REFUGEE EDUCATOR ACADEMY

Topics

• What are the components of the Refugee Educator Academy? 

  Based on Sustainable Learning principles, the Refugee Educator Academy is designed for educators teaching refugees (and other displaced, migrant, and culturally and linguistically diverse learners) and includes the following components:

  • Practice Mastery: There is an abundance of quality content, including for example on minimum standards for child protection, teacher training packs, social emotional learning, and other critical content areas. We seek to build upon this knowledge base, making existing content more widely available in measured, digestible chunks which educators can instantly make use of in their unique contexts. By placing participants at the center and building out from their goals, we aim to develop foundational skills, shared language, immediately useful lessons and materials, and learning design (or instructional) practice mastery. We cultivate teacher leadership and lift educators’ voices to advocate for joyful and sustainable learning environments for all teachers and students.
  • Micro-courses: These courses offer open-access, self-paced, unfacilitated learning opportunities focused on refugee and immigrant students, including students with interrupted formal education (SIFE or SLIFE). View and sign-up for courses here.

  • Facilitated courses: These longer courses allow for sustained, guided learning within a cohort or community of practice. Currently, facilitated course offerings exist for North American and European contexts. These courses can be customized and contextualized for individual learning centers, schools, districts, or departments of education. Please contact us to learn more about what is available and how we can support learning and capacity building in your institution or organization.

  • Webinars and Workshops: Workshops and webinars offer a chance for refugee educators to connect with each other around the world. Get a view inside diverse refugee education teaching and learning contexts from both practitioner and researcher perspectives and engage in conversation around critical issues in the field of refugee education. Sign up for webinars and workshops.

  • Micro-credentials:  Micro-credentials are competency-based assessments of educator’s areas of expertise. They are rigorous, self-paced professional development opportunities for educators who are looking for PD that builds from their own context. Micro-credentials are gaining traction in districts around the country as a way for teachers to personalize professional development and demonstrate their teaching competencies. Explore our Micro-credentials at Digital Promise. Watch the following video podcast featuring our project consultant Sarah Bracken speaking about micro-credentials.
    

  • Communities of Practice: Through the Refugee Educator Academy, you’ll become a member of diverse communities of practice within which to dialog, share resources, and problem-solve together with educators working within Education in Emergency (EiE) and refugee displacement, migration, and resettlement contexts from across the globe. Each of our communities of practice aims to foster quality holistic learning for refugee and displaced learners in inclusive, equitable, joyful learning environments around the world through sustained support for the educators’ teaching, learning, and leading in those communities.
• Why is the Refugee Educator Academy critical? 

  With more than 79.5 million forcibly displaced people in the world, the well-being of refugees has taken on crisis proportions. Alongside a global shortage of teachers and the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on access to schools and formal learning programs, refugee, displaced, and other marginalized communities find access to quality education limited. We are called upon as a global community to attend to the basic human rights of each person and to offer the promise of a better tomorrow and a brighter future to each of our children, neighbors, and colleagues. Quality holistic learning for teachers and students, alike, offers the potential to address this call, creating learning communities that are sustainable, thriving, inclusive, and equitable. . Sustained professional learning opportunities and supportive communities of practice are essential to build the dynamic, informed, skilled teacher workforce required to meet current teaching and learning demands. Creating professional development resources and opportunities tailored to the needs of educators teaching in refugee displacement, migration, and resettlement contexts is the core purpose of the Refugee Educator Academy.

• How can I participate in the Refugee Educator Academy as an educator?

  There are several ways Educators can participate in the Refugee Educator Academy, from joining communities of practice to completing shorter, self-paced courses. Educators can also join projects as co-creators of resources and toolkits, as participants in pilot tests of courses and assessment tools, as presenters in workshops and webinars, and as volunteers supporting colleagues globally and/or specific REA projects. As an educator, you have the opportunity to learn and to lead within the REA.

• Are there ways for educational institutions, INGOs, and other organizations to partner and/or contract services with the Refugee Educator Academy? 

  The Center for Learning in Practice collaborates with partners on instructional design, pilot programs, and other work to benefit educators in refugee displacement, migration, and resettlement contexts.

• How can I support the Refugee Educator Academy?

  The vitally important work of the Refugee Educator Academy is made possible through generous support from individuals, institutions and corporate sponsors. To support the Refugee Educator Academy at the Center for Learning in Practice, please visit our Donations page.