About Us

Welcome to the TEAM UP website, an online resource for teachers and teacher educators with an interest in learning more about teaching English language learners.

TEAM UP – Teaching English Language Learners Action Model to Unite Professionals – was developed at the University of Minnesota as a professional development model that would bring together teacher educators and teachers to address the school choices that can best enhance language and academic learning for bilingual learners in our schools.

Teachers have long known the value of talking with peers. Virtually no individual survives the teaching profession without close and dear friends — colleagues who share the knowledge of what teaching entails, and the joys and challenges of the work involved. The power of the kinds of conversations that teachers engage in each day has only recently been examined with any systematic effort to understand the impact it has on both teacher practice and student outcomes. TEAM UP was developed to provide a space within and across school communities for those conversations to take place.

TEAM UP was developed with the assistance of Title III funding from the US Department of Education in 2002 with the goal of providing a framework for sustained, teacher-drive, site-based professional development for schools that wanted to have a team address the issues of learning English while navigating subject matter content at school.

GOALS OF THE TEAM UP PROJECT

* Through a two-year collaborative process that allows school teams to examine, construct, and determine the most effective way in which to meet learner needs at their particular school site, the project offers direction for the implementation of best practice where English language learners are concerned;

* Individuals set professional development goals, participate in work with other educators away from their schools, and collaborate with others to meet their goals;

* Teams become leading partners in assisting schools in their district and in neighboring districts in making informed decisions concerning English language learners.

PHILOSOPHY UNDERLYING THE TEAM UP PROJECT

* Student-focused: Personal and team-based professional development will help educators provide effective learning experiences for English language learners in their schools.

* Site-Based: Small teams of seven work together to solve problems that are specific to their schools and in the process begin to rethink the choices made both individually and collectively concerning what can best maximize the strengths of their English language learners.

* Collaborative: Team members represent a variety of instructional roles (elementary: grade-level teacher, ESL teacher, paraprofessional bilingual staff; middle schools: content area teachers, ESL teacher) to ensure integrative and long-term solutions.

* Professional: Substantial release time and financial support is provided for team members who commit their time and effort to this initiative.

* Individually rewarding: Team members identify individual goals for professional development and work toward those goals.

* Long-term: Each team meets regularly for two years to foster a long-term approach to problem solving and community building.

During the period 2002-2007, the TEAM UP staff worked with eight elementary schools across seven school districts, representing urban, suburban, and rural communities. Beginning in fall of 2007, the middle school project began, with four new schools joining together their staffs of Math, Science, ESL, and Language Arts teachers to begin the two-year collaborative process.