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Introduction | |
| During 2006 the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute continued its New Haven program for the twenty-ninth year and carried out the Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools, a long-term endeavor to establish up to 45 new Teachers Institutes throughout the United States. | |
| From its beginning in 1978, the overall purpose of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute has been to strengthen teaching and learning in local schools and, by example, in schools across the country. The Institute places equal emphasis on teachers' increasing their knowledge of a subject and on their developing teaching strategies that will be effective with their students. New Haven represents a microcosm of urban public education in the United States. Eighty-seven percent of the students in the New Haven Public Schools are African American or Hispanic. Because of the high proportion of students eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch, the district now has a universal free lunch program for all students through eighth grade. | |
| At the core of the program is a series of seminars on subjects in the humanities and the sciences. Topics are suggested by the teachers based on what they think could enrich their classroom instruction. In the seminars, Yale faculty contribute their knowledge of a subject, while the New Haven teachers contribute their expertise in elementary and secondary school pedagogy, their understanding of the students they teach, and their grasp of what works in the crucible of the classroom. Successful completion of a seminar requires that, with guidance from the Yale faculty member, the teachers each write a curriculum unit to be used in their own classroom and to be shared with others. The units are disseminated throughout New Haven schools and, in certain schools, through Institute Centers for Curriculum and Professional Development. Both print and electronic publication make the units available for use or adaptation by other teachers in New Haven, and by teachers, students, and the wider public throughout this nation and indeed the world. | |
| Teachers are treated as colleagues throughout the seminar process. Unlike conventional university or professional development courses, Institute seminars involve at their very center an exchange of ideas among teachers and Yale faculty members. This is noteworthy since the teachers admitted to seminars are not a highly selective group, but rather a cross-section of teachers in the system, most of whom, like their urban counterparts across the country, did not major in one or more of the subjects they teach. The Institute's approach assumes that urban public school teachers can engage in serious study of the field and can devise appropriate and effective curricula based on this study. | |
| Through 2006, the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute has offered 176 different seminars to 613 individual teachers, many of whom have participated for more than one year. (Please see Appendix for a list of the Fellows.) The seminars, meeting over a five-month period, combine the reading and discussion of selected texts (and often the study of selected objects or aspects of the local environment) with the writing of the curriculum units. Thus far, the teachers have created 1588 curriculum units. Over the years, a total of 93 Yale faculty members have participated in the Institute by giving one or more seminars. (Please see Appendix.) Of them, 65 have also given talks. Forty-four other Yale faculty members have also given talks. About half of these 137 participants are current or recently retired members of the faculty. | |
| The Institute's twentieth year, 1997, had brought to a climax a period of intensive development of the local program. That had included placing all Institute resources online, providing computer assistance to the Fellows, correlating Institute-developed curriculum units with new school-district academic standards, establishing Institute Centers for Curriculum and Professional Development in the schools, and establishing summer Academies for New Haven students. In that year, while continuing to deepen its work in New Haven, the Institute began a major effort to demonstrate the efficacy of its approach in other cities across the country. | |
| This effort involved in 1998 the planning stage of a National Demonstration Project. In 1999 partnerships were established between colleges or universities and school districts at four sites that planned to tailor the Institute's approach to local needs and resources. Implementation grants were awarded to four new Teachers Institutes -- including Pittsburgh (Chatham College and Carnegie Mellon University) and Houston (University of Houston). These grants enabled them to work with the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute for an initial period of three years, from 1999 through 2001. | |
| In 2002-03 the Institute's work on the national level was notably assisted by an extension of the support for the National Demonstration Project which enabled the two-year Preparation Phase of the Yale National Initiative to be brought to completion. The Preparation Phase included Research and Planning Grants for the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute and the Houston Teachers Institute, which have significantly contributed to the evaluation of the Teachers Institute approach. The Preparation Phase enabled the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute to collate and analyze data from the questionnaires and surveys conducted during the National Demonstration Project, establish a Web site for the Yale National Initiative, and prepare the "Understandings" and "Necessary Procedures" that serve as the basis for membership in a new League of Teachers Institutes. The Preparation Phase made possible a summary evaluation of the National Demonstration Project by Rogers M. Smith and other researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, and culminated in 2004 with the announcement of the Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools in states throughout the country. |
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| In 2005-06 ten cities in nine states began participating in the National Initiative. These included three cities that already had Teacher Institutes -- New Haven, Houston, and Pittsburgh -- and seven cities that the Initiative had targeted for their potential to establish a new Teachers Institute. Superintendents of public schools in these seven cities nominated teachers to become Yale National Fellows who would participate in national seminars led by faculty members experienced in the Institute approach. In this way teachers might learn first-hand about that approach and might become leaders in exploring the creation of a Teachers Institute for their home community. Although they meet on a compressed schedule, the national seminars have the same expectations as New Haven Institute seminars. In this way, the National Initiative undertook an annual series of activities: an Organizational Session of the seminars that National Fellows attend each May; an Intensive Session of seminars for two weeks each July, which Institute directors and college and university faculty members from participating cities also attend; and an Annual Conference each October where school officials learn more about the Institute approach from National Fellows, national seminar leaders, and other faculty. |
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| The present report focuses on the activity undertaken by the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute in 2006. Extensive material on the National Initiative is available on the Initiative Web site. |
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