The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

During 2001, the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute continued to make progress in its two complementary areas of activity: the local and the national.

In New Haven it conducted a program of six seminars for Fellows. It continued its work with the Centers for Professional and Curricular Development in the schools (with eleven Centers in operation for most of this year). It developed further the relationship of its resources to school curricula, establishing Reference Lists for High Schools and Elementary Schools that show the relationship of many Institute-developed curriculum units to school curricula and academic standards. And it pursued its fund-raising to ensure the continuation of its activity in New Haven and across the country in the longer term.

Progress on the national level has been most notably assisted by a four-year grant from the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, and a supplementary three-year grant from the McCune Charitable Foundation, for the establishment of a National Demonstration Project. The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute has now completed the three-year process of working with four other Teachers Institutes. The National Demonstration Project has begun to create a network of Teachers Institutes across the country that can serve as a model for university-school collaboration.

The Institute is now seeking funds to continue the Yale National Initiative through this fourteen-year process, which might establish as many as 45 new Teachers Institutes across the nation. Support for the Preparation Phase of this Initiative has been received through an extension of the National Demonstration Project by the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds into 2003 and a grant from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund. All four newly established Institutes have declared their intention to apply for Research and Planning Grants during the Preparation Phase. During the Yale National Initiative, the periodical On Common Ground, which summed up the National Demonstration Project in its special issue, Number 9, may continue to be a vehicle for disseminating the progress and results of the Yale National Initiative.

(image available in print form)

Thomas R. Whitaker and Howard R. Lamar at the University Advisory Council meeting, April 2001.

The coming year, 2002, will be the Institute’s twenty-fifth year of operation. We are already laying plans to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary with one or more events that are intended to increase the Institute’s visibility and encourage further financial support. A dinner on November 13, 2002, will celebrate the anniversary and honor Howard R. Lamar, Honorary Chairman of the University Advisory Council of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.