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  • National Fellows Begin Program at Yale

    Organizational Session, May 2015

    Following are the remarks of Initiative Director James Vivian in welcoming participants to the eleventh Organizational Session of the Yale National Initiative.

    Good morning. I am delighted to welcome the 2015 National Fellows as colleagues in the Yale National Initiative and as members of the University community. If there is time after the morning’s panel, I will ask you to introduce yourselves.

    It was rewarding to read your applications and inspiring to hear your passion for teaching and your aspirations for your students. You remind us, forcefully, of reasons why we have undertaken this work, and encourage us about what your students will learn about the subjects you will study in our national seminars. From this I am confident we will have an enjoyable and productive time working together.

    You are participating in the eleventh year of the Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools. As you know, the Initiative is a long-term endeavor to influence local, state, and Federal education policy on teacher professional development, in part by establishing exemplary Teachers Institutes in states around the country. In this way we honor and support you and your profession.

    You come from nineteen school districts in eight states and the District of Columbia. Each location is at a different stage of considering or implementing the Teachers Institute approach. It is gratifying that new Teachers Institutes have been founded during the Initiative, and that another community is now planning an Institute. This progress is a direct result of the leadership and persistence of National Fellows and a tribute to their conviction about the power of the Teachers Institute approach for schools that enroll a high proportion of students from low-income families and minority backgrounds. So far, including yourselves, 410 individual teachers have been National Fellows, many more than once, and have become agents of the education innovation we advocate.

    Two thirds of the National Fellows this year come from school districts that are continuing to learn about the promise of the Teachers Institute approach for their location. One fifth come from existing Teachers Institutes and are Institute Fellows and teacher Representatives locally. We are thrilled that other National Fellows come from five school districts that have joined the Initiative this year. Overall, nearly two thirds of the National Fellows are participating here for the first time.

    Each of you will take part in a seminar with a Yale faculty member and teachers who are knowledgeable of the Teachers Institute approach. For those of you who are already familiar with our approach, you will help inform our new colleagues about its advantages for teachers and their students and schools. All National Fellows will deepen your own knowledge of the seminar subject and will develop a curriculum unit to educate and motivate your own students. In short, you will study both the Institute approach and your seminar subject, apply what you have learned in your own classroom, and share your curriculum unit with colleagues in your school district and through our popular Web site with teachers anywhere. Your work will have a large audience. Last year, the Teachers Institute Web site had over 2.4 million visitors and 6.2 million page views. Residents of 12,536 U.S. cities and towns visited site. Almost all visits to our Web sites were made to pages of curriculum units developed by Fellows in our seminars.

    The national seminars begin with meetings today and tomorrow. Before the Organizational Session ends, each National Fellow will submit a revised curriculum unit topic, a brief description of that topic, and a list of what you will study between now and the time you return for the Intensive Session in July. When you come to the annual Conference in October, you will report on the unit you will have completed in August, and on the further progress being made in your work locally. Faculty members from some partner colleges and universities will join you here in July, and superintendents and other officials from your school districts will accompany you in October to learn more about the compelling reasons to support your professional efforts.

    The conference, which Yale President Peter Salovey will host, will be expanded this year to fulfill one of the commitments Yale made at the December 2014 White House Summit on college opportunity. That is, in the language the White House released, "Toward the goal of ensuring an equitable distribution of effective teachers for engaging and educating students from low-income families, Yale will convene a national conference on the role of Teachers Institutes in supporting and retaining teachers in high-need schools."

    So, again, I welcome you today and look forward to the times when we will reconvene this summer and fall.

    To arrange the stage for our work together this weekend and later this year, the morning’s panel will speak and answer questions about features of the seminar and curriculum unit writing process that distinguish the Teachers Institute approach, which is described in the Manual I sent you.

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