The League of Teachers Institutes
The three Teachers Institutes participating in the Yale National Initiative now comprise a League of Teachers Institutes, which will over time develop its own procedures. Each of these Institutes engages the serious educational problems associated with low-income communities and a high proportion of racial and ethnic diversity. Each illustrates, however, a somewhat different pattern of needs and relationships to local resources, institutional apparatus, and state mandates. Each may therefore serve as one example for the establishment of Teachers Institutes elsewhere in the United States. The two new Institutes are serving school systems that are considerably larger than that of New Haven. In New Haven the partnership includes a major private university that does not have a department or college of Education. In Pittsburgh the partnership includes a private university focused upon the sciences and a small liberal arts college that has a strong Education program. In Houston the partnership includes a state-supported urban university that includes a college of Education. These Teachers Institutes show that a successful professional development program in the humanities and sciences can exist in each of these institutional contexts. The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute has had for over a quarter of a century a very significant impact upon its school district. And the two new Institutes, after their successful start during the National Demonstration Project, are now adopting somewhat different scopes and strategies that are directed toward having such an impact upon yet larger districts. The following subsections will provide basic information about each member of the League of Teachers Institutes, sketching the programs carried out during 2002, 2003 and 2004, will mention the two Institutes that in certain respects are currently affiliated with the League, and will describe the arrangements within the League for communication, dissemination, documentation, expansion and systemic effect, and affiliation.
The Yale New Haven Teachers Institute
The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in the fall of 2002, brings the resources of Yale University to an entire school district in which 49 schools serve more than 20,000 students. The founding Director of the Institute is James R. Vivian. More than 60 percent of the students in the New Haven Public Schools come from families receiving public assistance, and 87 percent are either African-American or Hispanic. There are about 1,000 teachers eligible for participation in the Institute. Through 2004, the Institute had offered 165 seminars to 580 individual teachers, many of whom have participated for more than one year. The teachers had created more than 1488 curriculum units. Thirty-three percent of New Haven high school teachers of subjects in the humanities and sciences, 33 percent of transitional school teachers, 30 percent of middle school teachers, and 12 percent of elementary school teachers had then completed successfully at least one year of the Institute. Over the years, a total of 83 Yale faculty members had participated in the Institute by leading one or more seminars. Of them, 57 had also given talks. Forty other Yale faculty members had also given talks. About half these participants are current or recently retired members of the Yale faculty.
During the National Demonstration Project, the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute had a dual relationship to the four other Teachers Institutes. It was both monitor of the Grant from the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and a senior colleague. It offered technical assistance to the other Teachers Institutes, convened the Annual Conferences, maintained the National Steering Committee and the National University Advisory Council and helped in other ways to further the aims of the entire league of Teachers Institutes. At the same time, it encouraged each of the other Teachers Institutes to develop both a necessary independence and a collaborative spirit. Its aim has been to assist in transforming the existing and potential Teachers Institutes into a fully collaborative league that might in the future extend its membership to include Institutes at yet other sites. During the Preliminary Phase of the Yale National Initiative, this Institute has furthered that aim by working in concert with the Pittsburgh and Houston Teachers Institutes on mutually shared research and planning that have been funded by the Jessie Ball duPont Fund. It also continues to sponsor the national periodical On Common Ground, a forthcoming issue of which will be focused on the Yale National Initiative.
In 2002, the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute offered six seminars for 62 teachers: "Survival Stories," "The Middle East in Film and Literature," "War and Peace in the Twentieth Century," "The Craft of Writing," "Food, Environmental Quality and Health," and "Biology and History of Ethnic Violence and Sexual Oppression." In 2003, this Institute offered five seminars for 55 teachers: "Geography through Film and Literature," "Everyday Life in Early America," "Poems on Pictures, People, and Places," "Physics in Everyday Life," and "Water in the 21st Century." In 2004 the Institute offered five seminars: "Children's Literature, from Infancy to Adolescence," "The Supreme Court in American Political History," "Energy, Engines, and the Environment," "Keeping the Meaning in Mathematics: The Craft of Word Problems," and "Representations of American Culture, 1760-1960: Art and Literature."
The Pittsburgh Teachers Institute
The Pittsburgh Teachers Institute, bringing the resources of Chatham College and Carnegie Mellon University to a school district that now has 95 schools serving 38,000 students, began in 1999 by working with 20 elementary, middle and high schools, representing the three regions of the district. In 2001 the Institute reached out to several other schools, and in 2002, after the National Demonstration Project, it opened its program yet more widely across the school district. The Director, Helen Faison, an experienced teacher and school administrator, is former chair of the Education Department at Chatham College and a former interim Superintendent of Schools.
Chatham College brings to the collaboration with the Pittsburgh Public Schools the strengths of a small liberal arts college; Carnegie Mellon brings those of a university with a strong program in the sciences. Although both institutions have previously worked with the schools—Carnegie Mellon, for example, sponsoring a program in the teaching of science, and Chatham maintaining a program in teacher certification—this is the first collaboration between the two institutions in partnership with the schools.
During the National Demonstration Project this Institute offered 17 seminars, led by 11 different faculty members. In 1999 there were 26 Fellows who completed their seminar work; in 2000 there were 47 Fellows; and in 2001 there were 72 Fellows. In 2002 the Institute mounted seven seminars, two of which were developed in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Public Schools, in which 58 Fellows participated. These included "Learning Science by Doing Science," "A Restless People: Americans on the Move, 1760-1900," "Comedy: From Aristophanes to the Present," "Everyday Science," "Genetics and Genomes," "Latin American and U. S. Popular Culture," and "A Survey of African-American History by Way of African-American Literature and Art." There were 55 curriculum units completed by the Fellows.
In 2003 the Institute offered eight seminars, three of which were planned in collaboration with school district staff. The Fellows completed 60 curriculum units. Seminar topics were: "Coming Over: The Old Immigration," "Looking at Everyday Mathematics," "Learning Science by Doing Science II-Electronics," "Integrating Musical Theater into the Curriculum," "Pittsburgh Rivers," "Reading and Teaching Poetry," "US Latino Literature and Culture," and "Understanding Nonfiction Genres." In 2004 the Institute offered eight seminars: "Everything You Wanted to Know About the Universe... But Were Afraid to Ask (Cosmology)," "The Great Problems of Mathematics," "A Mobile People: American Immigration and Migration, 1750-1900," "Healthy Bodies/Healthy Minds," "Introduction to Folktales," "Rendering the Visible in Writing," "Pittsburgh Landmarks and Parks," and "The Essentials of African Culture."
From the beginning all of the seminars have been approved for increment credit, which qualifies participating teachers for salary increases with the School District. Since 2001 they have been approved by the Pennsylvania Board of Education for Act 48 credit, which the State of Pennsylvania requires that teachers earn to retain their teacher certification. The Institute has also made a strong effort to relate the curriculum units explicitly to the national, state, and local standards that all Pittsburgh Public School curricula must meet.
During the Preparation Phase of the Yale National Initiative the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute undertook research and planning with the assistance of Allyson Walker, of Cornerstone Evaluation Associates, and Janet Stocks, Director of Undergraduate Research at Carnegie Mellon University and four-time seminar leader in the Institute.
The Houston Teachers Institute
In the fourth largest city in the United States, the Houston Teachers Institute brings the resources of the University of Houston to the Houston Independent School District, where 280 schools serve 212,000 students. The Houston Teachers Institute builds upon the experience of the Common Ground project at the University, directed first by James Pipkin and then by William Monroe, which assisted high school teachers in expanding the canon of literary texts that are taught in English classes. The late Michael Cooke, a Yale faculty member and participant in the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, had served as an advisor for that project.
The Houston Teachers Institute began its work with 20 self-selected middle and high schools enrolling 31,300 students to establish a program that would address the needs of an ethnically mixed student-body, a large proportion of whom are non-English speaking. Paul Cooke, who had been a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science, served as its first Director.
During the National Demonstration Project this Institute offered 17 seminars, led by 15 different faculty members. Fifty-eight Fellows completed curriculum units in 1999; 33 Fellows completed curriculum units in 2000. In 2001 there were 38 curriculum units completed by Fellows from 27 schools. The Institute has now opened its program to a yet wider range of schools.
In 2002 this Institute mounted seven seminars, one of which was funded by Project TEACH, a partnership between the Institute and the Houston Independent School District supported by the U.S. Department of Education. The Fellows completed 69 curriculum units. The seminars included: "Ethnic Music and Performing Arts in Houston," "Houston Architecture: Interpreting the City," "New Developments in Understanding the Human Body," "Reflections on a Few Good Books," "Shakespeare's Characters: The Lighter Side," "Sports Autobiographies: Mirrors of American Culture," and "Drinking Water: Finding It; Making It Clean; Using It Wisely." There were 69 curriculum units completed by the Fellows.
In 2003 the Institute offered eight seminars, two with the support of project TEACH: "The 20th Century's Most Significant English-Language Books for Children and Young Adults," "Heroes and Heroines in History and Imaginative Literature," "African American Slavery in the New World: A Different Voice," "Literature as Healing Balm: Multicultural Women Writers in America," "There's No Place Like Home: Architecture, Technology, Art, and the Culture of the American Home, 1850-1970," "From FDR's Death to the Resignation of Richard Nixon: America from 1945 to 1974," "Understanding the Wild Things Next Door: The Nature of Houston," and "The Science in Science Fiction." Fellows completed 85 curriculum units.
In 2004 this Institute offered nine seminars: "Eye on America: Playwrights and American Life and Times," "Hands-on Geometry: How We Can Use Geometry to See the World Around Us," "America at War," "Where Justice is Served: How American Courts Work From Bottom to Top," "The New Houston: New Immigrants, New Ethnicities, and New Inter-Group Relations in America's Fourth-Largest City," "Exciting Experiments and the Ethics of Experimentation," "Wild Habitats in the Urban Landscape," "George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, and the American Century," and "Beyond Houston: Literature of Travel and Exploration."
During the Preparation Phase of the Yale National Initiative the Houston Teachers Institute undertook research and planning with the assistance of Jon Lorence and Joseph Kotaraba, of the Department of Sociology, University of Houston, supplemented by the additional research and writing of the Director, Paul Cooke.
Communication and Dissemination
This League of Teachers Institutes has already established an appropriate network of communication. During the Preparation Phase the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute has continued to provide the new Teachers Institutes with a range of technical assistance, which includes the sharing of research, advice on specific problems, meetings of the Directors, and a fourth Annual Conference. Each year the new Teachers Institutes have submitted reports, described in the section on "Documentation and Evaluation" on page 24 of this booklet, to the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. During this Phase there has continued to be lateral communication among the new Teachers Institutes, and common work undertaken by members of the League of Teachers Institutes and school teachers and university faculty members from affiliated Institutes.
The National Steering Committee, which consists of two teachers from each Institute in the League, has continued to take a major initiative in planning this common work and encouraging communication among the teachers at the various sites. It is complemented by the National University Advisory Council, which consists of two faculty members from each Institute.
The Web site of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute already makes available the publications of this Institute, including all of its curriculum units. Other Institutes have established similar Web sites. A developing electronic network is therefore linking the Institutes more closely. The League is also seeking ways to increase electronic communication among the school teachers and university faculty members who participate in its Institutes. A Web site — http://teachers.yale.edu — has been created that is dedicated to the Yale National Initiative as an entity, with links to Teachers Institutes that are members or affiliates of the League of Teachers Institutes. This Web site is not only a communications hub for the work of the Project but also an important continuing means of disseminating its results to the nation. It carries literature (including policy statements, curriculum units, and issues of the periodical) and also video materials in several forms that can be downloaded. It also offers those who visit the Web site the opportunity to provide comments on curriculum units and other material. As other Teachers Institutes are established, this Web site will assume even greater importance as a national center of information on university-school partnerships.
The periodical On Common Ground is potentially an important means of disseminating the results of the Yale National Initiative. Number 9, for Winter 2000/2001, contained articles by persons from each of the sites on some aspect of the process of establishing a Teachers Institute and meeting the needs of an urban school district. In a similar fashion, Number 10 of will provide a summarizing account of the National Demonstration Project, the Preparation Phase of the Yale National Initiative, and plans for the League of Teachers Institutes. It will contain the results of the four studies mentioned in the section of this brochure on "Evaluations and Independent Studies," with some other material contained in the brochure, and contributions from persons who have been working with Institutes in the Yale National Initiative.
Documentation and Evaluation
During the National Demonstration Project and the Preliminary Phase of the Yale National Initiative, each new Teachers Institute receiving funding through the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute has been submitting to this Institute interim financial reports and annual narrative and financial reports. Each has also been submitting final narrative and financial reports. The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute then submits its own annual and final narrative and financial reports to the funding agencies—The DeWitt Wallace Reader's Digest Fund (now the Wallace Foundation) and the Jessie Ball duPont Fund—which synthesize and assess the information provided by the sites.
These reports describe the scope, strategy, demonstration goals, and progress of the new Teachers Institutes. They include evidence that the new Institutes remain in accord with the basic principles of the Teachers Institute approach. They describe the curriculum units developed, the relationship between participating school teachers and university faculty, the nature and extent of leadership exerted by teacher-participants, the incentives for university faculty members and school teachers to participate, and the assistance from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute that has been needed, obtained, and used. They include an analysis of the participation of school teachers in Institute activities, using surveys and other instruments developed by the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute and modified as needed to make possible comparisons across the five partnerships. They analyze the factors contributing to, and hindering, the success of the new Institutes, and the effects of those Institutes upon teacher empowerment, curricular change, and other issues central to school reform. They also give an account of the progress made toward funding the new Institutes beyond the period of the Grant. Once during the Grant period, annual reports also included surveys of the use of curriculum units by Fellows and non-Fellows in the school systems. In its final report on the National Demonstration Project the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute summarized the three-year demonstration, made clear the most important outcomes, impacts, and lessons learned, described how the demonstration had changed and how we might address the issues it posed, and indicated the plans at each site for continuing the partnership. The final reports on the Preparation Phase of the Yale National Initiative accomplish similar tasks.
During the Implementation Phase of the Yale National Initiative, newly participating sites, which may receive their funding from a variety of sources, will submit reports to the Yale National Initiative and to the funding agencies in a similar fashion.
Expansion and Systemic Impact
The expansion of existing Teachers Institutes in large cities may occur through a step-by-step process of scaling up, as more school teachers and university faculty become interested in participating, and as increased funding allows the offering of more seminars. A Teachers Institute may begin in this way to expand its scope of operation within a city. When the resources of a single institution of higher education are not adequate to meet the needs of a large school district, it may prove desirable to expand the partnership. There seems a possibility, for example, of expanding the partnership between Chatham College and Carnegie Mellon University to include other institutions in Pittsburgh. It also may be possible at some point for the Houston Teachers Institute to draw upon faculty from other institutions of higher education in Houston.
There are also opportunities for other kinds of expansion or increased systemic impact within a given scope. Teachers Institutes may wish to establish Centers for Professional and Curricular Development in the schools, as has been done in New Haven, which may bring to a higher proportion of relevant classroom teachers the work of Fellows in the Institute. Through such Centers they may wish to establish Academies in summer or after school, as has also been done in New Haven, in which teachers may collaboratively shape a curriculum for selected students on the basis of their work in the Institute. An Institute may also seek to relate its work quite explicitly to state and local requirements for teachers, as the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute has done. Or, as all three members of the League have done, an Institute may choose to address in certain of its seminars those subjects that have been designated as of signal importance by the school district. This may occur through discussions about possible offerings over the next several years, as in New Haven, or through contractual arrangements and partial funding for specific seminars, as in Pittsburgh and Houston. Finally, as all three members of the League have recognized, an Institute may increase its systemic effect by distributing curriculum units, maintaining a Web site that is easily accessed, and making itself known as a visible example of high quality professional development.
Affiliation with the League
New Teachers Institutes may be established at other sites through many different ways. Funding might be provided wholly or in part by a Federal or State program, a national or local foundation, a school district that channels government funds to an Institute, or a college or university. Such funding might be provided directly to a new Institute or indirectly through grants to the Yale National Initiative. Institutes that have been established through the Yale National Initiative will have already accepted the "Articles of Understanding" and "Necessary Principles" given below, and may then become members of the League of Teachers Institutes. That process will enable them to continue to receive technical assistance and collaborative support from other members of the League.
Other Teachers Institutes, whether established through the Yale National Initiative or through other means, may not be committed to the "Understandings" and "Necessary Procedures" but may share certain of the aims of the League of Teachers Institutes. Such Institutes may ask to be recognized not as members of the League but as affiliated Institutes. The League of Teachers Institutes seeks to remain in close touch with such affiliated Institutes, and will invite selected school teachers and university faculty members from those Institutes to participate in certain of its activities.