Established in 1978, the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute®, an intensive and sustained collaboration among Yale faculty members and public school teachers, is the premier partnership between Yale University and the New Haven Public Schools. The first such university-school partnership to be permanently endowed as a unit of a university, it is a widely recognized model of high-quality teacher professional development. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, for example, has cited the Institute as one of few programs that “bridge the gaps between public schools and the STEM professional community” to provide teachers with tangible resources for the classroom.

In Teachers Institute seminars, university faculty members contribute their knowledge of a subject, while K-12 teachers contribute their expertise in elementary and secondary school pedagogy. Successful completion of a seminar requires that the teachers, with guidance from a faculty member, write a curriculum unit to be used in the classroom and to be shared with others. More than 3,000 curriculum units written by teachers in Institute seminars are available online for no cost at teachers.yale.edu.Evaluations have established that Teachers Institutes enhance those teacher qualities known to increase teacher effectiveness and student achievement and exemplify the crucial elements of high-quality teacher professional development. The evaluations also found a strong correlation between Institute participation and teacher retention in high-need schools.

In 2004 the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute launched the Yale National Initiative®, a long-term endeavor to improve public policy with regard to teacher professional development, in part by establishing in states around the country Teachers Institutes that provide state and local policy makers effective examples of the innovative Institute approach. Extensive information on the Initiative, including its periodical On Common Ground®, is online at teachers.yale.edu. We welcome hearing from school districts and universities that wish to explore participation in the work, and we invite inquiries from funders who wish to support this type of high-quality professional development for teachers in their own communities.

Contact the Initiative at teachers@yale.edu.