nothin 2008 New Haven Teacher-Developed Curriculum… | New Haven Independent

2008 New Haven Teacher-Developed Curriculum Units Online, 2009 Seminars Set

DSC_1487.jpgThe curriculum units New Haven Public School teachers from 22 schools developed as Fellows in 2008, the 31st year of Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute seminars, are available, along with material from previous years, at this website.

(Pictured: New Haven Public School teachers participating as Fellows in the 2008 Institute seminar Pride of Place: New Haven History through Its Art and Material Culture,” led by Edward S. Cooke Jr., Charles F. Montgomery Professor of American Decorative Arts; Cooke is standing at right. Photo by Michael Marsland)

On December 16, Fellows who wrote those units — and Yale faculty members who led the seminars in which they participated as colleagues — gathered with subject supervisors and other district administrators to recognize their work together in this partnership. The event was organized by teachers serving as school Representatives for the Institute in 2008-09.

The new volumes of curricular resources reflect the efforts of some fifty New Haven teachers, in collaboration with Yale faculty members in the humanities and the sciences who led six seminars on the Yale campus over five months:

  • Controlling War by Law,” led by Robert A. Burt, Alexander M. Bickel Professor of Law
  • Storytelling: Fictional Narratives, Imaginary People, and the Reader’s Real Life,” led by Jill Campbell, Professor of English
  • Pride of Place: New Haven Material and Visual Culture,” led by Edward S. Cooke Jr., Charles F. Montgomery Professor of American Decorative Arts
  • Representations of Democracy in Literature, History and Film,” led by Annabel Patterson, Sterling Professor of English Emeritus
  • Forces of Nature: Using Earth and Planetary Science for Teaching Physical Science,” led by David Bercovici, Professor of Geophysics
  • Depicting and Analyzing Data: Enriching Science and Math Curricula through Graphical Displays and Mapping,” led by William B. Stewart, Associate Professor of Anatomy (Surgery)

Many of the units include appendices with explicit references to academic standards they address in the teaching of reading, writing, mathematics, science, social studies, art, health and languages such as Spanish as well as English. For 2008, the Institute has incorporated online the images — for example, photographs, charts, and graphs — that Fellows included in the printed versions of their units.

The units cover a wide range of curricular priorities, including some especially timely or of local interest, as well as intended to challenge and motivate students. Several examples illustrate this range among the units Fellows prepared across the six seminars.

In the volume on Controlling War by Law,” J. Robert Osborne of Hill Regional Career High School examines the writ of habeas corpus, the Constitution, and Lincoln as President during the Civil War. Both this unit and that by another history teacher, New Haven Academy’s Joseph Corsetti — on the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam — resonate amid today’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the effort to counter terrorism while securing liberties and human rights. In this context, history teacher James Brochin of Wilbur Cross High School scrutinizes government surveillance. Julia Biagiarelli of Betsy Ross Arts Middle School looks back at the Civil War and Reconstruction for her eighth-grade students.

Sean Griffin, an English teacher at Betsy Ross, also reflects on the Civil War, in his case creating a unit on Lincoln, the poems of Walt Whitman, and the photographs of Matthew Brady. That unit comes from the seminar on Representations of Democracy in Literature, History, and Film,” in which Jonathan Aubin of Career High School, an English teacher, looks at dissent in democracy,” with lessons he taught this fall in conjunction with the Presidential election. A Career teacher of history, Justin Boucher offers An Introduction to America’s Culture of Democracy” using texts including the Federalist Papers. Their school colleague Maria Cardalliaguet Gomez-Malaga, a teacher of Spanish, explores representations of Cuba. English teacher Marialuisa Sapienza of Cooperative Arts and Humanities H.S. examines democracy through excerpts from such diverse sources as Aristotle, Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and Frank Capra.

Many of the Fellows, whatever their seminar, sought to strengthen their elementary and secondary students’ reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, and their moral development. Those were particular aims of participants in the seminar on Storytelling: Fictional Narratives, Imaginary People, and the Reader’s Real Life.” With such multiple purposes in mind, English teacher Elizabeth Johnston of Wilbur Cross H.S. takes her students on a circular journey of storytelling.” Other units from that seminar include one by Katherine Massa, who teaches at John Daniels School — which has a dual-language (Spanish and English) approach — on storytelling to increase oral language proficiency. English teacher Mary Lou Narowski of John Martinez School considers Orwell’s Animal Farm. Ruth Chaffee, a special education teacher at Hyde and Cooperative High Schools, developed a unit on critical thinking and reading that asks What is true? What is real? What is reliable?” and employs online tools in addition to more conventional texts.

New Haven’s visual and material culture, its geography and its history, are the subjects of one volume. Carol Boynton of Edgewood School, Waltrina Kirkland-Mullins of Davis Street School, and Huwerl Thornton of Wexler-Grant are among the elementary-grades teachers who developed units for their students on the maps, fences, and gravestones of New Haven. Zania Collier created a history unit, on New Haven circa 1750,” for her middle-grades students at Microsociety School. Art teacher Melissa Sands of Columbus Family Academy considers local public art. Sara Thomas of High School in the Community, who also teaches art, and her students will be working with the New Haven Museum on local neighborhoods and mapping.

(Earlier in 2008, Sara Thomas was invited to speak on professional development partnerships that promote teacher quality and student learning, on March 13 at a National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality forum in Arlington, VA. There she discussed her experience as a Teachers Institute Fellow in each of her first five years as an urban public school teacher in New Haven. Her remarks were titled, Professional Rewards, Student Learning: One Fellow’s Experience with the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.”)

In the sciences and math, the seminar on Forces of Nature” produced curriculum units from the early grades to calculus. Erica Mentone, teaching second grade at Roberto Clemente Academy, addresses Matter in Motion,” while Sam H. Jones — teaching pre-calculus and calculus at Metropolitan Business Academy — pursues Gravity: A Relatively Heavy Subject.” Two math teachers from Hillhouse High School, Hermine Smikle and Kenneth Spinka, in different ways applied waves to develop units for their students.

The seminar on Depicting and Analyzing Data” resulted in curriculum units such as Marisa Asarisi’s on Using Graphical Displays to Depict Health Trends of America’s Youth.” She teaches fifth-grade math and science at Betsy Ross School. Nicholas Perrone of Barnard Environmental Magnet School aims to teach technology and math to students while promoting physical activity. A second-grade teacher at Vincent Mauro School, Larissa Giordano invokes the mind-body connection” to develop her young students’ math and science skills. Teaching anatomy and physiology at Polly McCabe Center, Jennifer Esty challenges students to interpret two-dimensional diagrams of three-dimensional objects. Also teaching anatomy and physiology, Sheila Martin-Corbin of Cooperative Arts and Humanities H.S. explores cardiovascular health. A teacher at New Haven’s new Science and Engineering School, Beth Klingher combines math, graphics, and critical-thinking instruction with a unit asking students to consider how graphs can justify a position, prove a point, or mislead the viewer.”

Teacher leadership is a core aspect of the Teachers Institute approach. In addition to participating as Fellows — including writing their own curriculum units for students — in seminars that university faculty members lead, teachers shape the seminar offerings each year through a network of school Representatives and Contacts. Representatives advise and support other prospective Fellows with their applications. One Fellow in each seminar acts as Coordinator, working with the seminar leader, and the Coordinators together comprise an admissions committee.

This fall, teachers representing the Institute in their New Haven schools have been canvassing their colleagues to identify those topics on which the program should offer seminars in 2009. The seminar offerings respond to teachers’ requests for what is most useful to them and compelling to their students in addressing the district’s curricular needs.

At the conclusion of their December 16 meeting, the Representatives decided to recommend the Institute offer five seminars in 2009:

  • Writing, Knowing, Seeing,” led by Janice Carlisle, Professor of English
  • The Modern World in Literature and the Arts,” led by Pericles Lewis, Professor of English and Comparative Literature
  • Science and Engineering in the Kitchen,” led by Eric R. Dufresne, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Physics
  • How We Learn about the Brain,” led by William B. Stewart, Associate Professor of Anatomy (Surgery) at the School of Medicine
  • Evolutionary Medicine,” led by Paul E. Turner, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Interested colleagues are encouraged to speak with their Representative to learn more and to obtain an application in advance of the January 27 deadline. More information will be available in the new year.

.… .
(Note: This account has been posted by the Institute’s associate director.)

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