About TIP

The Teachers Institute of Philadelphia is a unique academic professional development project based on a collaborative partnership, and supportive relationship between the University of Pennsylvania and the School District of Philadelphia. The Teachers Institute is consciously built upon a successful model of partnership practiced by Yale University and the New Haven (CT) School District. The goal of the Teachers Institute is to improve the quality of classroom teaching in public schools in West and Southwest Philadelphia, through a sustained academic professional development effort.

The Institute will annually offer academic seminars lasting fourteen weeks to a diverse selection of urban schoolteachers. These seminars bring together university faculty and city teachers in a collaborative and collegial effort as professional educators. The seminar topics, suggested by the teachers themselves, are designed to improve their mastery of academic content made available by university scholars.

A tangible result is the creation of curriculum and lesson plans by the teachers, reviewed with feedback by their peers, for classroom use. The finished curricula and lessons are then archived digitally, and shared with other teachers in their respective schools, and district wide.

An important intangible result is the rekindling of academic excitement for many teachers, through their experiences in the intellectually stimulating university environment that they, by means of their suggestions, have helped to design.

Each participating teacher who completes the curriculum and all requirements of the seminar series will be awarded an honorarium of $1000. The seminars themselves are offered to the teachers at no cost, though there may be, as may be reasonably expected, some expenditure for books and/or materials.

The Yale New Haven Model

Since 1978, the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute has developed a unique model for improving teacher quality. At its heart are partnerships between institutions of higher education and public schools. YNHTI offers five to seven seminars each year, led by university faculty, on topics the teachers have selected to enhance their mastery of what they teach. The seminars meet 14 times in a period running from late March through early July. The seminars significantly strengthen teachers in all five of the major dimensions that research has shown to be key to teacher quality.

In the seminars the teachers 1) gain more sophisticated content knowledge; 2) enhance their writing and oral presentation skills by preparing extensive curriculum/lesson plan units that adapt the themes of their seminar for their students; 3) gain new enthusiasm for their teaching because they are teaching curriculum they have shaped; 4) gain higher expectations for their students because they have more confidence in what they offering them; and 5) most important, they succeed better in motivating all students to learn.

Because the Institute approach relies on a network of Teacher Representatives in the participating schools to generate seminar topics and help direct the program, and because it uses teachers as Seminar Coordinators to assist faculty leading seminars, it also helps develop teacher leadership skills and promotes better communication among district teachers. It also helps many university faculty to see themselves as partners in improving public education, and to reinforce cooperation between the university and the public schools.