Structure

The Institute's Seminars

The Teachers Institute of Philadelphia at Penn offers a number of seminars each year to West and Southwest Philadelphia public school teachers. It is anticipated that the range of topics presented each year will be expansive, covering content from English literature, natural and social sciences, mathematics, and various humanities topics in response to the requests of the teachers. Teacher Representatives from participating schools solicit requests from teachers for topics, process the requests into general groupings, and negotiate with the university committee for the final shape and content of seminars as well as the university faculty willing to lead them.

By early January, teachers are selected for participation as Fellows based upon an application that, among other points, summarizes a curriculum project foreseen by the teacher applicant. The Teacher Representatives themselves will participate in the seminars. It is expected that approximately 10 to 12 teaching fellows will be enrolled in each seminar. Seminars run from late January until early May. Teachers and university faculty meet individually, and as a group for the final shaping of the seminar.

During the course of the seminar, the university faculty Seminar Leader meets with each teaching fellow individually to shape and guide the participants' points of interest in the content. A significant portion of each two-hour seminar is devoted to interactive presentations and discussions of the curricular material and its adaptations for classroom use. This peer review allows teachers to include School District curriculum standards and evaluation techniques. At the conclusion of the seminar series, each Teacher Fellow has completed a 15-to 25-page curriculum adaptation, including several lesson plans.

These works will be made available to other teachers, in the schools to which the fellows return, and will be archived by the Institute as well. The Philadelphia Institute's archives are linked to a larger database of works in the Institutes at New Haven, Houston, and Pittsburgh. A broad range of existing works is currently available at the websites of these existing Teachers Institutes.