othing we do in Congress is more important than ensuring our children have the tools and opportunities they needto succeed. For over 30 years, the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute has demonstrated that partnerships between teachersand institutions of higher education are beneficial to the educators' professional development and, most importantly, lead to

improved student achievement.

– Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro

High quality teacher professional development programs that focus on subject and pedagogy are proven methods for enhancing the effec-tiveness of a teacher in the classroom. The Yale-New Haven program has been incredibly successful. If this model is working let's giveother teachers across the country the same opportunity. The need for effective teachers with deep content knowledge is most apparent andurgent in schools that enroll a high proportion of students from low-income families, exactly the schools that Teachers Institutes serve.

– Senator Joseph I. Lieberman

The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute in Connecticut is an innovative model that can and should be used across the country to helpteachers at schools in every community develop and hone their skills so that they and their schools can be successful. In order for studentsin every neighborhood to receive an education that will prepare them for the future, we must have teachers who are experts in their fieldand equipped with the best tools and strategies to educate our children.

– Senator Richard Blumenthal

On Common GroundStrengthening Teaching through School-University Partnership

YALE-NEW HAVEN TEACHERS INSTITUTE® NUMBER 14, FALL 2011

®

JASPER JOHNS, FLAG, 1954-55

Enacting a Nationally Significant Approach

N

(continued on page 39)

By Paul H. Fryhe African American "naïve" artistHorace Pippin (1888-1946) wasborn in West Chester, Pennsylvania

and frequently painted scenes recalling hischildhood, like the West ChesterCourthouse depicted here. Having lost thenormal use of his right arm to a sniper bul-let in the First World War, Pippin took uppainting in the twenties as therapy for thearm, guiding it with his left hand as hepainted. Overcoming this considerableimpediment, he enjoyed a well-deservedmodest success as an artist, having attract-ed the attention of Romare Bearden amongothers, especially over the last decade ofhis life.

It is tempting to consider the life andexample of Pippin an allegory of the pres-ent state of public education, and our hopefor the modest success its hard-workingand devoted teachers deserve with the oddsbuilding against them. What strikes meabout Pippin's painting of the courthouse isthat it looks just as much a like a school-house, even in detail. The clock says 3:15,time for school to let out, and the child infront, who seems to be wearing a whitecarrying pouch, could either be hawkinga news sheet recording some courtroomevent or triumphantly holding aloft,for invisible parents or friends to see, an Aon a homework assignment. If they"teach to the test" in that building,they have succeeded with this child, whomay have benefited from the teacher'sparticipation in some content-based, colle-gial and empowering precursor of — forexample — the Teachers Institute ofPhiladelphia. As Delaware Secretary ofEducation Lillian Lowery points out in theremarks we have reprinted here, there is noincompatibility at all between responsive-ness to standards and creative engagementwith an Institute seminar.

A photograph reveals the allegorical fig-ure on the pedestal, which has "Old Glory"engraved in large letters across the front, to

be holding a gigantic flag billowing behindhim. Of flags there will be more to say, butnone of this is visible in Pippin's painting,where the figure seems to be enshrouded ina cape or cloak and to be raising an arm atan angle parallel to that of the child. As faras Pippin's handling of the silhouetted stat-ue is concerned, it could be one of WestChester's three nineteenth-century mem-bers of the House of Representatives: theattorney Joseph Hemphill, the botanistand doctor William Darlington, or theattorney Washington Townsend. Let ushope their spirit will help to sponsor andpass into law the Teachers Institutes billthat is now before the House, supportedby the fervent testimonials that the readerwill find as the opening feature of thisfourteenth issue of On Common Ground.The two commemorative plaques onthe pedestal would seem to reflectthe twofold connection Pippin wantsto express in his painting: the link betweenlaw and learning that would confirm,in an ideal republic, the integrity ofcivic values.

The hope of our proposed legislation is toauthorize the Institute model for every statein the Union, and Pippin's emphasis on theflag — above the building but firmly andcopiously planted in the ground as well,almost as ubiquitous as the flag of JasperJohns on our cover, especially if Pippinmeans the statue too to be the flag —seems to point the genius of place thatinspires this locale in the direction of anational idea, the idea we hope to realize.The architect of the structure Pippin haspainted, Thomas U. Walter, was also one ofthe architects of the Capitol building inWashington, D. C. But the location ofPippin's home town can also point towardsomething nearer to it: Delaware, not faroff and across the river. New Castle Countyin Delaware is the home of the newestTeachers Institute, now completing its firstyear of seminars under the directorship offormer teacher Ray Theilacker in coopera-tion with the University of Delaware underthe stewardship of its President, PatrickHarker. This issue of our periodical

(continued on page 33)

Editorial, Part I: On Enacting a Nationally Significant Approach

T

2 ON COMMON GROUND

Paul H. Fry is William Lampson Professor ofEnglish at Yale University.

HORACE PIPPIN, WEST CHESTER COURT HOUSE, 1940

FALL 2011 3

Credits: Cover art: Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Flag. 1954-55 (dated on reverse 1954). Encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood, three panels, 42 1/4 x 60 5/8" (107.3 x 153.8 cm). Gift of Philip Johnson in honor of Alfred H. Barr. Photo Credit: Digital Image The Museum ofModern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. Page 2: Horace Pippin, West Chester Court House. Date: 1940. Medium: Oil on canvas board. Size: 22 x 28 in. (55.9 x 71.1 cm.).Acc. No. 1979.1.3. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Bequest of David J. Grossman in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. Grossman and Mr. and Mrs.Meyer Speiser. Page 8: Jacob Lawrence, (1917-2000) © ARS, NY. Builders in the City, 1993. Gouache on paper, 19 x 28 1/2". Courtesy of SBC Communications, Inc. Location: PrivateCollection. Photo Credit: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation / Art Resource, NY. Page 11: Charles Sheeler, Rolling Power, 1939. Oil on canvas, 15 x 30 in.; 38.1 x 76.2cm. Smith College Museum of Art Northampton, Massachusetts. Purchased with the Drayton Hillyer Fund SC 1940:18. Page 12: John Steuart Curry, 1897-1946, Baptism in Kansas,(1928). Oil on canvas, Overall (Sight): 39 1/2 x 49in. (100.3 x 124.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney 31.159. Photograph by GeoffreyClements. Page 14: Kerry James Marshall, (b. 1955) Garden Party, 2003-2007. Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas 108 x 120 inches (274.3 x 304.8 cm), Courtesy of the artist; JackShainman Gallery, New York. Page 15: Robert Indiana, American (b. 1928), The Ten Stages Number Sculpture Reflected, 1980, screenprint, 25 3/8 x 33 in. (image), 31 5/8 x 38 1/2 in.(sheet), 1988.276. Indianapolis Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Pacheo. Page 16: Mel Bochner, Random Numbers (#1), 2002. Oil on paper, 20 x 15 inches. Copyright MelBochner. Page 19: Paolo Uccello, (1397-1475). Saint George and the Dragon, about 1470. Oil on canvas, 55.6 x 74.2 cm. Bought with a special grant and other contributions, 1959(NG6294). Location: National Gallery, London, Great Britain Photo Credit: © National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY. Page 24: Portrait of Ellen Johnson, 1976 (oil on canvas) byAlice Neel (1900-84) Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio, USA / The Bridgeman Art Library Nationality / copyright status: American / in copyright until 2055. Page 25: M.C.Escher's "Symmetry Drawing E126" © 2011 The M.C. Escher Company-Holland. All rights reserved. Page 30: John White, A Lande Crab, 1585-1593. Watercolour over graphite, height-ened with white (oxidised). Inv. PD 1906,0509.1.56. 9.13 x 10.9" (232 x 277 mm.). Location: British Museum, London, Great Britain. Photo Credit: © The Trustees of The British Museum/ Art Resource, NY. Page 31: John Steuart Curry (American, 1897-1946). Kansas Cornfield, 1933. Oil on canvas, 60 3/8 x 38 1/2 in. Signed and dated lower left: JOHN STEUARTCURRY/1933. The Wichita Art Museum, Wichita Kansas. Roland P. Murdock Collection, Ml.39. Page 34: Unknown Photographer, Scene from "Othello" with Paul Robeson as Othello,Theatre Guild Production, Broadway, 1943-44. 1 negative; 5 x 7 inches or smaller. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. Page 35: Henry Perronet Briggs,(1791/93-1844) Ira Frederick Aldridge (c.1805-1867), as Othello. American Actor. Ca. 1830. Oil on canvas 121.9 x 101.6 cm. (48 x 40'). Location: National Portrait Gallery, SmithsonianInstitution, Washington, DC, U.S.A. Photo Credit: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Art Resource, NY. Page 37: Folio A 2011 49. Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty (1710-1781), plate II from Gautier d'Agoty's exposition anatomique des organes des sens, Paris, Demonville, 1775, color mezzotint, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

Contents1 Enacting a Nationally Significant Approach2 Editorial

Paul H. Fry

4 The Teachers Institute Theory of Change Ellen E. Kisker

The New Castle County Teachers Institute8 Building the Institute in Delaware

Raymond F. Theilacker

9 Fulfilling Our Commitment to DelawareansPatrick T. Harker

10 Taking Care of Our Teachers and StudentsLillian M. Lowery

11 The Driving ForceSteven H. Godowsky

12 The Core of This TransformationTony J. Marchio

13 A Prehistoric Perspective Thomas M. Leitch

14 A Community I Believed InBarbara A. Prillaman

National Seminar in 201115 First Grade Mathematics: Coherent Foundations

and the Common CoreRoger E. Howe

What Is a Teachers Institute Curriculum Unit?17 Paul H. Fry

National Seminars and Curriculum Units from 2010"Poems about Works of Art"

18 Paul H. Fry

18 Lying to Tell the TruthBrook Blaylock

20 Comprehension through PoetryChante N. Givens

"Persuasion in Democratic Politics"21 Engaging Students

Samuel A. Reed, III and Elizabeth King

22 A Bright OpeningJeffry K. Weathers

"Creating Lives: An Introduction to Biography"23 Voices of Emery Secondary

Mika M. Cade

23 Creating a Life Molly Myers

"The Mathematics of Wallpaper"26 Roger E. Howe

26 Math and DesignRosemary Schmitt

"Nanotechnology and Human Health"27 W. Mark Saltzman

27 Starting with SmallConchita L. Austin

28 If You Can See It, It's Not Nano.Nancy Rudolph

National Seminars and Curriculum Units from 2009"Energy, Climate, Environment"

29 John P. Wargo

30 A National TreasureValerie J. Schwarz

"Green Chemistry"31 Gary W. Brudvig

32 Catching "The Headache" with Green Chemistry...Now That's Sexy Science!Rajendra K. Jaini

"Shakespeare and Human Character"34 Paul H. Fry

34 African Americans and ShakespeareBarbara M. Dowdall

"The Brain in Health and Disease"36 W. Mark Saltzman

37 Sensing Our Five SensesCarol P. Boynton

© 2011 by Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, Yale University© 2011 by Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, Yale University

ON COMMON GROUND4

By Ellen E. Kisker theory of change is a succinct

description of a program orapproach and the mechanisms

through which it is expected to improve itstargeted outcomes. A theory of change,which may be referred to by other termssuch as pathway of change, engine ofchange, blueprint, logic model or theory ofaction, identifies the important outcomesand indicates what intermediate outcomesto look for to ensure that the program is onthe right path to improving targeted out-comes (Reisman & Gienapp 2004).

A theory of change is useful throughoutall stages of a program's development.Initially, creating a theory of change canhelp stakeholders reach a common under-standing of the program and how it willaccomplish desired outcomes. Later, itbecomes a tool for stakeholders to commu-nicate with others about the program and itsexpected benefits. An explicit theory ofchange also provides a foundation for eval-uating the program. It guides the develop-ment of research questions, informs evalua-tion design, and aids in interpreting and pre-senting evaluation results.

The Teachers Institute Theory of

Change Maps Pathways to Teacher and

Student Outcomes.

The Teachers Institute theory of changedescribes how program founders designedthe Teachers Institutes to improve teachingand student learning. The Understandingsand Procedures (Yale National Initiative2007) provide a clear description of theessential features of the Teachers Instituteapproach. The theory of change extendsthis to focus on pathways to the expectedbenefits of following the Understandingsand Procedures.

At its most basic, the theory of changeillustrates how teacher and university facul-ty backgrounds, characteristics, and inter-ests, as well as the leadership of the subsetof Fellows who serve as seminar

Coordinators, shape the implementation ofTeachers Institute seminars (Figure 1). Theimmediate products of the seminars are thecurriculum units created by participants andthe professional recognition and facultyprivileges at the university that participat-ing teachers receive upon completion.

These immediate products are expected tolead to three strands of outcomes corre-sponding to teachers, students, and univer-sity faculty. For teachers, seminar participa-tion is expected to result in increasedcontent and pedagogical knowledge,which in turn is expected to improvethe quality of their instruction. Forstudents, teachers' increased knowledgeand improved instruction are expected tolead to greater motivation to learn. Theexperiences of university faculty who leadseminars are expected to improve their ownpedagogical skills, enhance their disposi-tion to collaborate, and enhance their senseof being part of a learning community.

Ultimately, these intermediate outcomes

are expected to increase teacher retentionand advancement and improve teachers'performance (as assessed in school districtteacher evaluation systems), enhancestudent learning of curriculum topics,and enhance the contributions of universityfaculty to public education. All of these out-comes converge to support higherstudent achievement.

The Teachers Institute theory of changehas a longitudinal dimension that is difficultto illustrate but is crucial for understandingthe potential impact of Teachers Institutesover time. Although a relatively smallnumber of teachers participate in seminarsin a given year, over time a significant pro-portion of teachers will participate. Someteachers will participate in multiple years,which is expected to strengthen outcomesfor those teachers and their students.

Higher teacher retention maximizesthe benefits that compound over time.Teachers who remain teaching in thedistrict continue to use Institute-developed

A

Ellen E. Kisker is Managing Partner of TwinPeaks Partners, LLC.

The Teachers Institute Theory of Change

5FALL 2011

curriculum units and apply their enhancedknowledge and classroom practicesin teaching future cohorts of students.Participating teachers who remain intheir district are likely to grow into leader-ship roles and continue to foster collabora-tion, higher morale and collegialityamong teachers.

Curriculum units are available for use byother teachers, further extending the poten-tial effects of the Teachers Institute seminarsacross teachers and over time. In NewHaven Public Schools, where the Yale-NewHaven Teachers Institute serves approxi-mately 50 teachers each year, simulationsshow that under reasonable assumptionsabout class sizes, teacher attrition, andreturning Fellows, two-thirds of students inthe school district at any time during a five-year period would be exposed to a curricu-lum unit taught by a Teachers InstituteFellow. In addition, approximately two-thirds of students enrolled at any time duringthe five-year period would be exposed toInstitute-developed curriculum units taughtby other teachers (Arnold 2010).

Research and Best Practices Support the

Teachers Institute Theory of Change.

The Teachers Institute approach was devel-oped more than 30 years ago, but it remainsa state-of-the-art program. The theory ofchange is grounded in the founders' visionfor the program, affirmed by participatingteachers' reports about their experiences andthe benefits of participating, and backed byresearch and experts' current understandingof best practices.

What Participating Teachers andProgram-Sponsored Research Say

Outcomes research conducted by the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute and the YaleNational Initiative shows that participatingteachers consistently rate their Instituteexperience as valuable and report experienc-ing key intermediate outcomes. Annual sur-veys have consistently shown thatparticipating teachers rate the Instituteprograms higher than other professional

development programs in developingknowledge, skills, enthusiasm, high expecta-tions of students, and capacities tomotivate students (Smith 2004).

An analysis of surveys of Institute Fellowsfrom 2003 to 2008 supports many of thepathways identified in the theory of change.The surveys show that teachers in all siteswere motivated to participate in the Instituteby the opportunity to develop materials tomotivate their students, to develop curricu-lum fitted to their needs, to increase their

content knowledge, and to exercise intellec-tual independence (Smith 2009). After par-ticipating in the Institute, teachers over-whelmingly agreed or strongly agreed thatthe seminars provided them with profession-ally useful new knowledge (87-94%) andthat the seminars raised their expectations oftheir students (87-95%).

Periodic surveys of participating and non-participating teachers about their use of cur-riculum units developed by TeachersInstitute Fellows show that virtually allFellows go on to teach the units they pre-pared in their seminar (87% taught theirunits in 2 to 5 classes). Most teachers report-ed presenting their units in teacher-led dis-cussions and stressed writing exercises andactivities designed to strengthen speaking,listening, vocabulary, and reasoning skills.Two-thirds of all Fellows rated the unitswritten by themselves or other Fellows assuperior to all other types of curriculum theyhad used. Many reported that theirunits were written to be interdisciplinary andsupported successful team teaching(Smith 2009).

Smith (2009) reports that Teachers

Institutes are influential in retaining existingteachers because participating teachers findthe seminars stimulating and feel "respectedand acknowledged as creative, caring edu-cated colleagues." Quantitative analyses ofdata in New Haven confirm this. Of thoseteachers who had been Institute Fellows bythe end of the 2000-2001 school year, 63%were still teaching in New Haven in 2004-2005, compared with 43% of other teachers.Fellows were almost twice as likely as non-Fellows to remain teaching in the districtfive years later, controlling for differences inrace, sex, and years of teaching experience,a significant difference (Smith 2009).

The majority of participating teachers ratestudent attention, motivation, interest, andcontent mastery as higher during Institute-prepared curriculum units compared withother curriculum units (Smith 2009). Aretrospective analysis of student achieve-ment outcomes conducted during the same5-year period, however, did not find signifi-cant effects of the Teachers Instituteson student achievement test scores or coursegrades. This was not unexpected, becausethe curriculum units were not alignedwith achievement tests. Smith (2009)concluded that student outcomes datamore closely tied to the goals of theInstitute-prepared curriculum units, ormore extensive and reliable data on studentoutcomes more generally, is required todemonstrate Institute impacts on students.

What Other Research Says

Strong causal research on the effectivenessof teacher professional development is stilllimited, but it provides evidence that teacherprofessional development can improve theintermediate and longer-term outcomes thatthe Teachers Institutes are designed to influ-ence, especially when the professionaldevelopment has features of the TeachersInstitutes. Other correlational research alsosuggests that teacher professional develop-ment can improve intermediate and longer-term outcomes.

A number of studies suggest that(continued)

The Teachers Institutetheory of change is

grounded in the founders'vision, research,

and practice.

6 ON COMMON GROUND

professional development can increaseteacher content knowledge. For example,Weiss and Miller (2006) identified sixpretest/-post-test studies of mathematicsprofessional development programs andfound positive gains in content knowledge.Hill and Ball (2004) found that teachers par-ticipating in the California ProfessionalDevelopment Institutes in mathematicsmade significant gains in their mathematics content knowledge; institutes with greaterduration and that focused on analysis, rea-soning, and communication demonstratedlarger gains. Of the 25 evaluation studiesreviewed in Blank, de las Alas, and Smith(2008), 10 reported evidence of measurableeffects on teacher content knowledge.

Research has also demonstrated thatincreased content knowledge can influenceclassroom practices. For example, Hill et al.(2008) examined associations betweenmathematical knowledge for teaching andthe mathematical quality of instruction andfound a significant, strong associationbetween them. Supovitz and Turner (2000)found that teachers who felt more well-pre-pared to teach science topics in elementaryschool were more likely to engage inreform-based teaching practices and create aclassroom culture of investigation.

Studies have also shown that teacher pro-fessional development programs can have apositive impact on classroom practices.Scher and O'Reilly (2009) conducted ameta-analysis of strong causal studiesand found that the pooled effect size1

of math and/or science professional devel-opment on teacher practice was .63 andhighly significant. Porter et al. (2000) ana-lyzed longitudinal data from science andmathematics teachers in 30 schools across10 districts and found that professionaldevelopment programs focused on specific,higher-order teaching strategies were associ-ated with teachers' use of those strategies inthe classroom, and the associations were even stronger when the professional devel-opment was reform-type, involved active

learning, was coherent, and involvedcollective participation.

Several studies point to the value of pro-fessional development that supports teachersin developing their own curriculum.Carpenter et al. (1989) evaluated a profes-sional development program that madeteachers aware of research findings, thensupported them in developing curriculumunits. The evaluation documented positiveeffects on teacher knowledge, improvements

in observed teacher practices, andhigher student achievement. McCutchenet al. (2002) provided an instructional insti-tute for teachers focused on increasingteacher knowledge and supporting teachersin developing their own curriculumaround what they learned. The evaluationdocumented positive effects on teacherknowledge and improvements in observedteaching practices.

Teacher professional development canhave a positive impact on student attitudesand student perceptions. Scher and O'Reilly(2009) found significant pooled effect sizesof math and/or science professional devel-opment on student attitudes (.42) andstudent perceptions (.57).

The ultimate goal of teacher professionaldevelopment is to increase student learningand achievement. Yoon et al. (2007) identi-fied nine studies of professional develop-ment that met What Works Clearinghouseevidence standards. All nine studiesemployed workshops or summer institutesfor elementary school teachers and focusedon a range of content areas. Most reportedeffects on student achievement were posi-tive; 8 were statistically significant, and 9 ofthe remaining 12 were substantively impor-

tant, with effect sizes of at least .25. Theaverage effect size was .54. Studies ofprofessional development that was morethan 14 hours long showed positive effectswhile studies of professional developmentthat was shorter did not. The meta-analysisconducted by Scher and O'Reilly (2009) alsofound positive effects on student mathand science achievement, with pooledeffect sizes ranging from .12 to .38.Subgroup analyses showed that impactswere concentrated in programs thattook place over at least one academicyear, focused on both content and pedagogy,and included both a workshop and coachingor another component. Blank, de las Alas,and Smith (2008) found that one third of theevaluation studies they reviewed reportedmeasurable effects of teacher professionaldevelopment in math and science.

What Experts Say

To help states and school districts makingdecisions about teacher learning and devel-opment, organizations providing technicalassistance have synthesized research resultsand advice of experts to identify features andpractices that make it more likelythat a teacher professional development pro-gram will be effective. The NationalComprehensive Center for Teacher Quality,for example, recently identified five featuresof high-quality professional development:(1) alignment with school goals,district standards and assessments, and otherprofessional learning activities; (2) focus oncore content and modeling of teachingstrategies for the content; (3) inclusion ofopportunities for active learning of newteaching strategies; (4) provision of opportu-nities for collaboration among teachers; and(5) inclusion of embedded follow-up andcontinuous feedback (Archibald et al. 2011).

The Teachers Institute approach encom-passes many of these recommended bestpractices: (1) each Teachers Institute isaligned with school reform goals and isdesigned to support a district's strategic plan,and the curriculum unit each teacher devel-ops is aligned with state and local standards;

Kisker: Theory of Change

1 All effect sizes cited are in standard deviation units.

The Teachers Instituteapproach encompasses

many of these recommendedbest practices.

(2) Institute seminars deepen teachers'knowledge of core subjects and assist themin developing strategies to teach their ownstudents what they have learned; (3) teachersare active learners in Institute seminars,receiving feedback from their peers andoften trying out the units with their studentsas they prepare them; (4) the collegialexchange of ideas among school teachersand university faculty members lies at thevery center of Institute seminars and is atenet of the Institute approach; and (5)Institute seminars are of substantial duration,involving a minimum of 26 hours in sessionplus substantially more for meeting withseminar leaders, researching seminar topics,and writing curriculum units. TeachersInstitutes are planned, implemented, andsustained by teachers. Each Institute seminartopic is suggested by teachers based onwhat they think will enrich their classroominstruction. Teachers recruit their colleaguesto participate, and one teacher in eachseminar plays a coordinating role to handleadministrative details, help establishcollegiality, and act as a resource forother teachers.

The Theory of Change Needs to Be

Rigorously Tested Using a Strong

Evaluation Design.

The Teachers Institute theory of changehas a solid foundation in experienceand research, but it is still a theory that needsmore testing with research designed toassess the causal relationships inthe theory. Evaluation of the TeachersInstitute approach employing a strong causalresearch design to explore the pathwaysand measure the magnitude of Instituteimpacts on intermediate and longer-termoutcomes is needed to confirm that the theo-ry of change provides an accurate map fromInstitute participation to outcomes.

Planning for a strong evaluation of theTeachers Institute approach is under way.The Yale-New Haven Teachers Instituteis undertaking a major redesign ofits Management Information System(MIS) to better support program activities

and to capture data needed for researchand evaluation. To the extent possible,the new MIS will be designed to accommo-date variations among local TeachersInstitutes and support their operations, aswell as promote the collection of consistentdata across locations.

Evaluation design activities are alsounder way. In the coming year, the YaleNational Initiative will work with localTeachers Institute staff to prioritize researchquestions and identify Institutes where astrong evaluation is feasible. Building onpast work to identify evaluation designoptions, the Initiative will develop a detailedevaluation design, sample design, anddata collection and analysis plan for produc-ing strong evidence of the effectiveness ofthe Teachers Institute approach. TheYale National Initiative will seek fundingand contract with an independent evaluationfirm to carry out the evaluation plan.

With stronger evaluation research based onthe theory of change, school district deci-sion-makers can have more confidencethat implementing a local Teachers Institutewill take them where they want to goand understand how it will do so.More broadly, lessons from the TeachersInstitute evaluation will contribute to thelearning and understanding of researchersand policymakers about how best tosupport teacher learning and developmentand thereby promote student learningand achievement.

FALL 2011 7

References

Archibald, S., Coggshall, J. G., Croft, A., and Goe, L. (2011). High-Quality Professional Developmentfor all Teachers: Effective Allocating Resources.Chicago: National Comprehensive Center forTeacher Quality.

Arnold, T. B. (2010). Modeling the Number ofStudents Reached by the Teachers Institute. NewHaven, CT: Yale University.

Blank, R. K., de las Alas, N., and Smith, C. (2008). Does Teacher Professional Development HaveEffects on Teaching and Learning? Washington, DC:Council of Chief State School Officers.

Carpenter, T. P., Fennema, E., Peterson, P.L., Chiang, C. P., and Loef, M. (1989). Using Knowledge ofChildren's Mathematics Thinking in ClassroomTeaching: An Experimental Study. American

Educational Research Journal, vol. 26, no. 4,pp. 499-531.

Hill, H. C., and Ball, D. L. (2004). LearningMathematics for Teaching: Results from California'sMathematics Professional Development Institutes.Journal of Research in Science Teaching, vol. 36, no.8, pp. 916-29.

Hill, H.C., Blunk, M. L., Charalambous, C. Y.,Lewis, J. M., Phelps, G. C., and Sleep, L. (2008).Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching and theMathematical Quality of Instruction: AnExploratory Study. Cognition and Instruction, vol.26, no. 4, pp. 530-511.

McCutchen, D., Abbott, R. D., Green, L. B., Beretvas, S. N., Cox, S., Potter, N. S., Quiroga, T., etal. (2002). Beginning Literacy. Journal of LearningDisabilities, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 69-86.

Porter, A. C., Garet, M. S., Desimone, L., Yoon, K.S., and Birman, B. F. (2000). Does ProfessionalDevelopment Change Teaching Practice? Resultsfrom a Three-Year Study. Washington, DC:American Institutes for Research.

Reisman, J., and Gienapp, A. (2004). Theory of Change: A Practical Tool for Action, Results, andLearning. Seattle, WA: Organizational ResearchServices.

Scher, L. and O'Reilly, F. (2009). Professional Development for K-12 Math and Science: What DoWe Really Know? Journal of Research onEducational Effectiveness, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 209-249.

Smith, R. M. (2004). To Motivate My Students. New Haven, CT: Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute,Yale University.

Smith, R. M. (2009). To Strengthen Teaching: An Evaluation of Teachers Institute Experiences. NewHaven, CT: Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute,Yale University.

Supovitz, J. A., and Turner, H. M. (2000). The Effects of Professional Development on Science TeachingPractices and Classroom Culture. Journal ofResearch in Science Teaching, vol, 37, no. 9,pp. 963-980.

Weiss, I. R., and Miller, B. (2006). Deepening TeacherContent Knowledge for Teaching: A Review of theEvidence. Paper presented at the MSP EvaluationSummit II, Minneapolis, MN, October 4-5, 2006.Accessed at http://km.mspnet.org/index.cfm/14124,October 20, 2011.

Yale National Initiative (2007). The Teachers Institute Approach. New Haven, CT: Yale-NewHaven Teachers Institute, Yale University.

Yoon, K. S., Duncan, T., Lee, S. W-Y., Scarloss, B., and Shapley, K. L. (2007). Reviewing the Evidenceon How Teacher Professional Development AffectsStudent Achievement (Issues & Answers Report,REL 2007-No. 033). Washington, DC: U.S.Department of Education, Institute of EducationSciences, National Center for Education Evaluationand Regional Assistance, Regional EducationalLaboratory Southwest.

8 ON COMMON GROUND

By Raymond F. Theilackern 2005, as a first-timeFellow of the Yale NationalInitiative, I had my sights

set on retirement. After all, I hadbeen a classroom teacher foralmost thirty-five years and feltthat there was not much else toexplore in a profession that I hadtruly loved. And then I experi-enced the Institute. That year, itwas my good fortune to workwith Paul Fry in his seminar onpoetry. In following years, MaryMiller, Steve Pitti, and againPaul Fry led seminars in which Iwrote curricula that undoubted-ly enabled me to do some of themost effective teaching of mycareer. I continued to participateas a National Fellow, then as theCity Representative from NewCastle County, then as PlanningDirector, and currently serve asFounding Director of theDelaware Teachers Institute in New CastleCounty (DTI). I could not have foreseenthis involvement, but know full well whyit happened. We hear it all the time whenFellows report that Institute seminarsprovide the best continuing academictraining they've ever had. There are manyreasons for this, but clearly it is whatattracts teachers.

In Delaware, there were many factorsthat placed the value of DTI squarelybefore the institutional partners. Inresponse to the teachers' exuberance wasthe strength of our superintendents’ sup-port. Individually and collectively, thechief school administrators found time andcreated forums for our growing numberof National Fellows in which to advocatefor the establishment of a DelawareInstitute. There were presentations atschool board meetings, invitational mes-

sages on district Web sites, time allotted onprofessional development days, internalmeetings with curriculum officers, andpersonal junkets to the Annual Conference,where they learned about efforts elsewhereand participated in team planning.

On the University front, both teacherand administrator advocates came throughthe doors of the University's Collegeof Education, whose staff were alreadyfamiliar with the education landscapein Delaware, were pivotal in leading usto the College of Arts and Sciences admin-istrators, and from thence to Universityadministration, working with whom we

were able to describe our experiencesand outline the potential benefitsof partnership.

Finally, and concurrent with these devel-opments, university faculty heeded invita-tions from teachers, school district andUniversity administrators, and morerecently, from their colleagues. As a result,a small chorus of Arts and Sciencesprofessors became devoted to ourestablishment on campus, following threeyears of summer attendance at workshopsoffered during the Intensive seminars.Their enthusiasm and devotion backhome — particularly in the planningphase — ultimately fueled the Universitypresident’s endorsement and encourage-ment of DTI's formal establishment asa unit on campus. Today, we celebratethe commencement of our first fourseminar offerings, and look forward to apermanent place in Delaware's educationallandscape. Our path is well-worn bythe steps of many who saw the valueof what the Teachers Institute brings tothe public school students of Delaware.

The New Castle County Teachers Institute

I

Raymond F. Theilacker is the FoundingDirector of the Delaware Teachers Institute inNew Castle County. Previously, he was anEnglish teacher at Howard High School ofTechnology in Wilmington, Delaware.

Building the Institute in Delaware

JACOB LAWRENCE, BUILDERS IN THE CITY, 1993

Fellows report thatInstitute seminars provide

the best continuingacademic trainingthey've ever had.

FALL 2011 9

By Patrick T. Harkerhe University of Delaware has aprofound obligation to the peopleof Delaware — for a few com-

pelling reasons. UD is privately chartered,but state supported; it's Delaware's flagshipinstitution of higher education; and it'samong the country’s earliest land-grantuniversities, a designation we take serious-ly. The Morrill Act of 1862 granted feder-ally controlled land to states for the pur-pose of creating colleges that would under-take the practical and liberal education ofthe "industrial classes." In exchange for theland, states essentially signed on to twocommitments: making higher educationuseful to their citizens, and ensuring thattheir citizens could access it.

And yet, nearly 150 years later, wecannot say this nation has fully resolvedthe problem of higher education access.Access faces two challenges: affordabilityand academic preparedness. While manyfederal and state programs have attemptedto address the former — clearly doing abetter job of it in flush economic times thanin bleak — it's the latter challenge, aca-demic preparedness, that we've spilled somuch ink over in our quest to do it right.

Delaware has had its own issues withaccess. In a very small state — one thatcounted fewer than 8,500 public schoolseniors last year — UD enrolls far morenonresident students than it doesDelawareans. Compounding this naturalimbalance is something else, a readinessimbalance, not unusual in state-supporteduniversities, where stiff competitionfor nonresident seats produces out-of-state pools heavily weighted towardhigh-achievers.

In a bid to raise in-state students' enroll-ment and competitiveness, UD launchedits Commitment to Delawareans, atwo-pronged approach to access that: 1) stipulates four years of high schoolcourses and grades that virtually guarantee

Delawareans admission to UD, and2) pledges to meet resident students'full demonstrated financial need. TheCommitment is working: In-state enroll-ment is up, and transcripts show studentsare taking tougher course loads.

But what the Commitment doesn't(and can't) alter is the teaching that goeson in Delaware's preK-12 classrooms —the quality of the instruction, the effective-ness of the educators. This is where the

University's proven teacher preparationand professional development programswill make the difference. We've investedourselves so heavily in high-quality teachertraining because it's there that we'll guaran-tee the college readiness and academiccompetitiveness of Delaware students.

For a long time, this country's educationestablishment believed that, all other thingsbeing equal, teacher quality matters. Butresearch has proved that all other thingsdon't have to be equal; teacher qualitymatters anyway — and it matters morethan anything else.

This is why the Delaware TeachersInstitute (DTI) in New Castle County is soimportant to UD. Aligned with all the char-acteristics of high-quality professionaldevelopment, the Teachers Institute modelis one of the most powerful vehicles I'veseen for improving teacher effectiveness.It brings university-level learning back

to elementary and secondary school class-rooms and raises the bar in terms of whatwe expect teachers to teach and studentsto learn.

One of the biggest deficits in teachers'ongoing education is that they're not con-tinually developed in what they teach; ped-agogy typically eclipses content. Giventhat deep subject knowledge is an essentialattribute of high-quality teachers, thisomission is troubling. But it's an omissionexpertly addressed in the Teachers Institutemodel. The content is contemporary, richand relevant, and the techniques developedto deliver it benefit from the true collegialpartnership of professors and teachersworking together. But this intensive andprolonged study yields something evenmore than deep content expertise. It yieldsteacher-leaders who rediscover their pas-sion for their subject, the same passionthat led them to the discipline years earlier.DTI Director Ray Theilacker, himselfa four-time National Initiative Fellow, putsit this way: "Teachers are married again towhat they love."

These are the teachers we need inDelaware's public schools. These are theteachers who will set a new standard forengaging, effective instruction; whosecurriculum units will build a foundationfor consistent quality; whose nuancedknowledge and renewed enthusiasmwill coax fellow teachers into DTI andinstitutionalize this powerful professionaldevelopment. These are the teacherswho will ultimately redefine what weexpect of the state’s students, and helpus truly fulfill our Commitmentto Delawareans.

As Delaware commences its firstfour DTI seminars this fall, the excitementis palpable. This is a grassroots effortled by teachers, championed by schooland district administrators, embracedby the state and advanced by UD. We enjoya full and strong community ofsupport eager to see how the DelawareTeachers Institute will transform teachingand learning in Delaware’s public schools.

T

Patrick T. Harker is President of theUniversity of Delaware.

Fulfilling Our Commitment to Delawareans

We've invested ourselvesso heavily in high-qualityteacher training because

it's there that we'llguarantee the college

readiness and academiccompetitiveness ofDelaware students.

ON COMMON GROUND10

By Lillian M. Lowery his is such an exciting time to be aneducator in the State of Delaware. Iwould like to thank the Provost and

all of the university officials for being sucha great partner. They have been there fromthe very beginning, traveling with the NewCastle County superintendents and teams tolearn more about the Teachers Institutemodel, and we are really pleased that wepartnered with the University of Delaware.Your Provost has been in the classroomsof three of your current seminar leadersand given them awards for outstandingteaching. This is what this program isbringing to us.

Dr. Steven Godowsky is one of themost modest people I know. He didn’t justhelp out, he made it happen. RayTheilacker's account of the TeachersInstitute experience completely energizedsomeone who had been around, seeneverything. I had the opportunity to travelto Yale with them and one of our teachers,Karen Yarnall from Newark High School,and marveled at the energy of the teachers.How many times do we actually give youprofessional development opportunitiesto talk about your craft? When you wentto college and majored in art or musicor math or science, you did it becauseyou loved it. This Institute, and these semi-nar leaders, will give you the chance torelive that feeling. I am so pleased thatsome of our best and brightest teachers,who are those among us tonight, willhave an opportunity to dig into what theyreally love doing in the content area andwork with some of the best minds in highereducation at the University of Delaware.

We are going to support that howeverwe can.

When I was Superintendent of theChristina School District, I saw what thoseteachers had seen. I was absolutely amazed.I was a secondary school teacher for overfourteen years, and I saw, just as today,these teachers engaging in higher-orderthinking skills around this work in a colle-gial atmosphere. I walked away thinking, "Iwish every teacher in every single class-room could have this opportunity."

How does the Teachers Institute reallysupport the kind of education reform that'scalled for concerning the new STEM cur-ricula? First of all, it stands apart from otherprofessional development because it is bothcreative and responsive to standards. Theteachers' curriculum units, each one of themdaunting pieces of research, conform rigor-ously to the standards. The Institute and theInitiative are packed with accountability.The reading, the research, the engaged con-versation around the unit as it develops isjust packed with accountability and alignedto your curriculum. This accountability isthe basis for creative work that is super-vised but not dictated by the seminar lead-ers. One of the things that drives me crazyis hearing people say, "We have theseinflexible standards and benchmarks, sowe can't be creative." You prove thatwrong. This Initiative, this Institute, provesthat wrong.

Because we have state curricula thatwe have to implement, because thereare standards and we have to make surethe children meet the benchmarks, wemust choose between a little bit of compli-

ance or a whole lot of compliance in pro-fessional development. The Institute showsthat compliance is easy without beingstultifying. One of the things that weadministrators have done in adopting thenew Common Core Standards — of course,we are one of 38 states to do that — is todevelop a Teacher Leader EffectivenessUnit at the Department. We need to knowthat teachers are ready to prepare studentsto meet the standards and to inspire theircolleagues to do so. We are also makingsure that any professional developmentpaid for by Federal or state dollars alignswith benchmarks and standards. TheInstitute is perfectly designed to this end.

What I heard from the teacher in NewHaven was how this approach was intellec-tually stimulating beyond precedentbecause it wasn't the kind of uniform,scripted professional development thateveryone endures over and over again. Itindividualizes a teacher's ability to improvecontent knowledge and brings out higher-order thinking skills. If we want our stu-dents to use their higher-order thinkingskills, let's model that for them. That's whatthis Institute allows each of you to do.

Finally, what is most profound for me isthat K-12 is in partnership with what hap-pens at higher ed, and higher ed is inform-ing what happens in K-12. We want tomake sure our students are college- andcareer-ready, and this gives children theopportunity to be in a seamless environ-ment with people who are informing educa-tion from both directions. I love hearing theteachers talk on these panels. I can't tell theteachers in the room from the Yale andDelaware professors. You're all so verybright and passionate, and I thank you forthe opportunity to be here and share thiswith you.

And thank you, too, Dr. Godowsky, foryour vision. Ray for his part is like a dogwith a bone. Once he got it, he wasn't goingto let it go. Dr. Marchio and the other super-intendents, thank you too for taking goodcare of our teachers so they will take goodcare of our students.

T

Lillian M. Lowery is Secretary of Education forDelaware. Prior to her appointment in 2009, sheserved as Superintendent of the Christina SchoolDistrict in Wilmington, Delaware. The text of herremarks on this page is taken from talks she gaveon two separate occasions: the celebration ofthe Delaware Teachers Institute at the October2010 Conference of the Yale National Initiative,and the Inaugural Open House of the DelawareTeachers Institute on January 20, 2011.

Taking Care of Our Teachers and Students

The Teachers Institute standsapart from other professional

development because it isboth creative and responsive

to standards.

By Steven H. Godowskyeturning to the Yale campus toparticipate in the Annual OctoberConference was a moving experi-

ence for me and for all of the members ofThe Delaware Teachers Institute team.These educators proudly represented ourgroup as the newest member of the Leagueof Teachers Institutes. This conference wasthe culmination of our journey to makeTeachers Institute seminars a possibility fora larger number of dedicated Delawareteachers who seek genuine, content richprofessional development.

I have had an affiliation with the YaleNational Initiative since 2005, when ourdistrict had the privilege of sending twoteachers to the first summer IntensiveSession. From that time, and in every yearsince, we have had interested teachers par-ticipate in national seminars. To a person,those "teacher Fellows" returned to start anew school year invigorated and confidentin their expanded subject matter knowl-edge and empowered as leaders. I was

then, and remain now, struck by their levelof excitement for teaching and for thehigh value they place on their Instituteexperience. Returning to the 2010 AnnualConference to be formally named asthe newest member of the League ofTeachers Institutes was the realization of asix-year effort to support teachers throughthe creation of our own Delaware Institutein New Castle County. It is our goal thatthis unique Institute, consisting of fiveparticipating school districts in a partner-ship with the University of Delaware,will provide teachers with powerful profes-sional learning experiences that trulymake a difference in the classroom andmeaningfully impact student achievement.

We began designing our plan by model-ing the successful Institutes held at Yale-New Haven and in other cities alreadydelivering high quality seminars. However,merging five school districts with a univer-sity partner presented unique challenges,consumed much time, and requiredgreat patience. We were guided byJim Vivian, who understood that buildinga commitment for the Institute modelwas a process, not a race to win. Weaddressed building the Delaware Institute

one step at a time, adding districtpartners, seeking administrative support atthe State Department of Education and uni-versity levels, and generating interestthrough regular meetings led by experi-enced Yale Fellows, especially our CityRepresentative, and now Institute Director,Ray Theilacker. Delaware's winning theRace to the Top Federal grant acceleratedthat process, providing momentum andpotential financial support. The drivingforce in the development of our plan, how-ever, was the strength of the teachers whoembraced the Institute model. Theyhave demonstrated a contagious enthusi-asm and collaborative spirit that will makeour Institute seminars profound andauthentic learning experiences forDelaware teachers.

The Delaware Teachers Institutein New Castle County is truly ateacher led, teacher inspired programthat will serve to strengthen our publicschools and enhance student learning inmeaningful and significant ways. Mycolleagues and I look forward toproviding many engaging and content-rich seminars at the Universityof Delaware.

11FALL 2011

Steven H. Godowsky served from 2003 to2011 as Superintendent of the New CastleCounty Vocational-Technical School Districtin Delaware.

CHARLES SHEELER, ROLLING POWER, 1939

The Driving Force

R

By Tony J. Marchioppoquinimink School District hasbeen involved with the YaleNational Initiative for four years

now, and, as superintendent, I have madethree trips to Yale myself to help jump startthe Delaware Institute in New CastleCounty (DTI) for my district and fourneighboring districts. It is hard not to getcaught up in all of the excitement andenthusiasm of just being associated with aprestigious institution like Yale, but it wasnot until I was having a lunch break withone of my own teachers that I realized thedeeper, more profound impact that the Yaleexperience has on teachers. "I was ready togive up," the teacher said, "to throw in thetowel and just move into another profes-sion. I was just worn out. Now I plan toretire as a teacher."

This "born again" experience is notuncommon among Institute Fellows.Institute fellowship offers teachers some-thing that is badly missing in public educa-tion professional development — valuable,in-depth content enrichment. TeacherFellows become masters in some aspect oftheir content that sets them apart from allothers. There seems to be a lot of personalsatisfaction around having that knowledge,and, besides the sense of accomplishmentin completing such a rigorous program, itis the feeling of confidence that comes withcontent mastery that is at the core of thistransformation. As hard as we educatorstry, we can't seem to get professional devel-opment right, often stringing together along series of seemingly unrelated topicsthat may frustrate more than encourageteachers. That is not the case with Instituteparticipation, as the work that the teachersdo comes alive in their classrooms. For aschool superintendent, knowing that teach-ers actually benefit from this form ofprofessional development to improve theirteaching made the effort to establish anInstitute worth it.

And so it was the words of one of myteachers that made all of the effort worth-while. Helping to create DTI has not beenan easy task, and on top of the hundreds ofother issues that continue to chip away at asuperintendent's time, keeping the momen-tum going took real effort. I feel very for-tunate that in our state the DelawareInstitute became a joint effort among fiveschool districts. We seemed to draw energyfrom each other, and when one superin-tendent got bogged down, the others pickedup the pace. We shared ideas in planning,we shared costs, and we now share theresponsibility of managing such a big proj-ect. What might easily have become over-whelming for one person became mucheasier when divided by five. No one is outon a limb and everyone gains in theprocess. Our Institute partnership wasmore attractive to the university becausemultiple school districts were involved. Iam not sure we would have received thesame commitment had just one districtbeen interested, but we were difficult to

ignore when we presented our proposal asa united team.

If there is one criticism that I hear of theInstitute it is that such a limited number ofteachers is able to participate. While thenumbers will increase as DTI grows, par-ticipation will still be somewhat limited.Our Institute will never reach the masses,but it definitely will impact those whoparticipate. While only about a dozenof my teachers are now Yale Fellows,they have made an indelible impact onmany others. And with eleven teachersnow participating as local Fellows, theimpact multiplies itself.

(continued on page 26)

The Core of This Transformation

Tony J. Marchio served from 1995 to 2011 asSuperintendent of the Appoquinimink SchoolDistrict in Delaware.

A

12 ON COMMON GROUND

This "born again"experience is not

uncommon amongInstitute Fellows.

JOHN STEUART CURRY, BAPTISM IN KANSAS, 1928

FALL 2011 13

A Prehistoric PerspectiveBy Thomas M. Leitch

s I write in the summer of 2011,the Delaware Teachers Instituteis about to launch its inaugural

season of four seminars for teachers in fiveschool districts in New Castle County. Ihave met the Fellows in my own seminarexactly once for a preliminary discussionof their goals, my expectations, and thebest ways to keep us all on the same page(or rather on related yet productively dif-ferent pages). How much can you sayabout an Institute that has yet to embark onits first season of seminars?

Quite a lot, it turns out. For if its historyhas yet to be written, the Delaware Institutehas a rich prehistory dating back to 2004,when Cary Brandenberger Riches and RayTheilacker, two teachers from HowardHigh School of Technology, were firstinvited to participate in Paul Fry's poetryseminar in New Haven. It is no wonder thatthey returned from the seminar burningwith excitement, for the benefits of a morecontent-rich approach to professionaldevelopment were obvious.

But many hurdles stood between us and aDelaware Institute. Every existing Institutewas based in a big city. Delaware wouldhave to rely on an alternative model: a sub-urban, multi-district Institute that wouldrequire not only cooperation between localschool districts and the University ofDelaware, their natural partner, but consen-sus among several district superintendents.Each curriculum unit, we knew fromthe beginning, would have to addressDelaware state standards for grade-and subject-specific instructional goals.Because the University, whose College ofEducation and Human Development wasthe state's premier teacher-training institu-tion, had a long history of outreach toDelaware public schools, we would have tomake sure that our programming comple-mented rather than competing with pro-grams that were already in place.

New obstacles arose during the longmarch to our inaugural season. The nation-wide economic downturn shrank schoolbudgets, strained grant resources, andmade legislators and citizens wary of anynew programs. Fortunately, Delaware'ssuccess in the first round of Race to the Topapplications for Federal grants to publiceducation inspired us with the promise ofnew funding and made educators aroundthe state sensitive to the need for innova-tive professional development.

I first heard about YNI in 2005 whenLaura Sturgeon, a former student of minewho had been accepted into DudleyAndrew's National Initiative seminar onadaptation, asked my advice about back-ground reading for the unit she was design-ing. The following year, Laura suggestedthat I go to Yale myself to see what washappening. Although other commitmentskept me from making the trip until October2008, I found her passion infectious, andon returning, I agreed to serve on theAdvisory Board for the yet unbornInstitute, then made a second trip toobserve two National Initiative seminarslast summer before signing on as a memberof the Delaware Institute steering commit-tee, a prospective seminar leader, andfinally a representative to the NationalUniversity Advisory Council.

I recount my own experience because Ithink it's typical. Virtually all the UD col-leagues I’ve talked to about the Institutehave wanted to hear more. The biggestobstacle to their further participation is notlack of interest but lack of time. Almosteveryone who has made the trip to New

Haven has been enlightened and excitedby their experience of the NationalInitiative. And virtually all of them havereturned eager to develop local seminarsof their own.

So it has not been hard for us to find orrecruit potential seminar leaders. The larg-er challenge has been to integrate theirinterests with the needs of the teachers whowill become Fellows in their seminars.In this connection, the prehistory ofthe Delaware Institute illustrates theparamount importance of cooperative part-nerships between seminar leaders andteachers, both before and after theybecome Fellows.

After my own recruitment by a student-turned-teacher, I learned a great deal frommy meetings with other teachers. At aroundtable for teachers who had alreadyserved as National Fellows, I asked oneof them, T.J. Vari, whether he thoughtteachers could find a local Institute stretch-ing over an entire academic term as appeal-ing or valuable as two weeks at Yale.His answer — "It certainly doesn’t soundas glamorous, but it holds out even morepromise of close partnerships with aUniversity mentor that can last foryears" — was all I needed to hear.

My own decision to propose a seminar in"Media Literacy" grew out of dozens ofconversations I had with local teachers andadministrators, and I was delighted andhonored when our Teachers AdvisoryBoard chose it as part of our opening slate.Once I had a preliminary list of teacherswho had been accepted as Fellows, readingtheir applications and learning about theirbackgrounds and goals gave me a pricelessopportunity to tweak my outline for theseminar, its weekly topics, and its list ofsuggested readings in order to make itmore responsive to their needs. Now I lookforward to a term of learning at least asmuch from my Fellows as they do fromme. If there's one thing I've learned fromthe prehistory of the Delaware TeachersInstitute, it's to pay close and respectfulattention to its middle name.

A

Thomas M. Leitch is Professor of Film,Literary and Cultural Theory at the Universityof Delaware.

I've learned from theDelaware Teachers Institute

to pay close andrespectful attention to

its middle name.

14 ON COMMON GROUND

By Barbara A. Prillamanommunity has always had a spe-cial meaning for me. After gradu-ating from college, I served in the

United States Peace Corps. It was duringthat time that I learned about the impor-tance of a community, of people workingclosely together to accomplish goals set bythe group, such as building a latrine for afamily up the mountain, or laying stones inthe road leading to the town. Sometimes itwas not a pretty scene — with people invery heated debates about which project tochoose next. However, decisions weremade collaboratively, and on the agreedupon day, each family in the communityalways sent one member to the "minga"and the work was completed — together.The Institute approach is a lot like this.When I first attended the Yale NationalInitiative four years ago, I had no ideathat this experience would become mycommunity. As I learned and grew confi-dent about subject matter I had feared,I met teachers from around the countrywho were excited, positive, intelligent,and interested in making a differencein our educational system and theirstudents' lives. I had found a communityI believed in!

With the promise of having a nationalexperience at a local level, our community,New Castle County, pulled together. Theopportunity to provide quality, content-based professional development for themany teachers in our area motivated ourgroup to meet with our superintendents,talk with our administrators, approach uni-versity faculty, and share our curriculumunits with our colleagues. We educatedothers about the Initiative in the hope ofcreating a network of people who werefamiliar with and supportive of theInitiative's philosophy, goals, and purpose.Additionally, we continued to meet on botha professional and personal basis. Monthly,we came together to discuss our progress

and make plans for the future. We also metfrequently to enjoy a meal, or to watch aplay or a film — getting to know eachother better. I believe this was of particularimportance, as our community spans a vastgeographic area and is comprised of fiveschool districts: Appoquinimink, Christina,Colonial, New Castle County Vo-Tech, andRed Clay Consolidated. We not onlyshared our common cause of bringing theInstitute approach to our area, but we alsodeveloped a personal investment in eachother as well.

Teachers are at the very heart of theInstitute approach. As Teacher Fellows,we are valued as the leaders of the deci-sion making processes and the organiza-tional structure. For us, this was evidentfrom the beginning of our involvement.We were the creators, meeting frequentlyto monitor our progress. We needed todetermine how teachers and their studentswould best be served. This is a process that

we continue to learn about in the first yearof our established Institute. Our Fellowsare lively and passionate about theirbeliefs and our meetings reflect this, asthey usually include lengthy debates aboutone matter or another. For me, these meet-ings are reminiscent of the town gather-ings I had sat in on as a young,idealistic Peace Corps volunteer. It is thisidea of a community in which peoplecome together to work towards a commongoal that makes the Institute unique inour educational field.

As I sat in on our first Seminar meetingthis past May, I had to continuouslyremind myself that this was real, thiswas happening in Newark, Delaware onthe University of Delaware campus. Ourwork is just beginning, but I have nodoubt that this group, as it continuesto grow, will remain committed to itsbeginning — to the community ithas established.

Barbara A. Prillaman is an English andSocial Studies Teacher at Conrad Schools ofScience in Wilmington, Delaware.

CA Community I Believed In

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL, GARDEN PARTY, 2003-2007

FALL 2011 15

By Roger E. Howehree Foundational Capacities

What could be simpler than firstgrade mathematics? In fact, com-

parative study of textbooks from variouscountries shows that first grade has a lotto do, and that it is a time to lay downstrong foundations. So it is important to getfirst grade right. Specifically, first gradeshould provide students with three relatedfoundational capacities.

1. A well-rounded view of the meaningsand uses of addition and subtraction.

2. A connected and coherent foundationfor the mechanics of computation.

3. A unified understanding of countingnumber and (linear) measurementnumber.

Unfortunately, at the moment, standardpractice in the United States fails to accom-plish any of these goals. What might we doto remedy such failures? It should be quitepossible, and the rationale for doing so isimplicit in the Common Core StateStandards (CCSS) (2). In some sense, it isa matter of implementing the CCSS cor-rectly, with an emphasis on coherence. Afuller discussion of these ideas is given in(3). Here we summarize basic points.

About 1): Mathematics educators haveidentified 14 types of one-step addition andsubtraction word problems.1 These 14types fall into 3 main classes:

• Change, referring to situations when aquantity changes over time;

• Comparison, referring to the compari-son of two quantities;

• Part-part-whole, referring to a groupmade of two subgroups.

The categories of change and comparisoneach involve two main subtypes. Changecan be positive (Change +) or negative(Change –). Comparison can be to thelarger quantity (Comparison, more) or tothe smaller (Comparison, less). Each ofthese subcategories comprises 3 types ofproblem, according to what is unknown.

Thus, in Change problems, the unknowncan be the final amount, the change, or theoriginal amount.

To develop a robust sense of the opera-tions of addition and subtraction, and ofwhen and how they can be used,children should deal with all these problemtypes, on a repeated basis, with hardernumbers as their computational fluencygrows. Moreover, explicit attention tothe structure of these problems, andcomparison of different types of problems,can be expected to increase student lan-guage skills as well as their mathematics,and will help students down the road tosuccessful decoding of word problems,which is a major hurdle in mathematicseducation everywhere.

About 2): Learning the addition/subtrac-tion facts (sums of single-digit numbers,and related subtractions) has long been astaple of first grade mathematics instruc-tion. The good news is, this is one oftwo essential ingredients in learning fluentand flexible computational methods foradding and subtracting. The bad news is,

we do a poor job connecting it with theother ingredient, which is understandingthe principle of place value, and how itgoverns writing numbers and computingwith them. A full understanding of theramifications of place value takes years todevelop (4), but it should start in first grade,using three key ideas:

i) Every two-digit number is a sum ofsome 10s and some 1s. Thus, 24 is 210s and 4 1s. The left digit tells youhow many 10s are in the number, andthe right digit tells you how many 1s.

ii) When operating (adding or subtract-ing) with two-digit numbers, one firstoperates independently with the 10sand with the 1s. Then, regrouping isdone as needed.

iii) The nature of the regrouping processis already revealed in learning thehigher addition/subtraction facts (thefacts involving a sum larger than 10).

There are well-developed teachingsequences that embody these principles(3), and in particular combine learning the

(continued)Roger E. Howe is William R. Kenan Jr.Professor of Mathematics at Yale University.

First Grade Mathematics: Coherent Foundationsand the Common Core

T

1 See Table 2, page 98 of (2).

ROBERT INDIANA, THE TEN STAGES NUMBER SCULPTURE REFLECTED, 1980

addition/subtraction facts with the begin-nings of learning place value. These teach-ing sequences are widely used international-ly, including countries that are mostsuccessful on international comparisons,but they are far from standard in theUnited States.

About 3): The main idea here is thatrods of various lengths can represent num-bers, namely multiples of some specifiedunit length, and that addition and subtrac-tion correspond to simple operations withrods. Addition corresponds to concatenation— laying the rods end-to-end. Subtractioncorresponds to comparison: laying the rodsside-by-side and measuring the difference(in the sense of finding another rod thatmatches the difference). This provides adirect connection between arithmetic andgeometry that will build over the years.

Linking the principles

It is important also that points 1)-3) belinked to each other. The addition/subtrac-tion word problems can be used as the con-text for calculations. They can be intro-duced and discussed when learning basicfacts, and they can be prompts for moredifficult computations. Rods can be usedto represent addition/subtraction facts andto model word problems with small num-bers. When two-digit numbers are intro-duced, the base ten structure can be rein-forced by representing the numbers as trainsof ten-rods and one-cubes. Addition andsubtraction of numbers can be representedby concatenating and comparing thesetrains, and regrouping can be representedby literally trading one ten-rod for tencubes, or vice versa. Also, the step of takingapart the two-digit numbers into their tensand their ones, and recombining these, is apalpable physical process when workingwith trains of tens and ones. The teachermust help students see the connections atappropriate moments.

Connecting to the CCSS

At this moment in the United States, recom-mendations about mathematics instruction

cannot hope to garner serious atten-tion without taking into account theCommon Core State Standards (2),developed in 2009-10 by the Councilof Chief State School Officers andthe National Governors Association,and since adopted by over 40 states.The three principles sketched abovecan be mapped very well to theCCSS. Indeed, it seems fair todescribe these ideas as a morefocused and more cohesive version ofthe CCSS.

The first CCSS standard on additionand subtraction mentions all theproblem types of point 1), and TableI on page 88 gives the full taxonomy.There is less emphasis on under-standing all the problems andon comparative discussions inCCSS, but such discussions can beregarded as the concrete realizationin the first-grade context of some ofthe standards for MathematicalPractice, including Practice Standard 1:"Make sense of problems and perseverein solving them"; Practice Standard 4:"Model with mathematics"; and PracticeStandard 6: "Attend to precision." Severalof the standards in "Operations andAlgebraic Thinking" should be part of dis-cussing word problems and representingthem symbolically.

Point 2) can be mapped in a detailedway to multiple CCSS standards under theheadings "Operations and AlgebraicThinking" and "Number and Operations inBase Ten." Section 2 of (3) discusses howto combine these various CCSS standardsinto the connected and coherent teachingsequence that is widely used in themost successful countries to teach two-digitaddition and subtraction.

The standards on measurement of lengths(standards 1 and 2 under "Measurement andData") can be thought of as part of what isadvocated here about point 3). I would likemore emphasis on connecting this workwith the numerical work than is explicit inthe CCSS. Doing this will help prepare

for introduction of the number line in sec-ond grade, and creates a more cohesiveoverall package.

The CCSS also has some standardsthat are not related to the programdiscussed here. There are standards on time,on representing data, and on studyingshapes. There is probably time to dosome of these things during first grade.This note, however, claims that the threetopics highlighted here form the coreof instruction, the part that isessential for future work, and it advocatesfor weaving them together into acoherent whole.

16 ON COMMON GROUND

Howe: First Grade Mathematics

MEL BOCHNER, RANDOM NUMBERS (#1), 2002

References 1. Carpenter, T., Fennema, E., Franke, M. L., Levi,

L., Children's Mathematics: Cognitively GuidedInstruction, Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH, 1999.

2. Council of Chief State School Officers, TheCommon Core State Standards for Mathematics,at http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards/mathematics

3. Howe, R., 3 Pillars of First Grade Mathematics,at teachers.yale.edu/3pillars

4. Howe, R. and Epp, S., Taking Place ValueSeriously, at http://www.maa.org/pmet/resources/PVHoweEpp-Nov2008.pdf

FALL 2011 17

By Paul H. Fryhe heart and soul of the work doneby teachers as Fellows in the localand national seminars is the cur-

riculum unit. Of course they master theseminar content, attend all seminar meet-ings, contribute to the collegial atmosphereof the discussions, and help each other incountless ways, but their main efforts gointo the writing of the 15-25 single-spacedpages of their curriculum units; and themain efforts of the seminar leaders, too,consist in helping to formulate topics for,discussing along the way, and editingdrafts of these units.

What follows here are some reports fromFellows who have taught units written inthe summers of 2009 and 2010. As it hasfallen to me in recent summers to organizeand lead a panel on the writing of theseunits — a process that puts the Fellowsunder considerable time pressure duringthe two July weeks when we’re together inNew Haven for the national seminars — Ithought that I might take this occasion toexplain what a curriculum unit is, and howit is typically organized.

I should confess that some years ofinvolvement in the Institute had passedfor me before I realized that our term,"curriculum unit," is a term with whichall teachers are familiar because it isthe name of what they write routinelyfor the approval of their school curriculumcommittees and principals when preparingtheir courses. The curriculum units thatwe require in our seminars, however,differ considerably from this standardpractice, largely because they are farmore substantive, requiring more descrip-tion and analysis of a content area thanwhat teachers are normally expectedto write.

In format we expect that these units willinclude: 1) a sustained "narrative," includ-ing a rationale for the particular approachchosen, the objectives the teacher hopes to

achieve, and a good account of the back-ground information and content masteryone needs in order to teach the topiceffectively; 2) "strategies," a section inwhich the teacher discusses in generalterms the pedagogical methods best suitedfor conveying the unit's subject matter; 3)"classroom activities," not to be confusedwith lesson plans because these are meantto be more descriptive of actual teachingprocedures than they, typically threein number and chosen to evoke what

the author anticipates to be key momentsof breakthrough in the students' absorptionof the subject; 4) a list of bibliographicalresources suggested for other teachersreading the unit and interested in adaptingit to their purposes, a separate list ofresources for the students to be taught; and5) an appendix describing the relation ofthe unit’s content to school district, region-al, and national standards, and any otherappendices that have typically to dowith diagrams or charts employed in teach-ing the material.

Fellows often find this a daunting taskat first. Many haven’t written anythingso long since college, if even then, andthe requirements for completing theassignment seem to yawn menacinglybefore them. For this reason we try toshape our panels and workshops withassistance that is as detailed as possible;and for this reason too it is such animportant part of the collegial experiencethat the veterans of unit-writing helpthe first-timers as generously as they do.

Soon enough the Fellows find writing thecurriculum unit uniquely rewarding amongthe tasks they have performed in profes-sional development settings over theyears, and take real pride in theiraccomplishment — not least because theirunits are published and they themselvesbecome published authors.

Units in local seminars are gathered intovolumes of hard copies introduced by theseminar leader, to be distributed in theteachers' school districts together with theelectronic circulation of these volumes;and units in national seminars are distrib-uted in comparable volumes electronicallynationwide and indeed globally via theNational Initiative Web site.

The audience for these units is the teach-ers' peers from around the world who havefound by keyword topics of interest tothem. Yes, their local curriculum commit-tees and principals may read them too,but what the Fellows mainly think aboutas they write is that teachers everywherewho teach in areas similar to their ownmay have the chance to improve boththeir own content preparedness and theirteaching strategies as a result of readingthese units. Our Fellows thus contributeto the quality of education well beyondtheir own sphere. Justifiably, they canplace themselves in the company ofthe educators whose published booksand articles on K-12 teaching they citeextensively in their own units.

Obviously we have no space to show youhow good these units are in themselves,and what important contributions theymake to the teaching of content in innova-tive ways across the curriculum; but whatwe can do is allow you to hear from someof the teachers who have taught their units,and who can give you a sense of their stu-dents' excitement in taking a holiday fromhumdrum lesson plans and finding them-selves eager to learn. As space also per-mits, in some cases we have introducedtheir reports with an account of the contextin which their unit was written provided bytheir seminar leaders.

T

Paul H. Fry is William Lampson Professor ofEnglish at Yale University.

What Is a Teachers Institute Curriculum Unit?

Teachers everywhere mayhave the chance to improve

both their own contentpreparedness and theirteaching strategies as a

result of reading these units.

18 ON COMMON GROUND

By Paul H. Fryhe authors of the two following arti-cles were in my 2010 summer sem-inar on "Poems About Works of Art,

Featuring African American, Hispanic, andWomen Writers." Because not all theunits involved ekphrasis (verbal responsesto visual artifacts), and because we discov-ered together that there's very littleekphrastic writing in the modern Hispanictradition (which however is very richin visual responses to literature),it seemed best to give this collection ofunits a title that differs from that of the sem-inar, so it's called "Connecting the Visual tothe Verbal in the Classroom." Some yearsbefore, I had led a seminar entitled "Poemson Pictures, Places, and People," and for the2010 seminar I had decided to devote thewhole time to a personal enthusiasm ofmine, poems about pictures, or rather notjust pictures but works of art in general.We went wherever our discussionscarried us, but a guiding thread throughoutwas the notion that writing about works ofart gives poets a chance to reflect, by con-trast with the visual, on the nature of theirown medium.

We spent a few days on the classics,including Keats on the Grecian Urn,Wordsworth on the Beaumont painting ofPeele Caste, Elizabeth Bishop's poemcalled "Poem," about a little painting by agreat-uncle, and well-known poems thatcan be reconsidered when read as ekphras-es, such as the oft-taught sonnet by EmmaLazarus that compares the Statue of Libertywith the Colossus of Rhodes. We spent awhole day with poetic responses toBrueghel, especially Auden's "Musée desBeaux Arts" and Williams's "Hunters in theSnow." For the most part, though, morethan in any other seminar I've led, weworked with the materials the Fellowsthemselves were working on.

Brook Blaylock of Charlotte in her unittakes an intermittently ekphrastic approach

to the teaching of literature through "arche-types," as mandated by her state and schooldistrict. As she teaches the stages of thehero's journey, focused on Perseusbut touching on many other figures, sheintroduces a rich array of ekphrastic materi-als to illustrate these stages: for example,responses to Raphael's St. George andthe Dragon to illustrate the slaying of amonster, and responses to paintings ofDanä e and the Golden Shower or theAnnunciation to illustrate the stage called"miraculous birth." She led discussions forus of a satirical middle school poem onUccello's "St. George and the Dragon" andon Elizabeth Alexander's response to HenryTanner’s splendid "Annunciation."

Chante Givens of Richmond found aplace for ekphrasis in her unit introducingthird grade students to the reading and writ-ing of poetry. When she first said sheintended to teach her students how to writea sonnet, I was skeptical, but she more thanconvinced all of us in the seminar that shewould be as good as her word. The unitoffers a rich archive of ekphrastic poemssuitable for children, but its special focus,with much across-the-curriculum potentialthat she outlines, is Greg Pape's poem aboutAudubon's "Flamingo." We were spell-bound by her explanation of how sheteaches this poem.

By Brook Blaylock am mythically inclined/ and I like

to take my time/ as I travel throughthe ages/ and across many pages."

These lines both open one of my eighthgraders' culminating poetry projects andsummarize the context of this unit explor-ing traditional archetypes within the contextof ekphrastic analysis. As my studentimplied, archetypes are everywhere

("through the ages/ and across manypages"). Representing the transcendence ofthe human condition and the mystery of thecollective unconscious, they emerge asforces inherent within the plots and charac-ters of every story and every painting. Theyvividly emerge in ekphrasis, begging thequestion: What better means to introducestudents to the primordial and universalunderstanding of character motivation theyunwittingly already possess than to pair theintroduction of archetypes with the study ofekphrasis, the verbal analysis of the visual?

My students' adventures with archetypesand ekphrasis began with viewing thepainting St. George and The Dragon. This1506 painting by Raphael depicts a knight,our hero, slaying a dragon and rescuing adamsel in distress. It embodies several clas-sic character archetypes easily recognizableto students as well as a heroic stage withwhich students would become familiar insubsequent lessons. Originally, I planned toshow this painting without any introductionor background and assign the task of writ-ing a poem about the painting. My promptasked students to identify the "plot" of thepainting and write the story the paintingtold. Students identified the characters, andwhile some students went into more cre-ative detail, most wrote boring and matterof fact descriptions: "The lady in the pinkdress wandered away from that little castlein the background and now the knightneeds to rescue her." "A knight is fighting asnake/dragon thing and a princess isscreaming." While disappointed with thelack of elaboration and detail in studentresponses, I felt that the identification of thebasic archetypal characters in this sceneprovided the means for a smooth transitioninto the next stage of analysis, ekphrasticpoetry. Ideally, this introduction to ekphra-sis and archetypes would be quite simple. Iwould tell my students to use the initialresponses to this piece as a means of brain-storming and turn their prose analysis into apoem about this work of art. I would writethe word "ekphrasis" on the board andexplain its origin and initiate them into the

Brook Blaylock is a Language Arts Teacher atJay M. Robinson Middle School in Charlotte,North Carolina.

Lying to Tellthe Truth

Poems about Works of Art

Paul H. Fry is William Lampson Professor ofEnglish at Yale University.

"I

T

FALL 2011 19

courts of ekphrastic poetic expression. I fol-lowed this very procedure, making it pastthe part about writing the poem beforemy students refused the ekphrastic call!I was met with blank stares and a numberof "What do you mean you want us towrite a poem about art?" "Why should Iwrite a poem about this when I alreadymentioned everything there is in the pic-ture?" "If we are looking at the picture,doesn't that tell us the same story as a poemabout the picture?"

This final question saved me, and the les-son, as I finally had the opportunity to notonly explain ekphrasis but the role of theviewer's response to the art in question.The ekphrastic poet did not have to tell thesame story as the artist, they had to tell thestory of their interaction with the piece.Abandoning the rest of my planned lesson,I introduced a poem I had analyzed inmy summer seminar, U.A. Fanthorpe'sekphrastic response to Paulo Uccello's St.George and the Dragon: "Not My BestSide." This poem gives voice to each ofthe three characters: dragon, princess,

prince/hero, and challenges their traditionalarchetypal roles. It also tells a very differentstory than what the average viewer mightsee. This poem, not even originally includ-ed in my unit, provided the frame of refer-ence necessary for my students to engagewith, and become writers of, ekphrasis.After analysis and discussion I allowed mystudents the option of writing a poem aboutthe painting's plot (the initial lesson plan) orselecting one of the three characters in thepainting and writing an ekphrastic poemfrom their point of view. The quality ofwritten responses I received amazed me.My students reveled in adopting the voiceof the dragon or princess and very creative-ly responded to this piece of art. I reveled inmy own sort of ekphrastic triumph. The ini-tial reaction of my students exemplified atableau vivant of sorts; staring at me open-mouthed, their silent, gaping expressionsrepresentative of the confused faces ofthose students who had come before thisclass and the unmodified lesson plans somany had failed to understand. While onlylasting a second before punctuated by com-

plaints, this visual picture drove me to aunique verbal response and, ultimately, toan altered instructional plan.

While this might not have been the imageI envisioned while planning my introduc-tion to ekphrasis and archetypes, my stu-dents fully engaged with ekphrasis andarchetypes throughout the lesson. In fact,when I reached the section of my unit onthe supernatural birth of heroes, and inte-grated Elizabeth Alexander's poem,Tanner's Annunciation, the previous discus-sions about ekphrasis involving theresponse of the viewer, helped studentsaccept the possibly controversial interpreta-tion of Tanner's piece by Alexander.Overall, the familiarity with the ekphrasticpoetry tradition I gained in Paul Fry's sem-inar allowed for an expansion of my cur-riculum unit beyond what I even initiallyenvisioned. In my unit introduction, I quot-ed Pablo Picasso's statement that "art wasthe lie that told the truth." It was within thecontext of this quote that I imagined stu-dents engaging with artworks, easily identi-fying and writing about the archetypaltruths inherent within their images, compar-ing and contrasting the archetypes of poet-ry and the brushstrokes in paintings. In myteaching of this unit, I developed a newquote, "My lesson plans are the lies thatreveal the truths of student knowledge."Okay, I admit it; I might have been slightlyover-ambitious in my unit construction, andwhile some of my lesson plans were ulti-mately modified or reinterpreted based onstudent readiness, my main objectives werestill met and I still had the pleasure ofwatching students identify symbols andarchetypes and explain their relevance andvalue in both visual and verbal texts, as wellas witnessing the creation of a numberof really impressive ekphrastic poetryresponses to artistic cues. It took my stu-dents' time, and it took my willingness tostudy and integrate the knowledge I gainedin my summer seminar, but by the comple-tion of this unit my students were, to bor-row from my third block poet, "mythicallyand ekphrastically inclined."PAOLO UCCELLO, SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON, 1470

20 ON COMMON GROUND

By Chante N. Givensvery new school year is filled withexpectations and anticipations.Teachers reflect on what they will

do and how they can make the school yearbetter. This past school year I was filledwith more excitement and anticipation thanI had felt before. Last summer while at theYale National Initiative, I was delighted tobe in a seminar with Paul Fry. I had signedup for his seminar that connected thevisual arts with written interpretation ofthese through ekphrastic poetry. I didn'tlike poetry to begin with, and I had neverheard of ekphrastic poetry, yet poetry wassomething that I had to teach to my stu-dents. Little did I know that I would befilled with excitement and a new love forthis thing called "poetry."

As each session grew more intense, and Istarted learning more, questions began toarise. How could I share my new passionfor poetry and the different forms of poetryI had learned about? How could I make mystudents partake in this affection that I hadfound over the summer? I felt like I wason the top of the world, joyous over mynew sweetheart. "YES WE CAN HAVEWORLD PEACE!" was how I felt, nothingcould have been better.

So with this mindset, I returned to school.Only, back at my school, reality didn'tseem to be so glorious. Truth hit as I metwith my teammates to discuss our plans forthe year. As they listed the things that wehad to get done during our language artsblock, our regular Houghton-Mifflin cur-riculum, the core knowledge curriculum,and our regular small groups, my "YESWE CAN" mentality scaled down to "ITHINK WE CAN."

To start, I took thirty minutes once aweek from our regular language arts blockand called it "Poetry Time." The ultimategoal was to have students develop bettercomprehension skills by interacting withpoetry and become better writers by writ-

ing their own poems. We began by com-pleting an activity called mirror images.Students were to read different poems andfind one poem that explained who theywere. This was a big hit! They enjoyedreading the different poems and relatingto words that other authors had written.One student found a poem that discussedhow a monster had a bad dream. Sheused this poem and explained that she hadnightmares almost every night. Anotherstudent found a poem that talked about amessy room. He remarked, "I guess I amnot the only one who is messy." I guessnot, I smiled.

We continued working on different partsof my unit weekly. Gradually as the "real-life" of school started weighing upon me,and as benchmarks and standards of learn-ing started getting a little more complicat-ed for students, I was forced to choose:continue taking thirty minutes a week forpoetry, or apply it to the old curriculum Ihad been using before. I chose to just usethe old curriculum. The thirty minutes wasstarting to add up in instructional time andbecame more of a burden than anythingelse. So, we went back to our normal text-book, vocabulary, spelling, and readinggroups. Yes, my students were learning, butsomething was missing from them. Wherehad that spark and excitement gone?Where was the joy I had seen when work-ing on their poetry books? Slowly studentsstarted to ask "Are we going to work on ourpoetry books?" It hurt my heart to respond,"Not today."

As the year continued to progress, ourCore Knowledge curriculum, made popu-

lar by E.D. Hirsch, most famous for hisWhat Every Third Grader Should Know,moved into our unit on poetry. Whileteaching the lessons, I saw how many ofthese lessons coincided with the curricu-lum unit that I had written, so I beganincorporating lessons from my unit. Whenwe read By Myself by Eloise Greenfield,students responded to poetry by writingtheir own poems based on this. One of mystudents did just that when she wrote:

When I am by myself,And I close my eyes,

I’m a twin,I am a fin,I’m eight,I am late.

Her response was taking the same twolines of the original poem, and beginningher own with these. Ironically, her poemwas a reflection of herself. She was an onlychild, though she wished she was a twin,and she actually was almost always lateto school.

In response to another poem titledTrees by Joyce Kilmer, we discussedpersonification. Students had an opportuni-ty to write their own poem, givinghuman characteristics to Saint Basil'sCathedral. As we were working on this,one of my students said, "Isn’t this like theelastic poetry we wrote before?"Ahhhhhhhh! I could hear the angelssinging. They had remembered! "Yes," Ireplied to my little girl. "Ekphrastic poet-ry," I replied being the expert that I was. Icould not believe it.

As we worked on the Core Knowledgepoetry unit, it became easier to use my owncurriculum unit. It was not the burden ithad once started to become. Throughoutthe rest of the year, I watched the spark andexcitement return to my children. Theirappreciation and comprehension of poetryhad grown. What a difference it made!The most exciting part is that I havethe pleasure of teaching them againnext school year in fourth grade. I knowexactly where we will start: with our"elastic" poetry.

Comprehension through Poetry

E

Chante N. Givens is a Third-Grade Teacherat J. B. Fisher Elementary School inRichmond, Virginia.

Yes, my students werelearning, but something wasmissing. Where was the joyI had seen when working on

their poetry books?

FALL 2011 21

Editor's Note: Bryan Garsten's seminar on"Persuasion in Democratic Politics"inspired remarkable results, includingwhat follows. Sam Reed offers his report onthe unit he taught in collaboration with aPhiladelphia colleague, Elizabeth King. Inthe course of teaching the political rhetoricof Frederick Douglass and PresidentObama, Sam reports that he rediscoveredon the spot the importance of learning howto argue with others without descendinginto a fight.

Jeff Weathers then shows how one of hisquietest students blossomed when prepar-ing an oration in the mode of Lincoln.

By Samuel A. Reed, III and Elizabeth Kingur school district provides addi-tional supports and a scriptedcurriculum framework for its

Empowerment Schools that are not meetingAdequate Yearly Progress. With this assis-tance, co-planning and co-teaching this unitallowed us to make teaching the arts of per-suasion that many students struggle withmore rigorous. This unit integrated medialiteracy into a traditional reading and socialstudies context. Our focus was on students'critical thinking, reading, and writing skills,introducing rhetorical devices for debatingand crafting persuasive arguments as aninnovative feature developed in SamuelReed's National Initiative curriculum unit.

Middle school students can be anargumentative, opinionated bunch. Theirpassion and conviction are promising, butwe often cringe at their blunt intolerance inspeaking. Our solution was to teach the "artof arguing," harnessing their fervor andreleasing some of their litigiousness by pro-viding them with the tools used by exem-plary rhetoricians in order to discuss "post-racial American society."

Our roles as a School Based InstructionalSpecialist and classroom teacher, respec-tively, provided some flexibility in planningthis unit in accordance with core standards.We knew that a unit encouraging our stu-dents to deliberate on issues of race carriedits own inherent risks. With this in mind, weeased into the unit by first defining and thendemonstrating the ways in which studentscan use what Aristotle called ethos, pathosand logos, key persuasive tools, in everydaysituations. Our examples included trying toconvince their parents to buy them the lat-est cell phone and attempting to persuadetheir teachers not to assign homework. As aformative assessment, in order to ensurethat they could identify these rhetoricaltools, we asked them in cooperative groupsto analyze Sojourner Truth's speech, "Aint IWomen," watch visual re-interpretations ofthe speech, and complete a graphic organiz-er showing where ethos, pathos and logosare found in the speech.

A few days into the unit we hit our firstspeed bump. The lesson began withan educational media clip depictingFrederick Douglass's biography, emphasiz-ing his bi-racial identity and the pointswhere he used his rhetorical ingenuity tofurther the cause of abolition. During thisviewing, an outspoken female studentshouted, "I hate white people!" We tooknote of her classmates' facial expressions,ranging from shock to smugness to disap-proval to apathy, but no one said anything.The student's outburst made it clear thatwe had to start with suitable guidelines forengaging in controversy.

With this "teachable moment" in mind,we modified the format of our original les-sons, meant to compare Douglass's andObama's biographies and rhetorical skills,to begin by teaching students deliberativediscourse strategies. In a Socratic seminar,we worked out a protocol for talking aboutrace in the classroom that encouragedrespect for everyone's views. It was crucialthat students take the initiative at thispoint, as afterwards they held themselvesaccountable to their own rules and expecta-

tions — such as not attacking an individualor group and being careful not to stereotypeor overgeneralize. "I hate white people"became "I don’t think what manywhite slave owners did during slaverywas excusable."

From then on, each seminar focused onone controversial statement. At the begin-ning of the seminar, students were givenone of these statements and asked to write,without sharing out loud, whether theyagreed or disagreed with the statement andwhy. "Obama is more black than white"instantly struck a nerve and several studentswore their opinions on their faces as theywrote. The ensuing conversation was bril-liant, with many speaking and all engaged.Those students who spoke would havemade Aristotle proud.

Because students had become more com-fortable discussing race, they were able todebate well about Obama's seminal speech,"A More Perfect Union." Students workedin groups to debate whether "BarackObama's presidency provides proof thatracism does or does not exist in America."They practiced their oral deliberationsusing a flip camera and were able nowto provide self-critiques judging theirproficiency in using the rhetorical toolsthey had learned.

As a culminating assessment, studentscompleted choice board activities, creatingmulti-modal products that demonstratedtheir knowledge in a broader context thanthat of the traditional five-paragraph essay.Their activities included resumé s, digitalcomics, skits, monologues, poems, andsongs or raps about Obama's or Douglass'sbiographies or rhetorical abilities. Onegroup of students created a skit that showedDouglass persuading the youthful Obamato stop experimenting with drugs and focuson his education.

This unprecedented level of excitementand energy caught other people's attention. During a walk through visit, school districtofficials noted a high level of engagement,focus, and quality of student work that they had not seen before.

Persuasion in Democratic Politics

O

Samuel A. Reed, III is the School-BasedInstructional Specialist and Elizabeth King isseventh-grade English and Social Studiesteacher at Beeber Middle School inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania.

Engaging Students

22 ON COMMON GROUND

By Jeffry K. Weathersne of my proudest moments as ateacher results from the cumula-tive experiences of the seminar

"Persuasion in Democractic Politics":researching and writing the unit and thenexperiencing the remarkable job my stu-dents did writing effective speeches. Iwanted them to discover both their selvesand the art of persuasion through journalwriting and rhetoric, and to create theirown version of either Lincoln's Gettysburgor Second Inaugural Addresses for the vic-tims and survivors of William Golding'sLord of the Flies.

Students who chose the GettysburgAddress were to contextualize their speechas if they were still on the island, but onlyafter the cruiser's arrival and an imaginarysearch for survivors and bodies, in order tomemorialize the fallen and inspire the liv-ing. For the Second Inaugural, studentswere to imagine themselves at the openingassembly of a school the following year,attempting to bring unity back to the boysand the whole school. All were to include aone or two sentence bio of whomever theyimagined themselves to be as speaker.

Most students attempted the SecondInaugural, for which the additional instruc-tions were to carefully select their pro-nouns as Lincoln did. The additionalinstructions for the Gettysburg Addresswere apparently considered more difficult:include an extended metaphor.

I am proud of all the students, butespecially of one student, Brian, whomesmerized everyone who heard hisspeech that last day of class. He chose theGettysburg Address.

The students spoke in the order oftheir lottery numbers and followedthe instruction not to applaud each speaker,allowing for minimal distractions, asothers were writing finals. As eachstudent finished, they handed in their

speech and I privately provided praiseand suggestions.

Then Brian rose to speak, casually takinghis position at the front of the room. Heis an unassuming and quiet Chinesetenth-grader who has struggled to survivein school. As he started, his right leg andarm began to swing gently to alleviatenervousness, but his left leg and armanchored him and his paper. He seemedotherwise composed.

Perhaps as methodically as Lincoln,Brian slowly, with control of each phrase,captivated his audience. One by one, eachstudent looked up and listened, turning toone another and mouthing, "Oh My God."When he finished the room burst intoapplause, and the remaining students saidthey feared having to follow him.

I watched the whole spectacle. I knewBrian had worked daily and diligently inclass, writing his speech painstakingly, lineby burning line. He included traces ofPlato’s "Allegory of the Cave" and anextended metaphor that captures themesfrom Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, bothof which we had previously studied.

Here is Brian's speech, unaltered andwith hints of his second language acquisi-tion, a testament to the power of education:

BiographyI am one of the big’uns on the island. I

chose to speak in order to acknowledgewhat we did on the island and to acknowl-edge the sacrifice of what Simon and Piggydid for the group of boys.

A Dark CaveFrom the day we first assembled, we

would work together to ignite a fire on themountain, but also, a fire in our hearts.Our chief had built up a community,one dedicated to helping us survive and

helping us be rescued. But, we fell into adark cave of our nightmares, horrified bythe beast and caught in the flames of warand destruction.

Now, we are here on this charred, burntland, once an island, but now the remainsof a battlefield. We came in order to honorour fellow boys that fell before us, the oneswhose flame tried to bring light and reasonto us all.

To some of us, the controversial rescuefire, both on the mountain and also in ourhearts, would spark a dangerous anddeadly battle among us. We would begin tosnuff out, not only our own, but others',internal light, plunging our world intodarkness and uncertainty. Our poor abilityto discover the truth about the beast andour inability to understand caused us toextinguish the flame of life that burnedwithin these two boys' hearts.

To the rest of us, we fell into a paralyzingfear, needing protection and unable tospeak up. We allowed and even took part inour misdeeds in snuffing out those flamesof life that tried to guide us. Our fear of thebeast shielded our minds and clouding ourhearts of the light and the truth.

But, as that we fell into a dark cave ofnightmares separated, we will emerge fromthe other end united. We had not fully lostour light and our fire. It is simply smolder-ing, like embers glowing with the desire tobe set ablaze, awaiting the time in whichwe will reunite. It will be at that time thatwe set those embers ablaze. Its flames willburn ever brighter; its light will be ourbeacon in the darkness.

We must make sure that the lives whichwere lost on this island were not lost invain, and that we, as the survivors, must setaside our differences, our fears, and ourmisdeeds, to become friends, rather thanenemies, once again.

Perhaps Brian's words can also serve tohonor and inspire the students and teach-ers, and schools, of America. One day, hischildren, and the children of all our stu-dents, will need to find their own brightopening out of a dark cave.

A Bright Opening

O

Jeffry K. Weathers is an English Teacherat Westmoor High School in DalyCity, California.

Perhaps as methodicallyas Lincoln, Brian

captivated his audience.

FALL 2011 23

Editor's Note: Inspired by LangdonHammer’s seminar on "Creating Lives,"Mika Cade had her students in Emeryville,California, learn about the history oftheir town by producing collaborativelya biography of their school. They usedschool yearbooks to study the changesand continuity in the school and itsculture and in the surrounding community,and to identify and interview alumniabout their experience.

Another Fellow in "Creating Lives,"Molly Myers, designed a "BiographyPrimer" focused on the life of the poetSylvia Plath.

By Mika M. Cadek, I'm really going to do this!" Itold myself one Sunday eveningin October, trying to ignore my

increasing jitters. I hadn't felt this way sincemy first week of teaching several years ago.It was a mix of excitement, nervousness,and the undeniable feeling that I was push-ing myself beyond my comfort zone.

It all started in the spring of 2010, when Iresponded to an e-mail from my principalsaying something like "Want to be in a Yaleprofessional development program thissummer? The first two people who respondget to go." I went. There was a momentwhen I felt totally overwhelmed (and a fewmore like that along the way) but support Ireceived from everyone around me carriedme through.

I was in the seminar entitled "CreatingLives" led by Langdon Hammer. I hadno idea what to expect, but after theOrganizational Session in May I becameimmersed in my topic. When I returned forthe July summer Intensive I was againinspired, excited, and encouraged by thethought-provoking conversations in my

seminar, the support of my colleagues, andthe resources available to me throughthe Institute. I savored the luxury of timeto explore what I wanted to teach and howI would do it.

On that Sunday evening in October Iwasn't nervous because I felt unprepared; Iwas nervous because I wanted my experi-ence in the Institute to make itself felt in theclassroom. The next day we began the unitwith an assessment of student knowledgeabout biography, using a KWL chart. It wasquickly evident that the students knew verylittle about life writing in any form. Theywere a little skeptical at first, expectinga run of the mill unit, but their attitudessoon changed.

We then moved into a study of the genre,using biographies of Langston Hughes asour model. We used life sketches fromchildren's books, their own textbooks, and full-length biographies of Hughes toexplore the complexities of the genre. I wasusing the literacy strategies that our Englishdepartment had chosen to focus on whileproviding a new topic and new literaturefor my students.

The main objectives of this section of theunit were for students to define biography,understand its elements, and understand therole of the biographer in creating a story.My students generally felt comfortable withHughes as a subject, and that allowed us to engage in well-focused discussions of thechoices of emphasis each biographer wasmaking. In the final assessment for this sec-tion, every student successfully met theobjectives and was able to write a criticalanalysis of the role of a biographer in an in-class essay.

Our study of the genre was the foundationfor the more daring part of the unit, an oralhistory of our high school. I gave studentsthe opportunity to decide which personsthey felt were important to interview, whatkinds of stories would be told and how theywould be told. Students worked in pairs,first interviewing each other and writingbiographies of each other. They had tocome up with interview questions, tran-

scribe their interviews, and formulate theseconversations into cohesive stories abouttheir partners' lives. Working as a pair, theythen chose someone to interview who waspart of the school community but not a stu-dent. They were able to get a wide range ofstories from alumni, janitorial staff, admin-istrators, teachers, and support staff. Theythen repeated the process of interviewing,transcribing, and storytelling.

At the end of the unit, all the studentswrote reflections on what they had learned.Several students mentioned that they hadfelt very challenged and that it was a lot ofwriting, but that they had fun. Although mystudents have had longer writing assign-ments in the past, they have typically beenasked to paraphrase or report on the wordsof others in books, and rarely required towrite so many words directly about the realworld. My students had to develop theirown authoritative voice even while tellingsomeone else's story. They also had to learnhow to organize their information and usethe best words to convey their story to alarger audience. They did not have a pre-scribed model for how to do this, yet everystudent succeeded in turning in a biography,a feat in its own right.

What I learned through the Yale NationalInitiative was how to push myself beyondmy comfort zone to create a challenging,engaging, and fun unit. In turn, my studentsgained a deeper, more authentic under-standing of core English Standards whilehaving fun and being challenged.

By Molly Myerst made me think differently about mywriting.”

"I got a lot closer to my grand-mother. I had no idea how hard her

life was."(continued)

Mika M. Cade is an English Teacher at EmerySecondary School in Emeryville, California.

Voices of EmerySecondary

Creating Lives: An Introduction to Biography

"O

Creating a Life

"IMolly Myers is a History Teacher at LindblomMath and Science Academy High School inChicago, Illinois.

24 ON COMMON GROUND

"Trying to combine her life story with thehistorical context of the time was the mostchallenging part of writing the biography."

"I cared more because I knew itwas a responsibility to write someoneelse’s story."

While many of these student reflec-tions match the goals that I had set for theyear-long biography project that servedas the through line for our team-taughtwomen's studies elective course, I didnot anticipate just how much the projectwould change me as well.

As a history teacher, I knew signing upfor an English-centered seminar wouldchallenge me to think in new ways. Ourfirst seminar meeting in May began witha conversation presented in HermioneLee's Introduction to Biography aboutthe uses of biography. Is biographymeant to be a portrait, presenting the sub-ject in his or her best light, or an autopsy,digging into the minutiae to portray thestrictly factual story of a life? This con-versation really stuck with me and pro-vided the lens through which I intro-duced the year-long biography project.

The seminar also introduced me to thebiographical subject that would serve asmy model for how to navigate the treach-erous task of biographical writing: SylviaPlath. With the help of the seminar leaderLangdon Hammer and his extensiveknowledge of Plath (The content knowl-edge of the seminar leader is a huge advan-tage of the Teachers Institute model), I wasable to create a pre-project unit on biogra-phy using Plath's work and the multipleinterpretations presented in Plath biogra-phies. Another reason I chose Plath was thevariety of primary sources that she offered(diaries, drawings, letters, interview tran-scripts and, of course, her poetry). Throughthis mini-unit, students could see how mul-tiple biographers took the same textual evi-dence from Plath's work and interpreted itin different ways. Beyond the project itself,the aim of this unit was to introduce stu-dents to critical reading at a higher level.Another part of the pre-project unit was to

examine the act of self-awareness andreflection necessary to write biography. Tosee another person's life and know whichof our interpretations and conclusionscome from our own experiences and

assumptions, requires reflective diligence.The project itself was a multi-step

process of researching, interviewing, writ-ing, and editing. This process was repeatedthree times throughout the year to help stu-dents build up a body of information bothfrom interviews and contextual research tocraft a ten-page final biography due at theend of third quarter. Since all students werecharged with selecting a woman over 40years old as the subject of their biography,the course content served as a foundationof the context that they could compare withthe biographical story they were develop-ing. With the help of the Fellows frommy biography seminar, I was able toconcretize my expectations for the inter-views and offer opportunities to practiceprior to scheduling the first interview.

This brainstorming session over the sum-mer was critical to making this projectwork. When thirteen dedicated educatorsdiscuss the stages necessary for a success-ful oral history project, magic happens.

Elementary teachers offered great adviceon scaffolding skills and being clearabout directions and high school andmiddle school teachers offered greatinsights for how to overcome potentialresistance by students. Such collegialityis another awesome advantage of theTeachers Institute approach.

Finally, the ten-page biographiesserved as the jumping off point for stu-dents to find a more creative platform fortheir work. While some students chose toenhance their biographies through fur-ther editing, adding images, and a cover,other students elected to use technologyfor their work. Multiple students usedvideo software to create documentaries,others chose Web site software or glog-ster to learn how to make a Web site tohonor the story of their person, and,finally, two dance students combined thework they did in each class and createda modern dance guided by their voicesto reflect the story of their person'slife. (Video can be found athttp://bit.ly/jDQMix.)Through all of this, I changed. I changed

by taking on a seminar subject that chal-lenged my way of thinking about biogra-phy. I changed through discussions in sem-inar about the responsibility of writing alife and the perils and possibilities therein.I changed by surrounding myself with col-leagues who know more about teachingand learning than I do. I changed by com-mitting to team teach with a teacher whoinspires me and intimidates me. I changedby taking on a subject matter, the story offemale archetypes through history and lit-erature, that I knew would at once be con-troversial and engaging. I changed by read-ing student work and seeing their develop-ment as writers and thinkers. I changed alot and it all started by filling out the appli-cation for the Yale National Initiative.

ALICE NEEL, PORTRAIT OF ELLEN JOHNSON, 1976

Myers: Creating a Life

By Roger E. Howen the seminar "The Mathematics ofWallpaper," we studied the principlesof the mathematical approach to sym-

metry. These ideas were implicit in Greekgeometry, but emerged explicitly around1830 in the work of Évariste Galois, oftragic destiny, on the theory of equations.In the 1870s, they were adapted byFelix Klein to promulgate a new and far-reaching conception of the nature of geom-etry. In the 20th century, they became cen-tral to theoretical physics, starting withEinstein's special theory of relativity in1905. However, they also shed light onmatters mundane and aesthetic, includingthe possibilities and constraints of symme-try in wallpaper design.

A key aspect of the mathematicalapproach to symmetry is to regard symme-try not as a passive property of an object ordesign, or any kind of structure, but asactive, something that you doto the structure. A little more precisely, asymmetry of some structure is some sort oftransformation of the structure that pre-serves all the essential properties ofthe structure.

To take a very simple example, imaginea square. If we reflect it across either of itsdiagonals, it looks the same. These reflec-tions are symmetries of the square. We canalso reflect it in the lines that connect themidpoints to two opposite sides, and wecan rotate it by 90°, 180°, 270° around thecenter. This gives 7 transformations (4reflections and 3 rotations) that are clearlysymmetries of the square. There is aneighth: doing nothing — leaving every partof the square where it is. This is called theidentity transformation. Understandingthat it is important, indeed, vital, to includethe identity transformation among thesymmetries of any system, was a keyinsight, very much like understanding theimportance of 0 for doing arithmetic.

A far-reaching consequence of thinking

of symmetries as transformations is thatyou can combine them, by doing one afteranother, and the result will again be asymmetry. Rotating the square by 90°and then doing it again produces a rotationby 180°. Less obviously, if you reflectthe square across one diagonal, and thenacross the other, the combined effect willagain be rotating by 180°. It can bean engaging challenge to visualizethe result of applying various symmetriesin succession. The technical term fordoing two transformations in successionis composition.

The upshot of the possibility to combinetransformations is that the list of all sym-metries of an object should always containthe composition of two of them. This iscalled closure under composition.

The symmetries of the (Euclidean)plane are the kind of transformationsknown as isometries, or congruences —transformations that preserve distances,and move any line segment to asegment of the same length. AsRosemary describes, in elementary schoolstudents are usually introduced tothree types of isometries: reflections (aka"flips") acrosslines, rotations(aka "turns")around points,and translations(aka "glides" or" s l i d e s " ) .However, the 4thtype of isometryis a kind ofCinderella, in thatit is rarely ifever mentioned:the glide reflec-tion. As describedin Rosemary'sessay, this con-sists of a transla-tion along a line,followed by (i.e.,composed with) areflection across

the line. Thus, the collection of all flips,turns and slides is not closed under com-position: you need to add at least glidereflections to the list.

The wonderful thing is, that's allyou need. The collection of flips, turns,slides, and glide reflections fills up theset of all isometries. In particular, ifyou compose any two of these transforma-tions, you will always get another one,never anything new. In other words, theglide reflections perfect the list of isome-tries: there are no more waiting to bediscovered. That is why I cheered withRosemary in reading that one of herstudents recognized a glide reflectionat Fallingwater.

FALL 2011 25

The Mathematics of Wallpaper

Roger E. Howe is the William R. Kenan Jr.Professor of Mathematics at Yale University.

I

M.C. ESCHER'S “SYMMETRY DRAWING E126” © 2011 THE M.C. ESCHER COMPANY-HOLLAND.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The 4th type of isometryis a kind of Cinderella,

in that it is rarely ifever mentioned: the

glide reflection.

By Rosemary Schmittan we engage our students in activelearning by applying math in an artclassroom? This form of active

learning is threatened by recent curriculardevelopments. As we add more mathematicsto the middle school curriculum, we musteliminate other classes, with the result thatclasses providing the practical application ofmath are no longer available to our students.As a middle school teacher, I am alwayslooking for ways to import math from myclassroom into other activities, such as art. Inmy "wonderful world of math" classroom,my students think that math confines itself tothat room, never to be seen anywhere else.In this unit on symmetry, I show my studentsthat math lives in the art classroom too.

As with most of my best planned lessons,things change as my teaching continues. Idecided to teach this unit on symmetry inconjunction with a field trip that wasplanned to Fallingwater. My colleagues andI applied for, and were awarded, a grant thatincorporated math, communications, and artthrough a trip to Fallingwater — FrankLloyd Wright's greatest work. We took 150eighth graders to visit Fallingwater in thefall. With so much symmetry on displaythroughout the house, I decided that this waswhere I needed to start.

We began by looking at pictures of objectsand designs that displayed symmetry.

My students were quick to identify reflec-tion symmetry and at times rotational sym-metry. At an early age, students do begin torecognize symmetry, which is usuallydescribed in terms of transformation. Atransformation of an object is the relation-ship between one position of an object andanother position of that same object. Thistransformation preserves the structure of theobject, and the nature of the transformationhighlights specific symmetries of the struc-ture. These symmetries may be related totransformations of reflection, rotation, trans-lation, and glide reflection. (The informal

terms used by students in elementary gradesare flips, turns, and slides.) All of these pro-duce congruent figures (preserving both thesize and the shape).

My students were totally engaged when Iintroduced wallpaper. They were amazed athow a simple design can be transformedthrough a series of rotations, reflections, andtranslations to repeat a pattern. Students whousually had trouble with computationseemed to excel in finding symmetrical pat-terns. Those who have very little interest inmath discovered an interest when designwas included. They were quick to correct

other students who seemed to think a partic-ular pattern had both vertical and horizontalsymmetry when it fact it displayed just oneof the two. These wallpaper samples fol-lowed the students to the art classroom. Thisis where I was most proud. My studentsinitiated and continued the symmetrydiscussion with the art teacher, whoseclass with my students I attend when myschedule permits. I was excited to hearthe math conversation, especially when thepatterns were complex.

Alongside the math conversation in the artclassroom, my students were able to identifysymmetries at Fallingwater. Although thesesymmetries weren't as complex as those dis-played in our wallpaper selection, it was stillamazing to see the symmetrical designs thestudents were able to identify in architecture.The moment that impressed me the mostwas when one of my students was able toidentify a glide reflection on the property. Aglide reflection is nothing more than areflection followed by a translation parallelto the reflected line. Sounds simple enough,but when seeing this pattern most people

would not think of it as a form of symmetry.I had intended my students to develop their

own wallpaper by creating a geometric fig-ure, using "Geometer’s Sketchpad." Owingto time limitations, however, my studentspicked one of the wallpapers provided anddrew a portion of its design on canvas. Thisbecame the backdrop for their art project.

In art class the students discussedShepard Fairey, an American contemporaryartist, street artist, and graphic designer. Hispaintings can be seen on buildings every-where in Pittsburgh's neighborhoods. He isknown for his Barack Obama "Hope" poster,used in the 2008 U. S. presidential election.He was the inspiration for our art project.The students were asked to depict an issuethey felt passionate about. It was surprisingto see what issues concerned them. Each ofthem settled on a single image that wouldshow how they felt about their particularissue. They drew this image over their wall-paper designs, and the results are now dis-played around our school, demonstratingboth their passion and their incorporation ofmath into art.

26 ON COMMON GROUND

Math and Design

C

Rosemary Schmitt is a MathematicsTeacher at South Brook Middle School inPittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

In this unit on symmetry,I show my students

that math lives in theart classroom too.

Marchio: The Core(continued from page 12)Institute Fellows raise the bar for all teach-ers with their enthusiasm and energy.Teachers Institutes are about quality.I'd much rather inspire a few teachers thanfail to inspire a great many. I can say withconfidence that, as a result of the YaleInitiative and DTI, we now have more mas-ter teachers in our schools. The impactof those teachers creates a new standardof excellence and permeates staff even inadjacent buildings.

We can hope that as the DelawareInstitute grows, more teachers will becomeinvolved and experience the rebirth of theirpassion for teaching. Finding good teachersis always a challenge, but keeping thoseteachers engaged and enthusiastic, so thatthey will stay in our profession until theyretire, is even a bigger challenge and worththe effort.

FALL 2011 27

By W. Mark Saltzman umans can comprehend the struc-tures of objects with an astound-ing range of sizes, from galaxies

that we view with telescopes to sub-atomicparticles. This seminar addressed tworelated questions: How does the size of anobject influence its properties? What isspecial about objects that are 1-100 nmin size? The first half of the seminaraddressed the first question, by exploringsome of the different properties of smalland large objects and how those propertiesinfluence an object's interactions with therest of the world. To help focus this discus-sion, all seminar participants read the bookWhy Size Matters by John Tyler Bonner.In the second half of the seminar, partici-pants considered the second question byexploring the new science of nanotechnol-ogy. Nanotechnology is distinguished bythe small size of the objects that are creat-ed and manipulated. Participants used theirunderstanding of the consequences of sizeto appreciate the uniqueness of nanotech-nology, and the technological hurdles thathave been overcome to create ultra-smallcomponents. The seminar focused on thepotential role of nanotechnology in treat-ment and diagnosis of disease. Why is nan-otechnology being suggested as the solu-tion to so many health problems? To focusthe discussion, participants concentratedon the special properties of nanotechnolo-gy that make it useful for treating anddiagnosing cancer.

Conchita Austin prepared a unit titled"The Relative Nature of Size in BiologicalSciences: Let's Start Small and Work OurWay Up." Using biological examples, theunit discussed the influence of size onfunction. It also discusses biotechnology,which depends on biological machines thatare nanometer-sized. Nancy Rudolph pre-pared a unit called "If You Can See It, It'sNot Nano: Working with Numbers at theExtremes." This unit uses concepts derived

from nanotechnology to help introduceessential math topics for high schoolstudents, including scientific notationand exponents.

By Conchita L. Austin y the end of the "intensive" week-end in May I left New Havenwith far more questions than

answers, but by July, I was ready and eagerfor the Summer Session — I had gottento meet with my seminar leader, theFellows in my seminar, and everyone elsewho participated in the national seminars.Everyone I met was open and willing toshare ideas and strategies. This opportunitynot only enriched me personally and pro-fessionally, but gave me a wealth of knowl-edge and experiences that I have been ableto share and pass on to my students.

My students were introduced to the firstpart of my curriculum unit at the beginningof the fall semester. I integrated a discus-sion of the metric system into our review ofthe scientific method and introduction tolab safety techniques. This allowed me tolay the groundwork for the rest of the unitand course by talking about the relativity insize between things that are macroscopic,microscopic, and on down to nanoscale.We kept referring back to this lesson whendiscussing cells, bacteria, and viruses.

The second part of my unit concernedsize relativity in the studio technology forcreating B-movie monsters! My studentsconcluded this part triumphantly by gener-ating their own macro- or micro- creatures.I presented this part of the unit right afterour study of cells and cell organelles. Thestudents enjoyed watching the old movieclips from the 1930s to 1960s — whichwere a far cry from movies they are morefamiliar with, like Avatar. Because myclasses are large, I had them create theirown creatures in groups, and required them

to explain and justify the scale and materi-als of their constructions, again as groups.Their classmates gave each group peerreviews of their presentations, and askedthem questions about their creations. Thestudents were excited, especially once Iinformed them that they were being video-taped and that two creature presentationsfrom each class would be shown to theother classes. With this incentive theyfound innovative ways of making theirpresentations. These occasions helpedto foster inquiry and critical thinkingbeyond expectations.

I presented the third part of my unit afterour discussion of genetics. I updated myBiotechnology PowerPoint presentationand note guide to include several slides onthe emerging science of nanotechnology,along with some of the ethical and medicalissues surrounding this work in the field ofgenetics. My students were surprised tolearn that there are already products on themarket that derive from research in nan-otechnology. They were equally interestedin the environmental issues surroundingthis science, such as the problem ofnanopollution. This provided a greatopportunity to revisit how human activitiesaffect our ecosystem.

During summer school of this year, I hadthe opportunity to present my unit in atotally different setting. I was asked toteach for two sessions a multi-disciplinedclass including students taking Biology,Earth/Environmental Science, Chemistry,and Physical Science. I was allowed toteach whatever I felt passionate about aslong as it would include aspects from eachof the science disciplines. This proved tobe a wonderful opportunity to provide mysummer school students with an innovativeway to view how interconnected all of thesciences are. I received some of the fol-lowing responses from my students:

"I learned that nanotechnology isalready in use and it has the potential tobe helpful and harmful to humans.""I learned that it changes everything

(continued on page 35)

W. Mark Saltzman is Goizueta FoundationProfessor of Chemical and BiomedicalEngineering at Yale University.

Nanotechnology and Human Health

HStarting with Small

B

Conchita L. Austin is a Biology Teacher atEast Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte,North Carolina.

28 ON COMMON GROUND

By Nancy Rudolphs a math teacher at a vocationalhigh school, I am always trying tofind connections between the

mathematics and my students' career areas.Having been a chemical engineer, it wasexciting for me to participate in a seminaron nanotechnology and to share cuttingedge technology with my students. I beganthe semester with all of my classes — 11thand 12th graders in Precalculus and 10thgraders in Integrated Math 3 — with anactivity to assess their prior knowledgeabout nanotechnology. Students moved toone side of the room or the other based ontheir belief that a given statement was trueor false; none of the students had any priorknowledge. They quickly learned what ispossible because of nanotechnology: goldnanoparticles covered with antibodiesinjected into the body to kill cancer cells,fabric that doesn't stain, self-cleaningtoilets, etc.

After the introduction, I used the contentI learned in the seminar differently for eachclass. Following a lesson about how somephysical properties of elements change atthe nanoscale (one billionth of a meter)because of greater surface area to volumeratio, 10th-grade students built composite"solids" from two common objects foundat home. They used their solids to illustratethe meaning of surface area by countingthe number of squares of a given size (1square inch, or 1 square centimeter) need-ed to cover their solids, and comparing it tothe area calculated using measured dimen-sions and formulas. Students then enlargedor shrunk their solids and found the ratiosof surface area and volume to their originalsolids. The pair of solids served as a visualto emphasize that area changes by thesquare of the scale factor and volumechanges by the cube of the scale factor.

For Precalculus students, the mathemat-ics of nanotechnology focused on the rela-

tive size of nanoscale particles in terms ofthings they already knew. The lesson rein-forced properties of exponents (especiallynegative) and scientific notation. Studentswere able to relate my lesson about theproperties of carbon that allow it to formnanotubes and buckyballs, two commonstructures in nanotechnology, to thechemistry they had learned, which trig-gered questions and enthusiasm. Studentswere assigned a mini-research project tofind an application of nanotechnology ofinterest to them, and prepare a PowerPointpresentation for the class on its use, howit works, and why they chose it, along witha little personal data.

Working alone or in pairs, their finalproducts went far beyond my expectations,as did the student responses to the presen-tations. Students were creative and artisticin their slide presentations; they listenedintently to each presentation, and applaud-ed each other. The most exciting result ofthe project was the connection studentsmade to their chosen career areas — exact-ly what we hope to achieve at a compre-hensive vocational high school. Many ofmy students were in the Academy ofManufacturing and Pre-engineering. Theypresented applications in solar panels,robots, wind energy, agriculture, andmachining. Students in Nursing presentedapplications for skin care, cancer diagnosisand treatment, drug delivery for neurologi-

cal diseases, orthopedics, cancer, and cor-recting paralysis. Dental students presentedadvances based on nanotechnology in thecomposite materials used for fillings ortooth replacements and in anesthesia toincrease activation time, which allowsmultiple procedures in a single visit.Students in Auto Body and AutoMechanics discussed "self-healing" paint,hydrogen fuel cells, and lighter, moredurable car panels and windows that makecars safer and more efficient. BusinessTechnology students presented ways inwhich nanotechnology makes computersmore powerful with more memory andfaster start-up and process times. CulinaryArts students found nanotechnology appli-cations for detecting contamination,improving food storage, and adding vita-mins and nutrients without affecting taste.Cosmetology students discussed uses ofnanoparticles in skin care, hair care andmake-up. Students in Electrical Trades pre-sented a method of generating mechanicalpower from body movement to replacebatteries. Environmental LandscapeTechnology students discussed applica-tions for water contaminant detection,water treatment and desalination. ATechnical Drafting student who plans tostudy architecture found that carbon nan-otubes are being used to reinforce concrete,making it both a stronger and lighter mate-rial than steel in building applications.And, finally, an Early Childhood studentfound an application related to her careerarea — the five senses — in which a bion-ic nose uses nanotechnology to detectsmells, especially those that can be haz-ardous, at lower concentration levels thanthe human nose.

Through the presentations, studentslearned that nanotechnology touches allfacets of their lives. Because the majorityof Precalculus students are college-bound,they will possibly learn more about nan-otechnology in their career program. At thevery least, they have some backgroundknowledge of a growing field and a greaterappreciation for its significance.

Nancy Rudolph is a Mathematics Teacher atPaul M. Hodgson Vocational-Technical HighSchool in Newark, Delaware.

AIf You Can See It, It's Not Nano.

The most exciting resultof the project was the

connection students madeto their chosen career

areas — exactly what wehope to achieve at a

comprehensive vocationalhigh school.

FALL 2011 29

By John P. Wargo

Editor's Note: John Wargo's essaydescribes the seminar he led on "Energy,Climate, Environment." All the Fellowsin the Initiative have benefited fromJohn’s stimulating lectures on environmen-tal perils. What he says here reflectsthe urgency of his topic and its importancefor teachers.

he science of ecology evolved rap-idly during the early part of thetwentieth century as naturalists,

botanists, and biologists gradually recog-nized the complex relations among allspecies on earth. This interdependent webof life is easily upset by human influencethrough agriculture, forestry, urban devel-opment, release of toxic chemicals, and ourrapidly changing climate. During the 19thand early 20th centuries human populationpressure and economic activity led many torecognize these effects, yet most presumedenvironmental change to be local in scale.

Ecologists are interdisciplinary scientistswho integrate knowledge among thefields of biology, chemistry, geology, andthe marine and atmospheric sciences.They normally study relations amongspecies, along with the conditionsnecessary to maintain biological diversity.Their research focuses on the presenceand movement of energy, nutrients,and materials through landscapes ormarine environments.

Early in the 20th century ecologistsfocused on small landscapes such as fieldsor forest plots, often defined by propertyboundaries rather than an understanding ofphysical and biological conditions neces-sary for life. They attempted to explain thepattern of life in one region, and theunderlying forces that have nurturedspecies, both in the present and the past.For example, scientists did not understandthat red spruce decline in New York'sAdirondack mountains was caused by pol-

lutants emitted from Midwestern powerplants to create acid rains that reduced thetrees' tolerance to disease.

The scale of ecological inquiry becameglobal during the height of the Cold War.The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission dis-covered by 1953 that nuclear weaponexplosions in the atmosphere forcedradioactive particles into global circula-tion. These particles would eventually rainor settle to earth and accumulate in terres-trial and marine food webs. Soon after-wards government scientists discoveredthat every human on earth carried radioac-tive particles from the atomic tests in theirbones, and that the source was a contami-nated food supply that especially threat-

ened the health of fetuses, infants, andyoung children. The enormous scale of thisnationally sponsored science made it possi-ble to understand other planetary environ-mental changes such as climate warming,stratospheric ozone depletion, ocean acidi-fication that threatens coral reefs and fish-eries, and collapsing diversity in all of theworld's biomes.

It is within this context that ValerieSchwarz chose to teach her students ecolo-gy through the concept of a watershed, aregion drained by a river, using the nearbyChesapeake Bay to focus student interest.The study of watersheds has a rich historyin the field of ecology. These studies exam-ine not just the flow of water, but also themovement of sediments, chemicals and

energy that influence the health and diver-sity of life in the region. Valerie's choice ofa region is compelling, as it demonstrates adelicate biophysical system under siege.The Chesapeake estuary is the largest inthe nation, home to nearly 3,600 differentspecies of flora and fauna, containing8,000 miles of shoreline, and sprawlingover 6 states. Its scale and complexitymake it challenging to study, and themultitude of political jurisdictions makeit even more difficult to protect or restoreenvironmental quality.

The core of the problem is the estuary'svulnerability to chemical contamination;intensive agriculture, especially fertilizersand pesticides, urban development andrunoff, and industrial pollution are the pri-mary offenders. Other chemical threatssuch as mercury are released to the atmos-phere far beyond watershed boundariesfrom power plants, and these accumulate insome species of commercial fish. Theimportance of the fishing industry is welldemonstrated by the abundance of bluecrabs: nearly 160 million pounds are har-vested from the Bay each year.

Valerie has produced an extraordinaryunit that will certainly lead students tounderstand principles of ecology, theirapplication to the estuary, and the ever-increasing human influence in changingthe physical and chemical nature of thewatershed. Students will read the history ofthe Nashua River restoration project inMassachusetts, prepare topographicalmaps, build watershed models, examineaerial photographs, and conduct fieldactivities such as painting storm drains toteach residents to avoid disposing ofhazardous materials in or near them, asthey flow directly into the Bay. The unitis exceptionally well-conceived, writtenwith clarity and energy, and it is certainto energize, enlighten, and entertain stu-dents. It will certainly improve the qualityof their scientific inquiry and will encour-age them to become more thoughtfulstewards of dwindling and vulnerablenatural resources.

Energy, Climate, Environment

John P. Wargo is Professor of EnvironmentalRisk Analysis and Policy at Yale.

T

Valerie's choice of a regionis compelling as it

demonstrates a delicatebiophysical system under

siege. The Chesapeakeestuary is the largest

in the nation.

30 ON COMMON GROUND

By Valerie J. Schwarzmagine immersing yourself in theChesapeake Bay ecosystem byspending three days on an island in

the middle of the bay, accessible onlyby boat. You'd pass hours of each daywith your own "private" waterman toteach you about the environment, thehistory, and the species of the bay. Thanksto the Chesapeake Bay Foundation,eleven other teachers and I didjust that, experiencing themighty Chesapeake at first handon Smith Island, Maryland.

Putting together my experi-ence with the Chesapeake BayFoundation, hours upon hours ofresearch, and the expertise andguidance of Yale professor JohnWargo, I created an in-depth unitof study, entitled TeachingEcology Principles Through theStudy of an Ecosystem, for myfourth- grade students at MaryMunford Elementary School inRichmond, Virginia. As I care-fully developed my unit, incor-porating all of my newly-gainedknowledge, I thought too abouthow to make it work in the class-room, but what I did not anticipate was theoverwhelming enthusiasm of the students.The unit basically took over our class forthe entire year.

The theme for the year in our room wascrabs. The behavior plan was based oncrabs moving toward the crab pot (a crabtrap). The students stuffed and sewed papercrabs that hung from the ceiling as decora-tions. Then the unit began. With the help ofa parent volunteer we created a watershedmodel of the Chesapeake Bay, using beeswax. With this model we could simulatehow pollution makes its way through thewatershed and into the Chesapeake Bay.We also used aerial photos of the same

location taken at different times to examinehow land use had changed. We observedhow oysters filter water, and then welearned how run-off increases the sedimentin the bay and smothers the oysters. Wealso studied the overfishing plight ofanother natural filter, the menhaden fish.Gradually the students had a very clear pic-ture of the many problems facing theChesapeake Bay. But the study of the bay

did not end when the unit was completed.Every year the Richmond Ballet works

in schools throughout the Richmondarea and puts together the annual Mindsin Motion performance. Each year there isa theme. Inspired by my unit, I suggestedthe Chesapeake Bay as a theme. I workedwith Catherine Studdard, a RichmondBallet employee, who choreographed theshow. The Chesapeake Bay Foundationbecame a sponsor for the show. The stu-dents worked to learn the dances through-out the year, and in May put on the finalperformance, "Dancing for a Brand NewBay." There were four performances in allover two days. Roughly, 1,600 students, or800 per day, watched the performance.Through dance, the show narrated the dete-rioration of the bay and the threat to itscreatures, explaining what needs to be

done to help save the Bay. Members of theChesapeake Bay Foundation staff werein the audience, and the show broughtsome of them to tears. At the Saturdayshows they were calling additionalstaff members as far away as Annapolis,Maryland and telling them that theyhad to come and see the performanceon Sunday.

In between performances, I spoke withthe Chesapeake Bay Foundationemployee who had led my trip toSmith Island. Through my con-versation with her, I found outthat there might be an opening totake my students on aChesapeake Bay Foundation fieldtrip to explore the James River,part of the Chesapeake Baywatershed. My class lucked out,and we were able to go on thetrip in June. The students spent agorgeous day aboard theBaywatcher on the James River.They learned more about theChesapeake Bay watershed, sawperegrine falcons and nestingbald eagles, and tested the waterto determine whether it was ahealthy environment. They caught

thirteen different animal species in theriver. The highlight of course was theblue crab.

This past year, all of our fourth-gradeclasses participated in the James RiverBoat Trip, and it was without a doubtthe favorite field trip of the year, despitemany great trips competing for the honor.

Senegalese poet and naturalist BabaDioum once said, "In the end, we willprotect only what we love. We will loveonly what we understand. We will under-stand only what we are taught." The seedsof love for the Chesapeake Bay are plantedin all of my fourth graders. I plan tocontinue teaching this unit in an effort todevelop a generation of children who careabout protecting the Bay and — oncethey've learned to care about a particularlocation — their environment in general.

I

Valerie J. Schwarz is a Fourth-Grade Teacherat Mary Munford Elementary School inRichmond, Virginia.

A National Treasure

JOHN WHITE, A LANDE CRAB, 1585-1593

FALL 2011 31

By Gary W. Brudvigur consumer-driven society gen-erates a tremendous amount ofwaste that is threatening the carry-

ing capacity of Planet Earth. The enormouschallenge facing us can be summarized inone word: sustainability. "Green chem-istry" is a growing field that aims to devel-op and apply new methods that are moreenvironmentally friendly for the manufac-ture of products and for recycling of prod-ucts after they have been used. Importantgoals of green chemistry are to minimizethe waste generated during manufacture ofa product and to develop products that arebiodegradable or are easy to recycle. Thereare many common household products onwhich green chemistry can make animpact, including fuels, plastics, electron-ics, pharmaceuticals, cleaning productsand cosmetics. The aim of this seminar wasto illustrate how the principles of greenchemistry relate to products that we useevery day and how they may lead to a moresustainable society.

My own interest in science stems frommy hands-on experiences as a child.Therefore, many demonstrations wereincluded in this seminar — at least onedemonstration during each seminar meet-ing. These demonstrations were chosen sothat they could engage the Fellows and atthe same time illustrate the scientific prin-ciples related to green chemistry. The bookby Paul Anastas and John Warner entitledGreen Chemistry: Theory and Practicewas used as the primary text for the semi-nar. The seminar was greatly enriched dur-ing the first meeting in May when PaulAnastas joined our group. Paul is widelyregarded as the father of green chemistryand he coined the name "green chemistry."During this first seminar meeting, Paularticulated the need for "green chemistry"and outlined the twelve principles of greenchemistry. Several of the Fellows in the

seminar took advantage of Dr. Anastas'soffer to sign his book. During the IntensiveSession in July, a focus of the seminar wason case studies of green chemistry. Thesewere taken from "Real World Cases inGreen Chemistry" published by theAmerican Chemical Society, which wasused as a supplemental text for the seminar.All of the case studies are examples ofprojects that have received the prestigiousPresidential Green Chemistry ChallengeAward. We discussed the principle of atomeconomy as it was applied to improving thesynthesis of ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil,Medipren) so that less waste and fewerbyproducts are generated in its production.The different types of plastics, and theirrecycling, were discussed both from thepoint of view of consumers and as to thechemistry for their production and recy-cling. A demonstration on thesynthesis of nylon added to thesediscussions. We also discussedgreener methods for dry clean-ing, washing clothes and dishes,and bleaching. Renewable ener-gy is a key aspect of sustainabil-ity. With this in mind, the semi-nar included a discussion of sus-tainable energy use in the futurethat included progress in thedevelopment of biofuels andprocesses for solar energy con-version using artificial photosyn-thesis. The seminar provided mewith an excellent opportunity toconnect my own research onphotosynthesis to the need forrenewable energy and the issuesassociated with the unsustainableuse of fossil fuels that we cur-rently use to power the planet. Ahighlight of the seminar was ademonstration of the productionof biodiesel fuel from cookingoil that culminated in the com-bustion of biodiesel fuel in an oilfurnace burner.

At the end of the seminar, theFellows prepared an outstanding

collection of curriculum units featuringexcellent activities that will engage theirstudents' interest and teach them aboutgreen chemistry. A particularly innovativeunit was prepared by Rajendra Jaini, basedon the Presidential Green ChemistryChallenge Award-winning synthesis ofibuprofen. As he explains in the followingarticle, Mr. Jaini created a murder mysterygame that requires the students to work outthe steps in the chemical synthesis ofibuprofen in order to determine "who dun-nit." I would encourage all teachers of ele-mentary through high school students toreview the curriculum units prepared dur-ing the Green Chemistry seminar. Thesematerials provide a valuable resource forincorporating topics of science and societyrelated to "Green Chemistry" intothe classroom.

Green Chemistry

Gary W. Brudvig is Benjamin SillimanProfessor of Chemistry and Professor ofMolecular Biophysics and Biochemistry atYale University.

O

JOHN STEUART CURRY, KANSAS CORNFIELD, 1933

32 ON COMMON GROUND

By Rajendra K. Jaini

Editor's Note: In his article Rajendra Jainimentions coining the expression "SexyScience" with his roommate. The room-mate was Eric Laurenson of Pittsburgh.Eric and Raju between them have beenespecially helpful in guiding less experi-enced Fellows through the curriculumunit writing process, and deserve specialmention in that regard.

rior to entering Gary's seminar onGreen Chemistry, I had no ideahow the Yale Teachers Institute

experience was about to transform myclassroom approach to "learning how tolearn." While I had heard about the"constructivist theory" of learning (amethod whereby a learner attains knowl-edge through constructing their own expe-riences), I had not seen it in action ata content level of this magnitude. AsI watched my fellow seminar membersengaged with spooling the nylon wewere synthesizing in class, I was awed.Questions were going back and forth aboutthe properties, the How's, and the Why's;I immediately knew that this was the wayI wanted my students to experiencelearning. Thus began my quest for the"ultimate unit."

Participating in the Institute is a transfor-mative experience where synergy takeslearning to the next level. My roommate(who was in the seminar on the brain) andI coined the phrase "Sexy Science," andvowed that we would not leave theIntensive Session without having createdunits that pushed our students' minds tonew heights, while creating a desire formore knowledge of the sciences. We bothtaught in urban schools where students'experiences were limited, and both consid-ered the delivering of "soft skills" to ourstudents as important as our curriculum.We both needed Sexy Science to help our

students connect themselves into the worldof possibilities. Sexy Science became ourmantra; it became the standard for ourdeliverable product.

With Sexy Science in mind, I wouldteach the "basics" of Chemistry whileintriguing, provoking, and encouraging thehigher order thinking and community skillsthat my students would need in their posthigh-school endeavors. The "Science" ofmy unit formed around the topic of the newIbuprofen Synthesis Model which epito-mized the impact that Green Chemistrycould have. The "Sexy" of my unit camefrom a "Who Dunnit?" mystery that mystudents could solve. To make Ibuprofen,

several successive chemical reactions areused, with certain atoms being "wasted"along the way. Compounds are created,broken apart, reconnected, combined withother molecules; form new molecules,waste others, and recreate new bonds toform Ibuprofen. It sounded like the perfectplot for a murder mystery (okay, so per-haps you needed to be in Gary's seminar tosee it). The end result, though, was the fol-lowing assignment for the students:

A Murder Most Foul: The D.A.'s officeneeds your help to convict the Head of theBrufen Family, Ibu Profin Brufen, a.k.a.,"The Headache." The Headache is anorganized, synthesized chemical drug bosswho MURDERED many chemicals in hisrise to the top. We have the broken familiesof chemicals (or what’s left of their bod-

ies). We have qualitative and quantitativeevidence. Your mission is to 1) Decipherthe only paper evidence found on "TheHeadache," 2) Conduct forensic researchto prove quantitatively which chemicalswere killed, and in which step, 3) Presentthis information to Judge Teacher to see ifthere is enough quantitative evidence to geta conviction, and 4) Calculate "TheHeadache's" murder ratio, known as atomeconomy, so that we can accuratelydescribe how murderous he was.

I created a crime scene in my class withmurdered molecules (blood oozing outfrom the broken bonds), scientific streetnames (clues), and crime scene tape. Theday that we began the assignment, I felthonored, as I got the opportunity to dowhat Gary had done months before: facili-tate constructivist learning at its best,answer inquiries with leading questions,and talk about how Chemistry was life!The end result for my students was anunderstanding that Chemistry was real andfun. As one student wrote, "I never thoughtthat I would use Chemistry, or that it wasreal, but I know Ibuprofen, and now I knowhow it’s made. I also know that Chemistryis everywhere. I get it Mr. J!" They werelearning because they wanted to, notbecause they had to.

We have now repeated this unit two yearsin a row. End of Course State test scoreshave increased 29%. However, my biggestsatisfaction came from an e-mail of a for-mer student who wrote, "Mr. J… I wantedyou to know that I am doing real good incollege. I got an A in my first twoChemistry classes and they want me tomajor in Chemistry, Mr. J. can you believeit? They were shocked that I knew howibuprofen was synthesized. Oh, and theygot me tutoring other students inChemistry, and they are paying me reallywell. Catching 'The Headache' was great,Mr. J. Don't ever change that assignment! Make all of your students do it, becauseyou never know who might change whatthey were going to do like me."

Now that is Sexy Science…

Rajendra K. Jaini is a Chemistry andBiochemistry Teacher at Armstrong HighSchool in Richmond, Virginia.

Catching "The Headache" with GreenChemistry…Now That's Sexy Science!

PI would teach the "basics" ofChemistry while intriguing,provoking, and encouraging

the higher order thinkingand community skills that mystudents would need in theirpost high-school endeavors.

FALL 2011 33

(continued from page 2)is devoted also to the celebration ofthe Delaware Institute in a group of articlesby its leaders, and we are delightedaccordingly to include contributionsnot only by Director Theilacker andPresident Harker but also by DelawareSecretary of Education Lillian Lowery,District Superintendents Steve Godowskyand Tony Marchio, University of Delawareprofessor Tom Leitch, and TeacherRepresentative Barbara Prillaman.Delaware is the first Teachers Institute toattempt the coordination of multiple schooldistricts, and many of the writers featuredhere describe how this novel challenge wasmet, with valuable lessons for those inter-ested in founding future Institutes. Afterall, isn't the child in the picture really hold-ing up all of these testimonials for all toread? Look what we've done here! Lookwhat you can do!

Like that child, we feel that the value ofour Institute model is self-evident, andRogers Smith's important study of NewHaven teachers who had participated inlocal seminars (To Strengthen Teaching,2009) clearly demonstrated that in thatcohort of teachers there was far greaterteacher retention — less burn-out, thatis — among teachers who had participatedthan among those who had not.

But beyond that, as everyone who hashad anything to do with teacher evaluationand evaluation of student outcomes knows,the criteria become both murky and contro-versial. There are so many variables thatthe test scores of students from the class-rooms of teachers with Institute experienceare almost impossible to track. The articleby Ellen Kisker, an expert in this field,explains the short-term and long-term out-comes for teachers, university faculty, andstudents touched by our Institutes and takesup the complex topic of evaluating profes-sional outreach programs for teachers. TheNational Initiative hopes to benefit fromher wisdom as it looks to the future.

If the sheet the child holds aloft is home-work, though, as it might also be, we can

imagine that it is an A for a first-gradearithmetic lesson as Roger Howe outlinesit in his article reminding us that basicquantification needs to be taught with agreat many more practical dimensions inmind than are typically taken into accountat present. Professor Howe, who has ledmany of our intensive sessions in math,has consulted on a national committee todevise new core standards for the teachingof primary arithmetic. He is especiallyimpressed by the success of Asian class-room methods — both the mathematicaltheory behind them and their practical suc-cess as evidenced by test scores — andhe introduces some of those considerationsin his article.

Returning to Pippin's picture, I come nowto the qualities that I find most interestingand unusual about it. First, there is themood established by the intense darks ofPippin's palette. Even though the figuresand the setting evoke confidence, serenity,and the feeling that the sky can be reachedfor — a sky not without clouds, but cer-tainly fair weather clouds — this is never-theless an honest picture. There is nochiaroscuro, no blending of colors. WestChester, despite boasting citizens like civilrights activist Bayard Rustin and Pippinhimself, was only three per cent blackwhen Pippin painted his picture, and stillis. Perhaps the suggestion of Pippin'ssevere dark and light palette is cautiouslyracial, coding white things such as theneoclassical columns, the technology ofthe street lamps, the hydrant, and theclocks with their Roman numerals, togeth-er with the claim to be foundational insist-ed on by the statue's pedestal and the flag-pole on the roof — coding all those whitethings over against the darkness of growthand patient perseverance, with the hopeof black and white working as one minia-turized in the clothing, the hair, andthe bright page of literacy brandishedby the child.

Yet this is a darkness that broods; it seeksno artistic or emotional "relief" in settlingback comfortably as part of a tableau. It is

literally foregrounded, insisted upon as areflection without illusion, as the trueground of any possible hope for better-ment. Horace Pippin was nothing if not arealist. What looks like the hand of the stat-ue is pointing toward the clock, as if to say,it's getting late. The lights in the building,suggesting overtime work, make it seemeven later.

But between the "hand" and the clockthere is a tree. Not just in this painting butin others of his, we see Pippin's publicbuildings through trees, their bold blacktrunks the closest things to us, proposingthemselves as rival pillars, the naturalarchitecture of humanity. But what is thisdarkness, more precisely? Pippin doesa very odd thing with the flag. In realitythe courthouse flagpole is on the frontlawn behind the statue (you can see itin photographs), but in Pippin's pictureit rises from the building's roof, whilethe heavily painted black halyarddescends improbably, not to the ground(we don't know where it ends), but to theexact top of a pine tree. This tree andits companion standing in front of thepillars insist on tying themselves to theideas of nationhood and civic justice.They are on the scale of the statue, equallydark and pyramidical, equally important,and they insist, just like the flags inthe ground, on the value of rootedness.Insofar as Pippin's image of the statuestill does evoke its actual identity as"Old Glory," there again you have theidea of a rooted flag, one that mustgrow like a tree if it is to retain its glory.Pippin's picture then is a meditation onthe necessary interfusion of nature andculture, full of subtly coded warningsthat power and privilege must notisolate themselves from grass roots, yetcautiously representing hope in theblack and white figure of the child. Natureand culture together, working in difficultharmony with each other in a worldshaped by technology and power, arehere represented On Common Ground.

(continued on page 36)

Editorial, Part I

34 ON COMMON GROUND

By Paul H. Fryhe next article is a follow-up on aremarkable piece of originalresearch carried out during my

2009 seminar, "Shakespeare and HumanCharacter." The Fellows in my 2008seminar, "Race and Gender inShakespeare," had taken a particularinterest in Harold Bloom'sShakespeare and the Invention of theHuman, especially in the way thatShakespeare according to Bloommakes consciousness in certain char-acters (Hamlet, Falstaff, Rosalind,Cleopatra, Edmund) register thecapacity to change. On hearing forexample that Goneril and Regan inKing Lear have gone to their deathscompeting for his favors, the dyingEdmund reflects, "Yet Edmund wasbeloved," and orders — too late — areprieve from death for Cordelia.Bloom argues that this sort of discov-ery through introspection is somethingcrucial and new in the history ofhuman self-understanding. TheFellows' interest in this claim prompt-ed the topic of the 2009 seminar. Withthis emphasis in mind, the 2009Fellows studied Hamlet, Henry IVPart I, Henry V, Julius Caesar, Antonyand Cleopatra, and King Lear. Itproved a worthwhile guiding thread,as whatever other kinds of focus theirclassroom situations required, theirpresentation of Shakespeare necessarilypassed through considerations of character(you can't get around character becauseShakespeare does not follow Aristotle'ssubordination of character to plot), andall their curriculum units very naturallyfocused on this issue.

Barbara Dowdall expanded the notionof character within Shakespeare — Othelloand Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus,for example — to the noble characterexhibited by actors of Shakespeare,

African American actors, who bravedprejudice and ostracism to pursue theircalling. One thinks primarily of PaulRobeson in this regard, and of all thewhite actors who played black characters

in blackface rather than allow black actorson the set, but Barbara unearthed a deeparchive of materials bringing to life theblack actors who successfully overcameobstacles to act Shakespeare, and not justOthello and Aaron, as far back as the nine-teenth century. She wrote a unit honoringthe namesake of her high school, AsaPhilip Randolph, an amateur actor ofShakespeare as well as a social activist, byteaching and encouraging research projectson the history of acting Shakespeare byAfrican Americans. Her unit combines thishistorical work with reflections on raceand racial attitudes in Othello and TheMerchant of Venice.

By Barbara M. Dowdallould a veteran English teacher,devotee of Shakespeare, and self-described warrior for social justice

journey for three decades in the classroomand be oblivious to the wealth ofmaterial on a stunning cast of AfricanAmerican actors performing the Bardfor nigh on to two centuries?Apparently yes!

Through the coincidence of coveringan African American history class onespring and, with the arrival of Will'sbirthday on April 23, off-handedlyGoogling "Shakespeare and AfricanAmericans" I discovered the wealth ofinformation on Black America's his-torical link to the greatest of Englishpoet dramatists. Although I had longknown about Paul Robeson and hisgroundbreaking Othello, the 19th cen-tury African American expatriate actorIra Aldridge's forty-year dominance inEuropean Shakespeare productionswas totally absent from my awareness,as was the lifelong devotion of myschool's namesake, civil rights giantA. Philip Randolph, to reading andperforming the Bard.

With the goals of stimulating studentcuriosity, promising surprises, affirm-ing their status as rising Shakespearescholars and hoping to spark anongoing dedication to lifelong learn-

ing, I began with a simple question: Whatis the earliest date you expect tofind African Americans performingShakespeare? Both at Randolph and thenearby Philadelphia High School for Girls'High, students asked and sought answers toother questions before answering mine:When did Shakespeare live? When werethe plays, particularly Othello, written?Were actors of color present inElizabethan theater? When and wheredid people of African descent arrive inthe New World? What was their condition?

Barbara M. Dowdall is an English Teacher atA. Philip Randolph Career Academy inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania.

Shakespeare and Human Character

C

African Americansand Shakespeare

Paul H. Fry is William Lampson Professor ofEnglish at Yale University.

T

UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER, SCENE FROM "OTHELLO" WITHPAUL ROBESON AS OTHELLO, 1943-44

FALL 2011 35

What were their opportunities both educa-tional and vocational and/or limitationsthereon? When and where did involuntaryservitude come to an end? Whatwould be the interest level in theAfrican American for evenreading, let alone performing,the works of a writer seeminglyso far removed from their lifeexperience? Assuming thatthere was such an interest, whatwould be the roadblocks to suc-cess? What would be theresponse from Black and whitetheatergoers?

Armed with the basic histori-cal information they deemedmost relevant and before beingprovided the specific textthat would satisfy the originalquery, students went on tomake their educated guesses.They ranged from a romantic ifinaccurate surmise: "Theearliest date I expect to findAfrican Americans performingShakespeare is maybe in the1650s, because in 1603Africans came to Jamestown,Virginia. Once they got settledand once they got free, then theystarted to perform Shakespeare," to themore conservative "1880s because in 1865the Constitution was changed and it wouldtake more time for acceptance to occur," tothe almost correct crediting New York'send to enslavement some time beforeinstead of six years after the earliest record-ed performance: "…after slavery ended inthe North, because slaves gathered freelyand more frequently."

In speculating about audience response,many correctly guessed that "some in thewhite community would have been angryand ignorant; that the Black communitywould have been proud." Propelled by theanticipation questions, students sought outanswers and expressed their interest andsurprise: "that African Americans had theirown theater; that white people came to see

African Americans perform; that Blackactors played in Shakespeare beforeslavery ended.”

Students then had available differentdoorways to the discovery of AfricanAmerican actors and Shakespeare: bychecking particular plays, researchingindividual actors from a list, or venturingto check on the career of a favorite actoror activist. A Morgan Freeman posterproject yielded rich biographical detail butoddly omitted his 1970s era appearances inJulius Caesar and Coriolanus. A seniorgirl took extensive notes from her laptoptracing of Maya Angelou's conclusionthat Shakespeare was a teen expressingdistress: "When, in disgrace with fortuneand men's eyes,/ I all alone beweep myoutcast state."

When asked to judge whetherShakespeare viewed characters likeShylock and Othello as stereotypes or fully

human, students analyzed text to make anassessment: "In the lines beginning, 'Ifyou prick us, do we not bleed?' Shylock

insists that everyone is equal andJews are no different. He is a fullhuman being who bleeds red just asany other."

In the two years since the unitwas written, additional AfricanAmerican actors have routinelytaken their place in Shakespeareproductions — plays as varied asThe Winter's Tale, King Lear,All's Well That Ends Well andMeasure for Measure; and recentscholarship has amplified thehistoric record, including glowingreviews of Ira Aldridge’s portrayal ofMacbeth and Frederick Douglass’suse of The Scottish Play text in hisquest for freedom.

Here is a rich literary field ofinquiry where teachers and studentscan learn together as teachers modelboth the joy of wonder and the tech-niques of focused research.

(continued from page 27)with science and the medical field.""Nanotechnology has a huge impacton our society because it is in ourmodern technology. We will be lostwithout it (technology), we depend onit for everything we use, we will soonadapt to nanotech."

For me, the most significant aspectof the whole experience of being aNational Fellow as well as participating inthe Charlotte Teachers Institute is how weare all treated as professionals and expertsin our area of instruction. Given the over-all climate of teacher evaluations, account-ability, and pay-for-performance propos-als, it is refreshing to feel that what we asteachers are doing has tangible value andis appreciated.

HENRY PERRONET BRIGGS, IRA FREDERICK ALDRIDGE AS OTHELLO, 1830

Austin: Startingwith Small

36 ON COMMON GROUND

By W. Mark Saltzmanuring the summer of 2009, CarolBoynton participated in a YaleNational Initiative seminar called

"The Brain in Health and Disease." Thehuman brain is a remarkable contraption,capable of decoding complex informationabout the world around us and organizingthat information into plans and dreams.This seminar reviewed the overall structureof the brain and its subdivision into regionsthat are responsible for different tasks, suchas vision, hearing, control of movement,and decision-making. The function of thebrain was related to the activity of cellswithin the brain, particularly neurons,which are capable of collecting, integrat-ing, and relaying information. The seminaralso described common diseases of thebrain, such as Parkinson's disease,Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and stroke,and related the causes and consequences ofthese diseases to properties of cells and

groups of cells in the brain. Because thebiology of the brain has many levelsof complexity, it is a suitable substratefor lesson plans at a variety of gradelevels, encompassing aspects of mathemat-ics, biology, chemistry, philosophy, andsocial studies.

Specifically, the seminar covered thefollowing topics:

1. Cellular structure of the brain 2. Organization of the brain3. Neurotransmission and the

synapse4. The body manager (major senses

and body regulation)5. Nutrition and the brain6. Parkinson's Disease and other

neurodegenerative disorders7. Positron Emission Tomography

(PET) imaging of the brain8. Emotions and social function9. Learning, thinking, remembering10. EpilepsyThe discussions were enhanced by our

reading from three books: The Dana Guideto Brain Health: A Practical Family

Reference from Medical Experts, Bloom,Beal, and Kupfer (Ed.), Dana Press (2006);Think Smart, Richard Restak, RiverheadBooks (2009); and The Brain that ChangesItself, Norman Doidge, Penguin (2007).

The Fellows prepared curriculum unitsthat covered a breadth of informationon the brain and the senses. The materialpresented in the units assembled bythe eleven participating Fellows spannedan impressive range and was designedfor use in classrooms from first gradethrough high school. Of those units, theone described here by Carol Boynton ofNew Haven, was impressive in severalregards. Carol’s unit, called "Sensingour Five Senses," is aimed at the youngeststudents, yet it provides a clear and helpfulintroduction to one of the most powerfulfunctions of the nervous system: collectinginformation about the world that weinhabit. Further, Carol makes the informa-tion palpable through a set of hands-onactivities to introduce young students tothe power of observation through thefive senses.

The Brain in Health and Disease

W. Mark Saltzman is Goizueta FoundationProfessor of Chemical and BiomedicalEngineering at Yale University.

D

Editorial, Part II: The Rest of This Issue(continued from page 33)The first part of this Editorial is written intribute to my predecessor as Chair of theEditorial Board, Thomas Whitaker. Tom'seditorial in Number 13 of the periodical wasan elegant response to one of Jasper Johns's"Catenary Series" paintings, finding pointsof reference in it to all the articles in theissue. Both in admiration, then, and alsobecause it's the kind of thing I enjoy doingmyself, up to this point I have followed Tomby viewing our contents in relation toPippin's "West Chester Courthouse."

But there's still an important portion of ourcontents that I haven’t mentioned. In turn-ing now to a survey of those articles, I turnmy attention likewise to some of our otherimages, no longer with the enjoyable but ofcourse completely artificial purpose of forc-ing them to become allegories ofour enterprise, but still by way of showing

how interestingly they can illustrate thework done by our teachers, and in manycases how they bring out the strong visualor "graphic" component of this teaching —a quality that’s well known to enhancestudent attentiveness.

Hence before taking up our Fellows'reports on teaching their curriculum unitsand the images that accompany some ofthose, I thought I'd offer a word or twoabout yet other images. This is the thirdJasper Johns flag we've put on the cover(see our first issue for the Fall of 1993; the"catenary" painting also features a flag). Welike his work in this vein because the prob-lems we seek to address are at once nation-al and local. Johns's flags, like his maps ofthe States, are never blandly flat, as thoughseamless and fixed in viewpoint; nor dothese flags billow, as over a rampart. Theyare grainy, textured by individual brush-

strokes, made to be a unity, not just given asa unity according to some pre-cooked idea.The images for the Delaware articles can beunderstood in much the same way. JacobLawrence painted a great many images ofbuilding and builders; they are urban andcooperative yet resist the feeling of anassembly line or chain gang (think by con-trast of Fritz Lang's Metropolis). Oftenthey're even rather chaotic: perhaps rough-edged and rough-hewn, but still spiritedexhibits of constructive work. CharlesSheeler's Rolling Power, with SteveGodowsky's article, represents the irre-sistible momentum Steve evokes when hesays the "driving force" behind theDelaware Institute is "the strength of theteachers who embrace the Institute model."Tony Marchio speaks of the wholly secular"'born again' experience" of many Fellows,

(continued on page 38)

FALL 2011 37

By Carol P. Boynton y first-grade students knewsomething exciting was about tohappen as they filed back into

the classroom after lunch. There wasan unusual object sitting right in the middleof our rug, a place where we gather togeth-er to talk, share stories, and learn newthings. It was a large, brown, upside-down,cardboard box. Trailing out from under-neath this box was a long extensioncord waiting to be plugged into a sock-et. "What is it? What's in there? Whatare we doing? When do we get to see?Can we look inside?" Questions beganflying around the room, exactly thereaction I was seeking. Questioning isthe foundation of science and, fortu-nately for me as a teacher, the founda-tion of a first grader’s day. Weavingtogether this innate curiosity and sci-ence instruction for these students islike slipping a hand into a glove.

Because exploration and discoveryare meaningful components of learningabout the world around us, young stu-dents need to have time to experienceopen-ended activities. This approach isthe guiding rationale for my curriculumunit, "Sensing the Five Senses."Participation in Mark Saltzman'sseminar, "The Brain in Health andDisease," was challenging and enrich-ing, an opportunity to learn about how ourbrains process and store information. Therewe all sat, primary teachers and highschool teachers, working together andready to write curriculum for our students.But how would I share such complex sub-ject matter as brain function with my firstgraders? The answer became clear to me asour seminar progressed — my six- andseven-year olds would learn how webecome smarter, more informed, as weengage our senses. So, my fundamentalfocus became heightening my students'awareness that information travels to our

brain through sensorial experiences, allow-ing us to gain knowledge that we can useevery day.

That autumn afternoon we all sat aroundthe big box as I plugged in the mysteriouscord. A flurry of guesses began as weall heard a sound from under the box."Maybe it’s a hair dryer," "I think it's a vac-uum cleaner," "Is it a fan or maybe a

microwave?" Now, with interest andcuriosity, it was time to lift the box, expos-ing a hot-air popcorn popper. Withexcited oohs and aahs, we watched asthe corn kernels bounced around and even-tually heard them explode into popcornpuffs. Then, that identifiable smell of pop-corn as the aroma filled the room, orat least the students' noses. The excitementfor these young ones was building asthey asked the inevitable question, "Dowe get to eat it?" The popcorn camespilling out into the bowl, a true rewardworth waiting for. Finally, the sense oftouch and taste were now engaged asthe students happily munched away.Our experiment had allowed everyone to

experience all five senses through one funand delicious lesson.

The learning continued with discoverythrough exploration as the students workedin science centers that housed an array ofsensorial activities. Various unmarked con-tainers held mystery scents, sounds, andobjects keeping students learning throughguessing, writing, discussing, and confirm-

ing information with their science part-ners. They were excited to hear and iden-tify sounds as they shook unlabeled con-tainers holding beans, rice, sand, pebbles,and nuts and bolts. The smell centerseemed to have the most visitors, andrepeat visitors, as they sniffed the scentsof vanilla, soap, peppermint, garlic,crayons and more. Reaching inside boxesto feel concealed objects seemed similar-ly exciting and a great, fun challenge toidentify what item they would be holdingin their hand — what does our sense oftouch tell us the object might be?

Throughout the experimental phase,the students developed vocabulary andbecame more articulate in describingand discussing their scientific findings.Rough, smooth, soft, bumpy, long, sweet,sour, salty, crunchy, heavy, are adjectivesthat began to creep into their discussions.They continually asked questionsand charted their learning — What couldit be? What sense is helping me? What

am I learning? How can I tell someone elseabout my learning?

For our final activity, we hiked overto the local nature park for a sensorialscavenger hunt, a great adventure.Students with parent helpers were excitedto complete their senses charts, collectingsights, sounds, smells, and "touches"found throughout the park. We didreserve the sense of taste for our bagsof trail mix — raisins, goldfish, andchocolate chips!

After three weeks of hands-on experi-ments and scientific inquiry, I arrived atschool Monday morning to the question,"How are we using our senses in sciencenext?" Music to a teacher's ears!

Sensing Our Five Senses

M

Carol P. Boynton is a First-GradeTeacher at Edgewood K-8 School in NewHaven, Connecticut.

JACQUES FABIEN GAUTIER D'AGOTY, PLATE II FROM GAUTIERD'AGOTY'S EXPOSITION ANATOMIQUE DES ORGANES DES SENS, 1775

38 ON COMMON GROUND

Editorial, Part II: The Rest of This Issue(continued from page 36)and we hope it won't be thought profaneto have illustrated his point with JohnSteuart Curry's uncritically objectiveBaptism in Kansas. Kerry James Marshall'surban back yard illustrates BarbaraPrillaman's article on community.

When we chose Mel Bochner's RandomNumbers (#1) for Roger Howe's article onfirst-grade math, we didn't have in mind themessiness of these ("random") numbers,although I have to say that at least for me it'sthe swift spontaneity of Bochner's calligra-phy that gives the image its aesthetic appeal.What we took note of, rather, was the num-bers beneath the numbers, existing in com-plex relation to, sometimes intertwined with(like the five over the seven on the right),the numbers in the foreground. This shad-owing of single digits, not by each other butby other single digits, illustrates for us thecomplexity of thought that students mustbring to bear on even the simplest problemsof addition and subtraction if they are tounderstand them fully. And with the aware-ness of complexity comes the probability ofuseful mistakes, reflected in the numbersthat Bochner has erased. A different butequally interesting complexity pervadesRobert Indiana's The Ten Stages NumberSculpture Reflected, with the same article.

Our section comprising the reports ofFellows who have taught their curriculumunits continues a tradition that has been inplace ever since the Yale National Initiativewas established seven years ago. It is alsoan oral tradition, featured in a panel that weput together on the first morning of ourannual October conference every year, andwe consider it one of the most excitingmoments of our work together. Seeing thesecurriculum units brought to life, accompa-nied by all the surprises that come with put-ting a plan to work, is exhilarating foreveryone. In the written form of this tradi-tion, some of the unit topics are introducedby the Fellows' seminar leaders, and in thecase of those that aren't, the curious readershould go to the Introductions on theInitiative Web site written by all seminar

leaders in a given year to the volumes ofunits written by their Fellows.

Not all these articles are matched withimages. Even in the case of my seminar onwriting about pictures, we have no imagefor the report of Chante Givens. In myIntroduction to Brook Blaylock's article andhers I mention that Chante had regaled usin the seminar with her strategies for teach-ing Greg Pape's poem on Audubon'sFlamingoes, a poem that calls the students'attention to Audubon's practice of shootingand stuffing all the birds he painted. Chantealso showed us an image of the lobby of herschool, which has a huge mural of flamin-goes, and explained how she got her thirdgraders in an across-the-curriculum exer-cise to compare and contrast the zoologicalinformation that Audubon and the muralistmake available. But Chante's report takesus in other directions, so we kept theAudubon on the shelf. The reports arisingfrom Bryan Garsten's seminar on"Persuasion in Democratic Politics" wefinally didn't illustrate either. For the articleby Sam Reed and his colleague, we thoughtof an image of tense racial confrontation(which is Sam's theme); and for JeffWeathers's "A Bright Opening" we thoughtof a dramatic illuminated clearing in thewoods. We had in mind a painting by theCalifornia figurative painter David Parkfor Mika Cade's article on writingbiographies of the staff members of herCalifornia school. But layout challenges leftthese hopes unrealized. Another topic thatwent un-illustrated was "Nanotechnology,"the topic of Mark Saltzman's FellowsConchita Austin and Nancy Rudolph. Butthen, the point of "nano," as Nancy Rudolphsays, is that you can't see it! The last ofthe Fellows' articles without an image isthat of Raju Jaini on "Sexy Science."Maybe if somebody like Wayne Thiebaudhad painted — perhaps for this veryissue! — a nice bottle of green headachepills we'd have put it in, but as it is weallow Raju's contagious enthusiasm toinfect us all.

What makes both teaching and encourag-

ing the writing of poems or prose aboutworks of art worthwhile is that, especiallyfor young people, it allows pictures to tell astory. That's what’s so much fun about U. A.Fanthorpe's poem as discussed by BrookBlaylock. It makes Uccello's St. George asilly narcissist, the damsel the long-suffer-ing pawn of a boring macho code, and thedragon a grumpy martyr who wonders,"Why did I have to get stuck in this myth?"The portrait by Alice Neel that we put inMolly Myers's report on the unit she wrotein Langdon Hammer's seminar is not SylviaPlath and is there chiefly — let's just admitit — because we like it a lot and we imag-ine that we'd like the sitter. Symmetricalcomposition by M. C. Escher accompaniesRosemary Schmitt's article on math in theart classroom.

The early American John White's A LandeCrab illustrates John Wargo's seminar on"Energy, Climate, Environment," eventhough land crabs aren't dependent on bod-ies of water, clean or dirty. Our secondimage from John Steuart Curry, KansasCornfield, adorns Gary Brudvig'sIntroduction to his seminar on "GreenChemistry," and we hope it's green enoughto make up for the green headachepills we never found. And finally, forBarbara Dowdall's report on teaching heroriginal research on African Americans act-ing Shakespeare for my 2009 seminar on"Shakespeare and Human Character,"we chose one of the many portraits ofPaul Robeson as Othello, together withHenry Perronet Briggs' interesting portraitof Ira Aldridge in the same role more thanseventy-five years earlier, confirmingBarbara's reminder that the AfricanAmerican involvement with Shakespearegoes back much farther than one mighthave supposed.

We hope the reader feels the excitement inthese reports as much as we do, and as muchas we do when we hear such reports atour October conference. These are the"results" that Ellen Kisker's theory ofchange points toward, and we really dothink they speak for themselves.

FALL 2011 39

In June, Senators Joseph Lieberman (I,CT) and Richard Blumenthal (D, CT) andRepresentatives Rosa DeLauro (D, CT-3)and Chaka Fattah (D, PA-2) introduced theTeachers Professional DevelopmentInstitutes Act. Senator Christopher Coons(D, DE) and Congressmen John Carney(D, DE-At Large) and Jesse Jackson Jr.(D, IL-2) have joined them in cosponsoringthe legislation.

The purpose of the bill, S. 1240 inthe Senate and H.R. 2255 in the House, isto provide Federal assistance to supportthe establishment and operation ofTeachers Institutes for local educationalagencies that serve significant low-incomestudent populations in states throughoutthe nation.

The bill recognizes that 1) "teaching iscentral to the educational process andthe ongoing professional developmentof teachers in the subjects they teach isessential for improved student learning,"and 2) "having a classroom teacher who is

highly effective in every academic subjectthe teacher teaches will require innovativeapproaches to improve the effectiveness ofteachers in the classroom."

It also cites evidence thata) Teachers Institutes enhance precise-

ly those teacher qualities known toimprove student achievement,

b) Teachers Institutes exemplify thecrucial characteristics of high-quali-ty teacher professional develop-ment, and

c) Institute participation is stronglycorrelated with teacher retention inhigh-need schools.

In a recent report, the President's Councilof Advisors on Science and Technologyidentified the need for Teachers Institutesas exemplary partnerships among schoolsand STEM professionals.

A variety of programs attemptto bridge the gaps between publicschools and the STEM professionalcommunity, but not all such programs

provide teachers and schools withresources that are useful in theirclassrooms. Nonetheless, several pro-grams demonstrate the potential forsuch connections to benefit K-12schools. For example, TeachersInstitutes, which began in 1978 in NewHaven and have since expanded tocities across the country, pair universi-ties and school districts, allowingteachers to identify the topics on whichthey would like to collaborate.University professors then guide theseteachers through inquiry-based learn-ing in a STEM subject area.… It isimportant that we find ways toharness these sources of partnershipand expertise in a committed, sustainedway relevant to K-12 teachersand students.

This recommendation reflects theemphasis President Barack Obama andSecretary of Education Arne Duncan have

(continued)

Enacting a Nationally Significant Approach(continued from page 1)

I'm proud to join Senators Lieberman and Blumenthal on the Teachers Professional Development Institutes Act, which will facilitatepartnerships between school districts and nearby colleges and universities to help improve teaching quality and student achievement inlow-income communities. These Institutes create an environment for teachers at all education levels to come together for a free-flowing,uninhibited exchange of ideas on a series of academic subjects that will enrich classroom instruction and help ensure our children receivea proper education.

It was in my home state of Delaware, which is known for being a leader in education reform, that the first Teachers Institute whosepartnership involved more than one school district was formed. We all know there's much that still needs to be done to ensure thatour children are provided the necessary resources to succeed in our global workforce. Partnerships like these are a strong step in theright direction.

– Senator Christopher Coons

I have co-sponsored and advocated for this legislation because I believe it has the potential to significantly improve the educationalopportunity available to our nation's students. The Teachers Professional Development Institutes Act will enable partnerships betweeninstitutions of higher education and K-12 systems to ratchet up the content expertise of our educators, and in turn, improve students' readi-ness for college. We know that when students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, have consistent access to high-qualityinstruction, their life chances, and those of their families, are dramatically improved.

This proposal tracks the success of the Teachers Institute of Philadelphia, based in my Congressional District, which has brought theresources of the University of Pennsylvania to 25 public schools in West and Southwest Philadelphia since 2007. I commendCongresswoman DeLauro for her leadership on this legislation, which continues her long history of advocacy for our nation's children andfor equalizing their educational opportunities.

– Congressman Chaka Fattah

As the son of two educators, I learned at an early age the vital role teachers play in the lives of their students. Teachers Institutes are agood way to provide teachers the training and tools they need to be effective in the classroom. I am pleased that my home state of Delawareis pursuing a Teachers Institute, and I look forward to seeing its continued success.

– Congressman John Carney

F A L L

On Common Ground

Number 14, Fall 2011Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute®

Phone: (203) 432-1080Fax: (203) 432-1084E-mail: Common.Ground@yale.eduWorld Wide Web: teachers.yale.edu

Executive Editor, James R. VivianChairman, Editorial Board, Paul H. FrySenior Advisor, Jules D. Prown

The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute is an edu-cational partnership between Yale University andthe New Haven Public Schools designed tostrengthen teaching and learning in local schoolsand, by example and direct assistance, in schoolsacross the country. In 2004, the Institute announcedthe Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching inpublic schools, a long-term endeavor to influencepublic policy toward teacher professional develop-ment, in part by establishing Teachers Institutes instates throughout the nation.

Strengthening Teaching through

School-University Partnership

®

40 ON COMMON GROUND

Yale UniversityYale-New Haven Teachers InstituteP.O. Box 203563New Haven, Connecticut 06520-3563

CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED

NON- PROFIT ORG.

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Read On Common Ground online at teachers.yale.edu.

placed on the necessity of high-qualityteacher professional development. Atthe launch of his "Educate to Innovate"STEM campaign, President Obamasaid, "Passionate educators with deepcontent expertise can make all the differ-ence." As Secretary Duncan explained:

We don't have enough teacherswho really know the content extraordi-narily well, particularly in poor anddisadvantaged communities. The morewe can provide high-quality profession-al development, so that teachers havedeep content knowledge, there arehuge benefits.

The Teachers Professional DevelopmentInstitutes Act attests to the nationalsignificance of the Teachers Instituteapproach to curriculum and professionaldevelopment. Its enactment wouldprovide a research-based and cost-effectiveway for school districts to offer high-quality professional development forteachers in the schools that needthem most.

The Teachers Institutes, whose establish-ment the bill would support, wouldallow many more state and local educationagencies to learn about and implementthis tested, innovative approach for reform-ing their teacher professional developmentpolicies and practices.

Follow the Teachers Institutes legislationonline at teachers.yale.edu/legislation.

112TH CONGRESS 1ST SESSION S. 1240 To support the establishment and operation of Teachers Professional

Development Institutes.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

JUNE 21 (legislative day, JUNE 16), 2011 Mr. LIEBERMAN (for himself and Mr. BLUMENTHAL) introduced the following

bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Edu-cation, Labor, and Pensions

A BILL To support the establishment and operation of Teachers

Professional Development Institutes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-1

tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 2

SECTION 1. TEACHERS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN-3

STITUTES. 4

(a) IN GENERAL.—Part A of title II of the Elemen-5

tary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 6

6601 et seq.) is amended by adding at the end the fol-7

lowing: 8

Enacting