A celebratory gathering in Sterling Memorial Library on Sept. 30 showcased the work of this year’s fellows in the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, a partnership between Yale University and New Haven Public Schools to strengthen teaching and learning in New Haven’s public schools.
This year, 21 local K-12 educators completed the five-month program, attending seminars led by Yale faculty and developing new curriculum units for their own classrooms.
The celebration also offered the fellows a chance to share their work with their peers, family, and friends.
Founded in 1978, the institute each year offers local teachers the chance to enrich their knowledge on a topic, develop new teaching strategies, and forge collegial bonds with Yale faculty and other teachers.
This year, teachers applied in January for acceptance into one of two seminars: “History, Science, and Racism: The Long Shadow of Eugenics,” led by Daniel HoSang, professor of American studies in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS); and “Objects, Material Culture, and Empire: Making Russia,” led by Molly Brunson, associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures in the FAS.
In addition to weekly seminar meetings, fellows attended lectures and visited the university’s museums and galleries. They became members of the Yale community — receiving a university ID card and borrowing access to university libraries. These resources all informed their development of a curriculum unit, shaped by their own expertise and teaching needs and supported through workshops and faculty feedback. Fellows will now use these curriculum units in their own classrooms and make them available to other New Haven teachers.
Stephanie Reid, director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute
Stephanie Reid, the institute’s director, honored the fellows’ efforts in her opening remarks at Sterling.
“Central to the institute is teacher leadership,” she said. “Your dedication to your own professional learning inspires me, as does your commitment to engaging your students and your ambitions for what they will learn from your unit.”
The fellows then spoke briefly about their work, offering a glimpse of the range of experiences they each brought to the program. Carol Boynton, a kindergarten teacher at Edgewood Creative Thinking through STEAM Magnet School, has participated as a fellow every year since 2007.
“Unlike most professional development, this model has teachers of all grades and all disciplines sitting together,” said Boynton, who is also a member of the institute’s steering committee. “It really is designed so we can take a nugget of the content and bring it back to whoever we are teaching.”
BY THE NUMBERS
New Haven Public School teachers who have completed the program since 1978
New Haven students who will be taught the 2025 curriculum units by fellows
Curriculum units developed by institute fellows since 1978
Yale faculty who have participated as seminar leaders
Jaimee Mendillo, a sixth-grade teacher at Nathan Hale School, was particularly grateful for HoSang, her seminar leader. “He made a point to make sure that [the content] made us open and enlightened,” she said. “There were light bulb moments going off and this shared sense of awe.”
Since 2005, the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute has also run The Yale National Initiative, which offers a summer program of seminars for K-12 public school teachers from around the country, and which promotes the establishment of similar institutes in high-need school districts across the United States.
Applications for the 2026 cohort of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute will open in January; more information can be found at https://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/participate.
