Denise Massari (left) was one of six hotshot grads who convinced Yale faculty like Dean Jon Butler (right) that Yale should pay them to learn how to teach in New Haven’s public school. It worked: The inaugural year of Yale’s promising new experiment in how to improve city schools got underway.
In a “win-win-win” situation called the Yale Urban Teaching Initiative, grad students get a teaching license and a paid Master’s degree from Yale. Yale gets help with the new program from the finest of local veteran teachers. And New Haven schools will get the hotshot graduates like Massari for at least three years after.
At a welcome event Wednesday at Yale’s Betts House, the new teachers-in-training described what it took to prove that they’re up to the challenge of New Haven’s tougher classrooms.
“They were really grilling me! This one was talking on his cell phone, that one was calling out —” all of them started acting up,” remembered Denise Massari, at the Wednesday reception for the first ever Yale class of Urban Teaching Master’s students. Massari wasn’t talking about high school students testing the limits. She was talking about Yale faculty acting like challenging high school students, during her interview for admission to the program.
“Jack [Gillette] and Linda [Cole-Taylor] acted like unruly students,” said Nina Condren, another member of the new Urban Teaching class, recalling the mock-lesson piece of her “nerve-wracking” 90-minute interview months back, with a panel headed by program directors Gillette and Cole-Taylor. The new program will have Master’s candidates taking Education classes at Yale while teaching under experienced counselors at Hillhouse, Co-Op and Career High Schools, to start. When the program is more established and drawing more applicants, classes will have ten members and spread to more schools. The admissions bar for this first six-member class was already high.
“The goal was to test out their temperament, in response to different provocation,” explained another interview committee member and faculty advisor to the Master’s program, Yale English Prof Jill Campbell. “I couldn’t do it. I was the goody-goody. I thought: Do we really have to put them through that?”
Gillette, the director of the Teacher Prep program at Yale and key engine behind the new Yale Urban Teaching Initiative, thought they did. In line with the program’s commitment to improving education in New Haven, the committee wasn’t just looking for the candidates buffest in their teaching subjects (English, Spanish, math, history and humanities this year), but those aspiring educators who really get it —” and really care — about urban teaching.
“This is an urban teaching program. We were looking for a willingness to engage in all the complexities of an urban high school. Not everybody wants to do that,” said Anthony Wight (pictured with Master’s candidate Kayan Clarke), a longtime New Haven teacher slotted to be a counselor to program participant Kate Johnson as she learns the ropes of math teaching at Hillhouse High School. “We asked probing questions —” what were their feelings about urban high school, what sorts of experiences had they had? —” looking for a willingness to look at themselves, and come to grips with ‘Who am I?’ in situations that are not always comfortable.”
“It was important how they heard and responded to those questions: Not just, Oh, I teach math, but reflections on how they interact with students, reflecting on the knowledge and on themselves.”
What the strategy got them is a set of city-savvy teachers, for whom commitment to New Haven schools promises to come naturally.
Kate Johnson is returning from Bowdoin College to teach math in New Haven; she grew up in the area. Fellow Master’s candidate (and former Guilty Party mayoral candidate) Leslie Blatteau (pictured below at left, with Nina Condren, right) has worked at Wilbur Cross’s school-based day care for more than five years afer graduating from Yale, reaching out to teen moms throughout New Haven’s neighborhoods.
Nina Condren’s headed back to urban high school classrooms after UCONN because “that’s where I come from.” Her memories growing up in Hartford schools, and working in Hartford summer schools since, are of a few stand-out students with the rest left to under-achieve —” instead of equal education opportunities making school the “leveling agent” she’d want it to be. “I see a system that’s in need of a lot of help.”
Denise Massari took her Dartmouth degree in Spanish to public schools in Greenwich and then Mexico City, teaching experiences that prepped her well for the Yale admissions committee role-play. “As soon as they started to act up, all my nervousness was gone.” She finished her trial Spanish lesson to the admissions panel of Yale faculty and New Haven schoolteachers with confidence, and not a word of English —” as she’ll do for real teaching Spanish at Hillhouse in the fall.
Of course the six candidates aren’t only city-oriented and dedicated to urban teaching. They’re also book smarties, qualified for Yale grad school (Yale doesn’t have a full school of Ed.) on the merits of their academic work. “We were certainly looking for intellectual excellence,” said Yale prof Campbell, who will advise the two aspiring English teachers as part of their Methods class.
So while local educators like Hillhouse principal Lonnie Garris (pictured at right) were glad to be able to offer the Yale students the “benefit of training with veterans,” veteran teacher Andy Wight said he was looking forward to learning from his resident Yalie, as she steeps herself in new approaches and theory in grad classes. “Why wasn’t there a program like this when I wanted to learn this stuff?”
The steeping had already begun, as classes in the first of two summer sessions (sandwiching the school year’s class work and student teaching) opened Tuesday. Denise Massari has been up until the wee hours with homework for Professor Cole-Taylor’s Intro to Urban Ed course, considering false preconceptions of the “expert teacher,” and what she herself might need to “unlearn.”
No wonder Dean of Yale Graduate School Jon Butler was proud. “It’s a privilege to have you here. The university couldn’t be more proud to have this program,” he told the reception hall of New Haven educators, Yale faculty, and their six newest students. That, he said, is why Yale is funding the program so generously, giving an $18,000 stipend to each student on top of free tuition. “We want our schools to be better.”
Butler said the program “symbolizes Yale’s commitment to the city of New Haven,” and was an “unusual and exciting outreach on the part of the University. We’re thrilled that the New Haven public schools can see it as something good. It’s a win-win-win.”
City Supervisor of High Schools Charles Williams assured “on behalf of New Haven public schools” that he was “seriously elated.”
It’s these spaces where Yale and New Haven interact that are richest, said Program Director Gillette, promising the new Master’s candidates that mentors from both would “guide, help, goad, irritate, and stimulate” them in their progress through the program.
“Theory in the university and practice in the classroom: Between those new teaching knowledge is going to be generated.”
At the center was a determination to improve education for kids nationwide. “We are dedicated to the fact that American society has to be a place where birth circumstances do not determine where you end up. We’re serious about this. We’re starting here,” said Gillette.
It's great to see this type of initiative on behalf of Yale to committ to improving New Haven schools. What's surprising, however, is that Yale has not collaborated with any of the talented faculty at area university schools of education. Southern Connecticut, for one, has a distinguished faculty who have EdDs from Teacher's College and Harvard. Perhaps Yale's Urban Teaching Iniative could benefit in future years from the leadership exhibited by those who area already training teachers in Connecticut schools. True, Southern graduates are placed regionally, not only in New Haven. Although, in order to have a truly adequate response to New Haven's troubled schools, we need regional solutions. Many New Haven teachers live in the surrounding towns. In evaluating this program, and its future successes, the program directors would be well-served to consider collaborating with existing education program in the community, if they haven't done so already.