News – Teachers Institute of Philadelphia

TIP Seminar Leader Nominated for World Fantasy Award

TIP Seminar Leader Ebony Elizabeth Thomas has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award which recognizes the best fantasy fiction books published in the previous calendar year. The awards will be presented at the World Fantasy Convention on October 29th – November 1st. Ebony’s book The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games examines the teaching of African American literature, history, and culture in K-12 classrooms. This year she…

Superintendent Hite Praises Fellows at Spring Celebration

On June 30th we honored the 64 School District of Philadelphia teachers who completed our semester-long seminar program via Zoom. Guest speakers William Hite and Otis Hackney congratulated the teachers on their accomplishments and Fellows in each seminar shared what they learned and the curriculum units they created. Although we were unable to celebrate in person this year the event was an uplifting conclusion to a successful seminar program. Click here for photos from this…

TIP 2021 Seminars

Next year’s program covers a variety of topics including renewable energy, urban studies, democracy, cancer biology and African music. To learn more about TIP’s spring 2021 seminars click here: https://theteachersinstitute.org/apply-to-tip/current-seminars/ 2020 seminar leaders are (top left to lower right): Professor Jorge Santiago-Aviles, Professor Sandra Ryeom, Professor Rickie Sanders, Professor Carol Muller, Professor Karen Detlefsen. To learn how you can participate next year click here: https://theteachersinstitute.org/apply-to-tip/application/

TIP 2020 Spring Celebration

This year TIP’s spring celebration will be virtual! A fellow from each seminar will present a summary of what was learned and discuss the curriculum units created. This years seminars were: Evolutionary Biology led by Dustin Brisson New Approaches to the History of Slavery: The View from the Penn and Slavery Project led by Kathleen Brown A Visual Approach to Learning Math led by Robert Ghrist Cinema and Civil Rights led by Karen Redrobe The…

Seminar Leaders Ramsey and Troutt-Powell Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

TIP seminar leaders Guthrie Ramsey and Eve M. Troutt-Powell are two of four Penn faculty being recognized for their world-class leadership and expertise. They have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences which honored 276 leaders from different disciplines and professions in 2020. Ramsey is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Music in the School of Arts & Sciences. A musicologist, pianist, and composer, he is a widely…

2020 National Fellows Selected

TIP Fellows Alex de Arana, Cristobal Carambo, Rachel Odoroff, and Lisa Yau have been chosen to participate in national seminars hosted by the Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools. The summer intensive program provides public school teachers deeper knowledge of the subjects they teach and an opportunity to learn from internationally renowned faculty members and colleagues around the nation. Alex de Arana will attend Politics and Public Policy in the United States…

Tip seminar leader kathleen brown featured in Penn today

TIP seminar leader Professor Kathleen Brown spoke with Penn Today about the history of black voting rights, quandary of black voters today, and the women’s suffrage movement. Click here to read more: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/african-americans-have-been-blocked-voting-black-vote-not-block Kathleen is currently teaching a TIP seminar entitled New Approaches to the History of Slavery: The View from the Penn and Slavery Project in which she and 11 Fellows are developing new strategies for learning about the history of slavery in the…

TIP Seminars will be led remotely due to coronavirus outbreak

TIP seminars will resume remotely on Monday, March 23rd to prevent the spread of COVID-19. We thank TIP’s 2020 Fellows and seminar leaders for adjusting and doing their best to safeguard public health during this difficult time.

TIP 2020 Seminars Begin

This week TIP Fellows began attending their weekly seminars! This year’s program covers a variety of topics including cinema, mathematics, science fiction, Philadelphia’s history, biology, and the Penn & Slavery project. To learn more about TIP’s current seminars click here: https://theteachersinstitute.org/apply-to-tip/current-seminars/ 2020 seminar leaders are (top left to lower right): Professor Robert Ghrist, Professor Ebony Elizatbeth Thomas, Professor Howard Spodek, Professor Dustin Brisson, Professor Karen Redrobe, and Professor Kathleen Brown To learn how you can…

National Teacher of the Year Award Winner Speaks at Yale National Initiative

Rodney Robinson, a three-time fellow at the Yale National Initiative (YNI) Summer Intensive program, was named Teacher of the Year by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). He addressed Yale’s Annual Conference on Saturday, October 26th, where Teachers Institute fellows from around the country had gathered to celebrate the completion of their unit-writing process. He explained the challenges of his former role teaching in a juvenile detention facility in Richmond, Virginia, and described…

TIP Fellows Present their Units at Annual Educator Convening

TIP fellows contributed enthusiastically to the Celebration of Writing and Literacy (CoWL) on Saturday, October 12, 2019, an annual convening that brought teachers and scholars from around the region. It was the third year TIP will partnered with the Philadelphia Writing Project on this event, in which teachers share self-authored curricula and research. Presentation sessions by TIP fellows showcased materials from 2019 seminars in Philadelphia and at Yale, and included “Intercultural Storytelling,” “Lead and Health,”…

Freda/Frankie Anderson wins 2019 Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching

TIP Teacher Freda/Frankie Anderson, won the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching this summer. Anderson teaches a community activism class to high school sophomores and juniors at the U School. “She comes up with ideas for her class by researching topics she is passionate about, borrowing some from Date, the previous teacher, and receiving input from other people. This includes not only her students, but also organizations such as Youth United for Change and Teaching Tolerance, more…

TIP Teacher Lisa Yau Publishes book of poems on depression, features work of 5th grade students

Kirkbride Elementary teacher and TIP Teacher Representative Lisa Yau created a book of her 5th graders’ poems entitled Demystifying Depression: 29 Voices to Normalize Crazy Goodness. The book stemmed from a project in which Yau’s students researched depression, then wrote and made art on the subject. Yau’s work in the 2019 TIP seminar “Modern & Contemporary U.S. Poetry” taught by Professor Al Filreis, inspired her to use poetry to teach about this important and difficult…

TIP Fellows Present at Penn Ethnography Forum

TIP Fellows Amanda Schear and Charlie McGeehan participated in The University of Pennsylvania’s 40th Ethnography in Education Research Forum, February 22 – 23, 2019 at the Graduate School of Education. This year’s theme, “The Future of Ethnography and Education: Methodologies, Equity, and Ethics” covered a wide range of topics in educational research, both local and international. The conference featured a full day of presentations and workshops led by educational practitioners. Amanda Schear led a session entitled: “When…

Professor Karen Detlefsen featured in Penn Today

Professor Karen Detlefsen, TIP seminar leader and advisory council member, was recently recognized in Penn Today for teaching Philosophy to 5th grade students at the Comegys Benjamin School, a Pre K – 7 school in southwest Philadelphia. She developed students’ critical thinking skills by ‘helping them understand that some questions are hard to fully understand and encouraging them to change their minds when faced with reasons to do so’. This is Detlefsen’s fourth time teaching…

Educators Gather for Celebration of Writing and Literacy

This year’s Celebration of Writing and Literacy was a smashing success! Sponsored by the Philadelphia Writing Project, Teachers Institute of Philadelphia (TIP), Mighty Writers, and Penn Graduate School of Education, the Celebration featured educators from around Philadelphia presenting ideas on teacher research and knowledge. Throughout the day, teachers learned from peers and university scholars about new approaches to classroom learning, both content and pedagogy. To kick off the conference, Matt Kay, Science Leadership Academy Teacher presented…

James Forman Jr. Keynote at TIP-PhilWP Conference

TIP welcomed Yale Law professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Forman, Jr. to the Penn campus on Saturday, October 6 to lead a keynote session as part of the TIP-Philadelphia Writing Project annual Celebration of Writing and Literacy (CoWL). The keynote addressed a seminar Forman led for teachers attending the Yale National Initiative’s summer intensive program this past July. Forman based his summer seminar on his book Locking up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in…

TIP Fellows Learn With Peers from Around the Nation at the Yale Summer Intensive Session

This summer from July 9th to 20th, TIP’s National Fellows gathered in New Haven for the Yale Summer Intensive Session. The four fellows that participated in the session–Cristobal Carambo, Bridget Mason, Matthew Menschner, and Eual Philips–spent two weeks at Yale attending special seminars and writing curriculum units. This year’s National Seminars covered topics including “Race, Class, and Punishment,” “Manipulating Biology: Costs, Benefits, and Controversies,” and “Poems about Works of Art, Featuring Women and Other Marginalized…

TIP Fellow Terry Anne Wildman Teaches Origami in Class

Terry Anne Wildman describes how she’s using what she learned in the TIP seminar “Origami Engineering” to teach the students in her class at Alexander McClure Elementary School qualities like perseverance and patience through origami. The following are excerpts from Ms. Wildman’s description of her experience teaching her origami curriculum. When teaching something to students that has many steps, you need to use different strategies to reach all students. I knew teaching origami shapes and…

TIP Fellows Gather to Celebrate a Successful Seminar Session!

On May 22 at 4:30 pm, the 2018 TIP fellows gathered with leaders and friends of the program to celebrate their accomplishments this past semester. At weekly seminar meetings from January through April of this year, the fellows acquired cutting-edge knowledge from Penn and Temple professors about topics in science, math, social science, humanities and the arts. Fellows representing each seminar gave a summary of what they had studied. The representatives were: Keeler Park from…