The Delaware Teachers Institute in New Castle County (DTI) is an educational partnership between the University of Delaware and six New Castle County school districts: Appoquinimink, Brandywine, Christina, Colonial, New Castle County Vocational-Technical and Red Clay Consolidated. The Institute is designed to strengthen teaching and learning in the community’s public schools. DTI is situated in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Delaware, and is led by a University faculty group and a committee of teacher leaders. The Institute is coordinated and administered by a director.
DTI offers seminars on subjects that school teachers request in the humanities and sciences, and which best fit contemporary needs among the student population.
Following a rigorous application process, K-12 teachers are admitted into small seminar groups organized around the content topics. In seminars, university faculty members contribute their knowledge of and expertise in a subject, while teachers apply their knowledge of elementary and secondary pedagogy, their understanding of the students they teach, and their grasp of what really works in the classroom.
Successful completion of a seminar requires that teachers, under the personal guidance of university faculty leaders, each write a curriculum unit to be used in their own classrooms and to be shared with other teachers in both their home schools and across the country through both print and electronic publication.
By developing teacher leaders in individual schools serving high-need student populations, DTI strengthens the schools’ learning environments. DTI is also part of a national network of local teacher institutes from New Haven, Connecticut; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Richmond, Virginia; Chicago, Illinois; the Dine Nation of Arizona and New Mexico; and several locations in the San Jose, California area are working to establish local institutes.