Meeting Teacher Needs
Leadership
Delaware Teachers Institute is a collaborative partnership between five New Castle County School Districts and the University of Delaware. Our leadership explicitly reflects that partnership. This initiative is co-led by a teacher leadership team, the DTI Steering Committee, representing all five partner districts and the DTI Director, a University employee. The Director and Steering Committee are also supported by a university advisory committee comprised of University of Delaware faculty members.
The leadership recognized the challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemic:
- In-person, on campus seminars were a key feature of our program
- Seminar leaders (UD Faculty members) and Fellows (K-12 teachers) had varying degrees of comfort using a fully remote model
- Fellows were navigating a novel and challenging shift in their districts, from in-person to remote to hybrid instructional models, that changed rapidly and often
- Accepted teachers had agreed to a Fellowship before the pandemic brought so many unforseen personal and professional challenges
- Many Fellows were juggling family responsibilities, illnesses and remote instruction for their own children in addition to their professional responsibilities
The leadership team responded to these challenges with a commitment to providing the same, high quality DTI experience while also embracing technology and its potential. After three cycles of fully virtual seminars, 2023 brings the opportunity to move into a mixed delivery approach. Two seminars will remain largely virtual while the third returns to in-person instruction. DTI leadership made this decision after consultation with previous participants and potential applicants in our partner districts. We remain committed to meeting the needs of DTI Fellows and are excited to support teachers as they develop new skills and new understandings about both content standards and the many ways they can meet them.
DTI has always prioritized the voice of our Fellows. We know that teachers are still navigating a challenging time in education. As we work together to overcome these challenges and maximize our opportunities, we welcome your feedback. Please contact your district representative on our Steering Committee or the Director at any time.
Tools
Accessing Virtual Resources
- Zoom – As needed, seminar leaders will provide links to virtual sessions on zoom
- Poll Everywhere: The University has recently licensed Poll Everywhere for use by all faculty and staff. Your “affiliated professionals” status should allow you access to this resource as well. Using this in seminar will give you valuable experience as you use these polls in your own classroom.
Library Access
DTI Fellows, while researching and writing about thier unit topic, gain access to the full slate of resources available at the Morris Library at UD. Those resources are also now available online! With your UD email and password (obtained once you onboard as a DTI Fellow), you are able to access research articles, books, multimedia, support from research librarians and more. Visit the library’s page and search for your topic of choice.
Reference Tools
DTI Fellows write a curriculum unit as their culminating project. This resource is designed to be used by you in your classroom and published by DTI for other teachers to access. In order to give proper credit to the sources you use for your unit you will need to provide citations. The University of Delaware library provides some excellent citation management tools (for free!) to help. Check out this research guide for a comparison of these tools and choose the one that works best for you.
Learn from other Fellows
Many teachers choose to participate in DTI year after year. These veteran Fellows embrace the opportunities for collaboration and leadership. Check out these screencasts of Fellows sharing tips on the unit writing process.
Writing with endnotes – Lynn Gallo, Colonial School District
Creating an LFS Map – Barbara Prillaman, Red Clay School District
Resources
Accessibility
DTI Fellowship applications are open to any full time teacher in grades K-12 working in one of our partner districts. (RCCSD, Colonial, NCCVT, Christina or Appo) If you require accomodations to participate in Seminar please reach out to the Director to make arrangements.
Website accessibility is important to DTI. We strive to meet or exceed the Website Accessibility Guidelines set forth by the American Disabilities Act. Our curriculum database was recently updated moving the curriculum documents into html format. This increases their accessibility. If you have any problem using our site, please contact the Director and provide the URL (web address) in question, information about the problem you experienced and your contact information. We will work to provide the information you need and to remedy the access issue.
Learn more about Delaware Teachers Institute!