Charlotte Teachers Institute

CMS Teachers to Discuss New Civil Rights Curriculum

CHARLOTTE – Feb. 5, 2013 – Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teachers will share new curriculum they created about African American literature relating to civil rights, from 5:30 to 8 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 7, at the Gantt Center for African American Art + Culture in uptown Charlotte.

Sponsored by Charlotte Teachers Institute, the Gantt Center and PNC Bank, this “Teachers as Scholars” event will feature CMS teachers who collaborated in an intensive, semester-long CTI seminar, “African American Literature of the Civil Rights Movement.” Brenda Flanagan, the Edward Armfield Professor of English at Davidson College, led the seminar.

Flanagan’s seminar explored the Black Arts Movement and poetry and drama that reflected and paralleled the modern civil rights movement from 1955 to 2000. The CMS teacher fellows produced 13 extensive and student-centered curriculum units for teachers in kindergarten through high school classrooms. Three of these teachers, from elementary, middle and high school levels, will present their work during the Feb. 7 program.

“One of CTI’s strategic goals is to provide opportunities to showcase CMS teachers’ innovative scholarship created in CTI seminars to a wider community audience,” said Scott Gartlan, CTI executive director. “This partnership with the Gantt Center will serve as an important step in fulfilling this goal.”

Free and open to the public, the event will begin with a reception and viewing of the Gantt exhibition America I AM: The African American Imprint. Presentations and a panel discussion with Flanagan and the three fellows will follow at 6:30 p.m. Featured topics and teachers will include:
• “African American Literature of the Civil Rights Movement” – Flanagan, Davidson College.
• “Using Poetry to Teach Children about the Civil Rights Movement” – Elouise Payton, kindergarten-third-grade teacher, Barringer Academic Center.
• “The Power Perspective: Reading the Literature of the Civil Rights Movement through a Socio-Historical Lens” – Stefanie Carter-Dodson, eighth-grade language arts teacher, Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School.
• “Art and Black Identity in the Civil Rights Movement” – Larry Bosc, social studies teacher, East Mecklenburg High School.

Each of the 13 teachers in the seminar produced a unique set of curriculum units related to African American literature of the civil rights movement and designed specifically for their own students.
“We hope that these units inspire other teachers to share their creativity with colleagues in an effort to benefit more students in more classrooms across the district,” Gartlan said. Flanagan’s seminar was one of eight CTI conducted on a wide range of topics for a total of 94 CMS teachers from all grade levels and subject areas, led by Davidson College and UNC Charlotte faculty. The units developed in all eight seminars will be posted soon on the CTI and Yale National Initiative websites for use by teachers around the world. CTI recently announced a new set of eight seminars for CMS teachers to begin in April.

Information is available at www.charlotteteachers.org.

About Charlotte Teachers Institute
The Charlotte Teachers Institute (CTI) is an initiative designed to strengthen teaching in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) by cultivating content-knowledge, creativity, leadership skills and collaboration within and among Charlotte’s public school teachers. An affiliate of the Yale National Initiative at Yale University, CTI exists as a partnership among CMS, Davidson College, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte), and is made possible by a joint commitment of resources from all three Institute partners and through the generosity of private funders and community partners. Through intensive, semester-long seminars, led by faculty from UNC Charlotte and Davidson College, CMS teachers learn new content, work collaboratively with other district teachers, and develop curriculum units for their own classrooms. Participating teachers receive continuing education credits and a stipend. For more information, please visit charlotteteachers.org.

About the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art+Culture
The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture presents, preserves and celebrates excellence in the art, history and culture of African-Americans and those of African descent. The Gantt Center presents the renowned touring exhibition America I AM: The African American Imprint – celebrating nearly 500 years of African American contributions to the United States – through March 3. The Gantt Center is the only African-American cultural institution to host this exhibition and serves as the last venue to house it in the Southeast as the exhibit makes its final tour. Covering more than 10,000 square feet, the exhibition presents a historical continuum of pivotal moments in courage, conviction and creativity that helps to solidify the undeniable imprint of African Americans across the nation and around the world. The more than 200 artifacts and information within the exhibit provide context to how African Americans have contributed to and shaped American culture across four core areas – economic, socio-political, cultural and spiritual – throughout the country’s history, including the
inauguration of the first African-American president. The exhibit fills the Gantt Center galleries with objects as diverse as the typewriter Alex Haley used for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Roots to Prince’s guitar. Developed in partnership with Tavis Smiley, America I AM: The African American Imprint was organized by Cincinnati Museum Center and Arts and Exhibitions International (AEI), and is made possible by Wal-Mart.

Faculty and Artists Explore Time through Art and Science

CHARLOTTE — January 13, 2012 — Exploring and expressing the concept of time intrigues artists and scientists alike, and “Exploding Canons: All the Time in the World” will continue the exploration on Friday, Jan. 25, in an event presented by the Charlotte Teachers Institute (CTI) and the McColl Center for Visual Art.

The evening at the McColl Center begins with a 5:30 p.m. reception, followed by a discussion at 6:30 p.m. when national and local academic experts including the McColl’s visiting artists, will consider time through art, physics, biology, environmental science and personal experiences. Following the panel, the art exhibition “All the Time in the World” will remain open until 9 p.m. CTI designed the event in conjunction with the exhibition, which opens that evening.

“The McColl Center has been a leader in arts integration in the Charlotte community for many years,” said CTI Director Scott Gartlan. “This natural collaboration expands our signature approach to interdisciplinary study by showcasing six scholars from four states in six different educational institutions from Stanford University to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. This will be an unprecedented cultural and scientific event.”

The exhibition features video, installation and mixed media work by Gail Wight, associate professor of art practice at Stanford University, and Mary Tsiongas, associate professor of art and art history at the University of New Mexico. Exhibition curator Arif Khan, curator of art at the Clay Center for Arts & Sciences, said the exhibition “explores creative ways of expressing or marking time and shows how an understanding of science can influence the practice of contemporary art.”

Topics and presenters in the panel discussion are:

• “Visualizing the Invisible Universe: From the Very Large to the Very Small” – Mario Belloni, professor of physics, Davidson College.
• “Images of Time: Photography and Film in Contemporary Art” – Jae Emerling, professor of art and art history, UNC Charlotte.
• “Reflecting Sustainability Through Art: Production, Consumption and Waste in the Modern World” – Beth Lasure, art teacher, Mallard Creek High School.

Lasure, a founding teacher leader in CTI, was recently named a McColl Center Artist-in-Residence. Her remarks will focus on curriculum ideas related to art and science she developed in a recent CTI seminar. Khan will moderate the panel. Wight and Tsiongas will join the local academics in the discussion, which includes a question and answer period.

The Exploding Canons program and the McColl Center exhibition are free and open to the public. CMS educators from all grades and subject areas are especially encouraged to attend. Seating for the Exploding Canons program is limited, so registration at the CTI website (www.charlotteteachers.org) is recommended.

The McColl Center is located at 721 N. Tryon St. in uptown Charlotte. Free parking is available in the McColl Center lot at the corner of 10th and Church streets. Metered parking is also available on 10th, Church and Tryon streets (free after 6 p.m.). Handicapped-accessible parking is located in the small lot directly behind the McColl Center on Church Street.

The “Exploding Canons” speakers series optimizes the partnerships among CTI to offer educators and the public collaborative educational opportunities that highlight university and college faculty, explore diverse topics in an interdisciplinary manner, and encourage community conversation.  This marks the eighth event in the “Exploding Canons” series, which has served more than 1,500 people, half of whom were CMS teachers.

Charlotte Teachers Institute (CTI) Honors 94 Teachers for Seminar Achievements

CHARLOTTE – Dec. 19, 2012 – Charlotte Teachers Institute recently honored 94 teachers in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools for accomplishments that include the writing of 1,900 pages of new curriculum accessible by teachers worldwide.

The teachers, called CTI Fellows, completed CTI seminars led by Davidson College and UNC Charlotte professors. They expanded the impact of what they were learning by developing the new curriculum units for their own students, and for other teachers via the CTI and Yale National Initiative (YNI) websites. CTI recognized Fellows’ work at its 2012 Fellows’ Finale Celebration at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art.

The educators represent every grade level, with 29 elementary, 25 middle, and 40 high school teachers. They teach subjects ranging from art to biology, world history to foreign languages and ESL, language arts and costume design to physics, and math to technology.

“Together, these teachers spent nearly 3,000 hours attending CTI seminars at Davidson College and UNC Charlotte,” said CTI Executive Director Scott Gartlan. “In addition, they spent time reading and researching, and writing the original curriculum units. They plan to share their curriculum units with nearly 500 other CMS teachers and 7,425 CMS students will learn from the units the teachers created this year.”

“CTI provides teachers and higher education faculty with a transformative experience that changes their teaching forever,” Gartlan added. “This year’s Fellows have collectively taught for over 1,080 years, or 11.6 years per teacher. Of those combined years, they have taught 807 in CMS.  They plan to teach a combined 1,177 additional years.”

In a recent CTI/Yale National Initiative survey, a CTI Fellow spoke of the initiative’s impact. “CTI has helped me grow into a better teacher by reminding me that I must constantly evaluate my effectiveness and look for opportunities to improve, even in the smallest of ways,” the teacher said.

Each year, CTI teacher leaders request and select seminars designed in conjunction with UNC Charlotte and Davidson College faculty. A CMS teacher coordinates each seminar, in partnership with the higher education faculty member. This year, seminars and seminar leaders included:

• The Science of NASCAR – Peter Tkacik, mechanical engineering, UNC Charlotte
• Reading African American Lives – Jeffrey Leak, English, UNC Charlotte
• Entertaining with Math – Tim Chartier, mathematics, Davidson College
• American Political Parties: Their Failures and Their Futures – Susan Roberts, political science, Davidson College
• Reading Media Imagery: Critical Thinking and Literacy, led by Dan Grano, communication studies, UNC Charlotte
• ‘All Immigration is Local’: Exploring the New Geography of Immigration – Heather Smith, geography and earth sciences, UNC Charlotte
• African American Literature of the Civil Rights Movement – Brenda Flanagan, English, Davidson College
• Environmental Science and Climate Change – Cindy Hauser, chemistry, Davidson College

Each CTI Fellow received three continuing education units and a stipend for seminar completion. Additionally, each Fellow is now eligible to apply to attend the YNI Summer Intensive Seminars at Yale University in July 2013.  CTI is one of five Institutes nationwide affiliated with the Yale program, including others in New Haven, CT; Pittsburgh, PA; Philadelphia, PA; and New Castle, DE.  Richmond, VA will be the site of a new Teachers Institute.

The Charlotte Teachers Institute is an educational partnership among Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Davidson College and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, working to improve teaching in Charlotte-Mecklenburg public schools. CTI cultivates content-knowledge, creativity, leadership skills and collaboration within and among Charlotte’s public school teachers. Programs include long-term seminars and special events for teachers, as well as community presentations such as its “Exploding Canons” interdisciplinary discussion series. Resources come from the three Institute partners and private funding institutions, such as the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Belk Foundation, the Piedmont Natural Gas Foundation and the Wells Fargo Foundation. The Institute is housed at UNC Charlotte within the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

For more information, contact CTI Executive Director Scott Gartlan, 704-687-2026, info@charlotteteachers.org.