Application Process and Seminars

I’ve finally arrived at the much anticipated Yale University in New Haven, CT!  My journey began about three months ago, after being accepted into the Yale National Initiative (YNI) program.  We, my fellow attendees and I, began with several preliminary meetings that oriented us to the YNI.  After applying and being accepted on a regional and then national level, we were assigned a specific Seminar topic to focus a unit of instruction on and got started with our homework.

There were many Seminar topics to choose from.  Several of the topics were “Psychological Determinants of Global Health” with Mark Saltzman (Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering), “Problem Solving and the Common Core” with Roger Howe (Professor of Mathematics), “Explaining Character in Shakespeare” with Paul Fry (Professor of English), “History in our Everyday Lives: Collective Memory, Historical Writing, and Public History” with Mary Lui (Professor of History and of American Studies).  As a middle school English teacher, two topics that I applied for were “Literature and Information” with Jessica Brantley (Associate Professor of English) and “Reading Literature through Film” with Brigitte Peucker (Professor of Film Studies and German).  

Even though the application was a bit time consuming, it was rewarding and completely worth the effort.  It required us to propose a teachable unit that fell under one of the Seminar topics.  Each applicant proposed a unit for two different topics, their first and second choices if they were accepted, and had to incorporate the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into their proposal.  The application process was exciting and finally being accepted into the program made the hard work and effort worth the time.  

Once we were accepted, our Seminar leader contacted us and assigned us homework to complete before the first meeting in May.  I received my first choice, which was “Literature and Information”, a seminar focused on teaching non-fiction literature in the classroom.  By the time I received my work, I had about a month and half to complete two major readings.  The amount and type of work varied for each Seminar topic. 

My homework was to read a non-fiction novel about the Hmong culture entitled The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman.  It discussed ethnocentrism and the progress of acculturation in the refugee Hmong culture the United States.  Interwoven throughout the novel was also a story about a Hmong family’s struggle to save their child from severe bouts of epileptic seizures by means of using Shamanism and a reluctant reliance on Western medicine.  I was also assigned a short essay by Hayden White that discussed the bias and challenge of writing and expressing historical literature.  The amount of reading was a lot, but it was interesting and, like I said, not every Seminar group had such extensive amounts to complete by May.