Nine years ago, Henry Bolter, a long-time school teacher from Brookline, Massachusetts, grew frustrated with the professional development workshops his district mandated.  His dissatisfaction mirrored that of many teachers who associated vocational growth with awakening the life of the mind rather than the latest techniques of classroom management or test preparation strategies. 

Bolter’s response focused on teaching and learning, but by engaging faculty from nearby Harvard University, he created a new model for professional development, called Teachers as Scholars. The program recognizes and cultivates schoolteachers’ social role as leaders and thinkers by renewing their connections to serious intellectual inquiry.  The Teachers as Scholars model offers K-12 teachers small, content-rich seminars led by university professors known for both their scholarship and their teaching.

Teachers responded to the program with enthusiasm. Bolter’s peers craved the intellectual stimulation provided by the seminars and looked forward to discussing topics like Steinbeck’s America, the Courts of Europe, or Art and Religion on the Silk Road. Program participants returned to their classrooms reinvigorated in their love of learning and ready to incorporate their new knowledge into their teaching.

Today, over 20 Teachers as Scholars programs operate around the country including one here in Seattle. The Puget Sound Teachers as Scholars program is jointly sponsored by the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington and Seattle Arts & Lectures.

In alliance to the national model, the local Teachers as Scholars program offers primary and secondary schoolteachers scholarship-based seminars led by university faculty. In addition, the Seattle-based program links seminars with local cultural events and exhibitions. This collaboration adds an additional, experiential dimension that links K-12 teachers not only to university resources, but to those of regional arts and humanities non-profits. Thus school teachers attending a seminar on Shakespeare’s plays can compare their seminar’s interpretations to those manifested in a particular local production. Teachers participating in a seminar on Native American Powwow have an opportunity to witness contemporary enactments of these rites. The associated events enrich the seminar curriculum and suggest ways teachers might connect the subjects they study, the subjects they teach, and the particular historical, cultural place in which they live.

The Teachers as Scholars professional development program functions on the principle that schools need to be, first and foremost, sites for intellectual development. At a time when many of our young people lack basic literacy skills, professional development that focuses on history or art might be considered a luxury. And yet, teachers with struggling students require the greatest commitment to intellectual inquiry. Moreover, teachers need substantive opportunities to reengage intellectually to model such development for students.

For more information about the Teachers as Scholars seminars or to register for an upcoming seminar, please visit www.lectures.org/tas.html. To find out if your school is a Teachers as Scholars member school call 206-621-2230 ext. 16 or email  tas@lectures.org.