Jessica Brantley, Professor of English, and Kim Shirkhani, Senior Lecturer in English, co-led a national seminar for the 2025 program of the Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools. Established in 2005 by the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, the Initiative offers seminars led by Yale faculty for K-12 teachers from participating school districts across the country.
Brantley and Shirkhani’s national seminar, “The Art of Writing and Revision,” explored the craft of writing through a workshop model. They read nonfiction essays in a range of styles from personal narrative to cultural criticism and paid attention to the details that make a writer’s voice vivid and compelling on the page. The seminar ran from May to August, including a two-week Intensive Session in July when the seminar met daily. Each Fellow completed the seminar by creating a curriculum unit to teach in their classroom.
Brantley, a four-time national seminar leader, described how she benefits from the experience: “I love to talk teaching with other teachers, so learning from the Fellows about their pedagogy is very rewarding for me. My participation in the seminar forces me to think deeply and fundamentally about teaching about reading, and about why I value both.”
This press release was prepared by the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute for open distribution.