About Us:

Amity TeenTeachers

Amity Teen Teaching was a group formed in the late 1990's in conjunction with a state grant for University of New Haven . Since that time our group has undergone a complete transformation to where we are today. Initially the small handful of kids took summer classes at UNH and then were placed a few times a year in a local elementary school for mentoring. As the years went by the grants evaporated and we became autonomous. We went through a dramatic growth spurt in the early 2000's where each year the students went on 2 trips to different types of elementary schools. One trip was urban and one was suburban. We went to schools such as Edgewood in New Haven , Bethany Community School , and Peck Place before realizing that once a year visit wasn't enough to really learn what it was like to be in a classroom. We searched for a partner school who would allow us more frequent visits and were fortunate to find the John S. Martinez School in New Haven , CT. Our group in 2005 had 12 members committed to attending monthly mentoring at JSM. 2005-6 was such a huge success, we were invited to return even though our membership grew nearly 60% to 21 committed students who write in their Journals, attend monthly meetings to discuss their experiences and write lesson plans for usage in their assigned classrooms. Currently we have 24 committed members who attend monthly trips and meetings. We began a new and gently used book drive in 2007 and just completed our second book drive. We are proud to announce that we collected 900+ books and donated them on December 18th to the children of John S. Martinez School in New Haven. Every child was able to take a book home they could call their own.