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Hemispheres · New Haven

Free classroom sessions, every Friday afternoon.

Hemispheres is a free program in which Yale undergraduates teach weekly lessons on international relations to high-school students. The aim is to open up a range of global issues that the high-school curriculum traditionally leaves out.

Hemispheres shall serve as a free-of-cost program for students attending public secondary schools in the greater New Haven area that shall include programming related to international relations and similar fields.

YIRA Constitution, Article II, Section Six

The class

  • A group of high-school students wearing visitor badges standing in the plaza at United Nations Headquarters in New York, with the flags of the member states and the Sphere Within Sphere sculpture behind them.
    New Haven High Schoolers at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.
  • Students and their Yale teachers standing along the front of a wood-panelled Yale lecture hall, in costume, in front of a blackboard.
    A Friday session near Halloween in one of Yale's lecture halls.

The Details

When and where
Classes run at Yale every Friday from 3 to 5pm.
Cost
Nothing. Food catered from local businesses is provided during lessons, and students may request free bus passes to get to and from Friday classes, with priority to schools inside New Haven city limits.
Who can attend
Students in grades 9 through 12 at public high schools and K-12 institutions in New Haven and bordering towns. Students at private high schools are not eligible.

An average Friday

  1. 3:00 to 3:20

    News update

    Students are brought up to date on the week's news. Yale and New Haven students both present.

  2. 3:30 to 4:15

    Lesson

    Yale students teach a lesson, mostly on international relations but sometimes reaching into history, comparative politics, and the natural sciences.

  3. 4:15 to 5:00

    Mentorship

    College applications, resumes, and guest speakers.

What the program is for

  • To broaden the academic horizons of New Haven public high-school students in international relations and related fields.
  • To support New Haven public high-school students in their budding academic and professional lives.
  • To help ease the cultural, social, and political tension between the New Haven and Yale communities.

Teach, or help run it

Teaching a term of Hemispheres makes you a member of YIRA. Applications for teachers and for the board of directors open each fall: write to the program for the current form.

Email Hemispheres@yale.hemi on Instagram

Opens an email to hemispheres@yira.org.

Contact