Urban Teacher Preparation

Imagine a proven method for selecting highly effective school leaders. Martin Haberman did, and then he brought his vision to life. Haberman believed that hiring the best teachers and administrators for students in poverty must be America’s highest priority. We (1) highlight the academic challenges for urban learners in poverty who are placed at-risk, (2) discuss Ruby Payne’s (2013) and Martin Haberman’s (1999, 2010) competing frameworks for understanding poverty in educational settings, (3) outline Haberman’s two-step protocols for identifying and selecting ‘star’ school leaders, and (4) salute Haberman’s outreach legacy of sharing proven selection practices with school districts across America.

Publisher/Distributor:
University of California Press in association with the Center for Learning Through the Arts and Technology at University of California, Irvine

Publication Date:
12-01-2010

Series:
Learning in the Arts and Sciences

Permalink:
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5zp4c70w

Not One, But Many: A CRT Research Team Approach to Investigate Student Experiences in Racially Diverse Settings in "Understanding Critical Race Research Methods and Methodologies : Lessons from the Field," edited by Jessica T. DeCuir-Gunby, et al., Routledge, 2018.

With concern to critical pedagogy, the concept of love is fairly frequently (ab)used, yet under-theorized. In this exploratory study, I ask: How does a critical pedagogy of love-or critical pedagogical love-look, sound, and feel? Regarding feeling, how does a critical pedagogue engage the sensations of pleasure attendant to love? Lastly, how does the pedagogue invite love and pleasure into the pain-filled field of urban teacher education? Using Black feminist theorizing of love as an analytic filter , I investigate a university-based urban teacher educator's navigation of the nexus of love, pleasure, and critical (specifically, antiracist) pedagogy. Extrapolating from the resultant narrative portrait, I consider the affordances of a critical pedagogy of love that accesses embodied pleasure, emphasizing how such a pedagogy might present racially marginalized persons-particularly urban teacher educators of Color-with opportunities for reprieve from the suffering that characterizes many of our experiences with/in teacher education.

Although the ubiquitous nature of whiteness has been scrutinized in research on teacher preparation in the United States, scholarship on how this concept impinges upon the field’s overall culture, as well as on pedagogy, is scarce. Thus, I perform a critical autoethnographic study on the relationships among whiteness, pedagogy, and urban teacher education. The inquiry threads Critical Race Theory and feminist theorizing on (Black) bodies, affects, and assemblages, and extends from extant literature illustrating that the dichotomous thinking characteristic of whiteness undergirds the disembodied approaches to teaching and learning prevalent in teacher education programs. This, I discover, leaves one White pre-service teacher ill-equipped to discern and disrupt the materialization of whiteness in an (inter)corporeal encounter with a Black youth in an urban classroom. Additionally, a pedagogy of disembodiment hinders this pre-service teacher from developing robust understandings of how latent within his lived-in, socio-historically situated White body is the potent potential to exacerbate the psychic pain that racism inflicts upon the racially othered children and youth who navigate urban classrooms under the scorching glare of whiteness. These findings underpin my call for urban teacher educators to embrace a pedagogy of embodiment in order to build pre-service teachers’ capacities to teach racially marginalized children and youth in ways that broaden the boundaries of the human beyond the scope of whiteness.

This conceptual article explores literature about and concrete examples of teacher education programs that support the increased achievement of African American and urban students. Drawing from the extant literature as well as their own relevant experiences, the authors highlight studies of effective approaches at both the program and course level that teacher educators can use to support urban pre-service teachers in bringing the best of themselves to African American and urban students.

In the last twenty years, debates in the field of teacher preparation have increasingly become paralyzing and divisive as rhetoric around the failure of university teacher preparation intensifies. Toward a Framework of Resources for Learning to Teach addresses the historical and practical factors that animate these debates, arguing that novice teachers and teacher educators must understand the central conflicts in the field; however, the book also advances a way of approaching learning to teach that accounts for but does not get stuck at the level of programmatic designation. Using lively, in-depth case studies, the author shows how novice urban English teachers from two different teacher preparation pathways—a university-based program and an urban teacher residency—learn to teach within a policy context of high-stakes testing and “college readiness.” The author illustrates how learning to teach might best be understood as a recursive and dynamic process, wherein novice teachers differentially access programmatic, relational, experiential, disciplinary, and dispositional resources.

This grounded theory study explores transracially adopted Asian/American college students’ experiences in higher education and how student affairs professionals can serve this underserved population. Participants included 33 current college students from across the United States. A theoretical model surfaced that demonstrates the complex needs adopted college students are faced with. We provide practical suggestions that student affairs professionals can use to create integrative environments and policies that can better serve this minoritized population.

This article outlines how Loyola University Chicago’s School of Education has re-conceptualized the preparation of teachers to meet the sophisticated and changing needs and realities of urban schools and communities by focusing on student achievement. In contrast to often criticized university-based models of teacher preparation, the Teaching, Learning, and Leading with Schools and Communities program represents a shared responsibility between university, school, and community partners to impact and support student learning, achievement, and success. The four tenets around which this comprehensive teacher education program is organized are described: (a) partnerships with schools and communities, (b) teacher preparation for diverse classrooms, (c) a developmental trajectory of field-based experiences, and (d) stakeholders engaged in communities of practice.

After barely surviving one of the most racist and degrading graduate programs in Minnesota, this reflection-paper will deconstruct my area of focus to show the awareness of intersectionality between graduate students in teacher training programs and the organizational design of classes predetermined by administrators that lack racial-competency by not facilitating the training of new teacher with the experience of the black-male body.  In the article “Back to School or back to hell? Why America's education system continues failing Black students,” the author, Starla Muhammad (2012) explains that structural racism is a major contributing factor to why the public education system is failing Black children. The fact that there are not enough Black male teachers is a huge problem (K-12 and college) and the number one institutional issue that is breeding the crime, dropout, suspensions and enormous referral rates to special education (Muhammad, 2012).

This is my dissertation, which was revised and published as "Preparing teachers for urban schools. Lessons from thirty years of school reform," Teachers College Press.
"Perspectives on preparing teachers o f at-risk students in urban
schools, 1960-1990."
Harvard University, 1991

In this article, I employ sociocultural theory to analyze the learning to teach process of two novice teachers enrolled in one Urban Teacher Residency (UTR). Findings show that Sam and Jackie were differentially drawing on programmatic, disciplinary, relational, experiential, and dispositional resources as they learned to teach in an urban context. I show that programmatic resources of supervision and classroom management requirements (i.e.,
Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion) not only differentially influenced teachers’ learning and development but also differentially impacted the development of trust with students.

This qualitative study explored 8 urban mentor teachers’ experi- ences and perceptions of mentoring in a yearlong field placement in an Urban Teacher Residency program. Results indicate mentors’ and preservice teachers’ joint work provided a context conducive for professional learning and contributing to a larger social justice mission. However, ongoing collaboration also produced tensions, some of which mentors had difficulty navigating. This study suggests that if extended field placements are to be an effective reform intervention, mentor teachers need professional support to maximize the benefits and to negotiate the complexities of collaboration.

This essay presents a dialogue between a new teacher and a former professor, generated when the teacher decided to leave the classroom after two years. Contextualized within the literature of teacher attrition and offering implications for teacher education, the essay explores what it means to be (a) a novice educator in the era of accountability and (b) a teacher educator tasked with preparing new teachers for this challenging climate. The authors share their perspectives in the hopes of starting a discussion about an important issue that remains relatively unexplored in the research literature: the stories of teachers who leave and their former professors who watch them go.

This chapter shares the experiences of a Puerto Rican dean of a school of urban education and the experiences of a Korean department chair, both working at a Midwest Asian American Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI). They share stories and experiences which are situated within the context of this AANAPISI as well as the literature on higher education leadership in Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs). The chapter shares a model of mentorship that builds the capacity of diverse leaders within the School of Urban Education.

In this paper I propose that the educational and opportunity gap cannot be eliminated without reforming teacher education policy and injecting a dynamic social justice agenda approach into teacher preparation - one that begins with recruitment to the profession.  I then argue that while both traditional colleges of education and non-traditional “pathways” have the potential to effectively address the concerns of equity, TFA has made some headway in the field in terms of diversity in recruitment and commitment to social justice.

Using case studies, we describe what happens from novice to
apprentice when preservice teachers learn to teach in an urban
teacher-residency (UTR) program with a focus on inquiry. Our
UTR operates within a “third space” in teacher education,
seeking to realign traditional power relationships and to create
an alternate arena where the roles of the university, school,
teacher candidate, and community can be reimagined. This
third space encourages preservice teachers to be inquirers
themselves in order for them to support their students as
inquirers.

This case study investigated the perceptions of educators from a Historically Black University located in New Orleans, Louisiana. Educators’ perceptions about teachers’ preparedness to meet the academic needs of students traumatized by natural disasters were the focus of this study. The extent to which teachers’ instructional practices changed since Hurricane Katrina and the extent to which teachers’ instructional practices were influenced by teacher preparation curricula since Katrina was also investigated. Data were collected via interviews of 17 educators whose roles included administrator of the college of education (COE), faculty in the COE, pre-service and in-service teachers enrolled in the COE. Analysis of course catalogs, course descriptions, faculty participants’ syllabi, and teacher participants’ work products provided additional data.
The study was guided by Ecological Systems and Trauma Theory. Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory helped to explain the effects of Hurricane Katrina on children, their microsystems, and the broader ecological mesosystems, exosystems, macrosystems, and chronosystems. Sandor Ferenczi's Trauma Theory helped to explain why one role of teachers as providers of emotional support is integral to the well- being of children traumatized by natural disasters. Educators who participated in this study generally perceived teachers as prepared to meet the academic needs of students traumatized by natural disaster Katrina. Participants perceived teachers who taught prior to Katrina as being prepared, but perceived those who came to New Orleans after the hurricane as less prepared.

Existing alternative certification teacher education programs like the New York City Teaching Fellows program (NYCTF) insufficiently prepare candidates to teach in urban schools. Such alternative teacher preparation programs lack coursework and fieldwork experiences that discuss and deconstruct topics of race and culture as they relate to the classroom, pedagogy, curriculum, and student-teacher relationships. • These omissions are especially problematic because candidates in alternative programs are typically required to begin teaching after only one semester of coursework. This leaves little opportunity to acquire insight, perspective, or consciousness that can be developed over the length of a traditional teacher education program. • Insufficiently prepared graduates of these programs often utilize deficit thinking about minority populations to explain urban students' poor academic performance. Culture, parents, and home experiences are blamed for students' lack of school success. • Attrition rates in cities of teachers from these alternative programs are very high. Urban schools in high need of pedagogical capacity are destabilized when alternatively certified teachers leave shortly after placement. • The Urban Teacher Preparation Program described in this brief is a rigorous road to alternative certification that requires teacher candidates to engage in non-traditional coursework in minority studies as well as education, an apprenticeship with a master teacher, and an action research study in order to earn their credentials. This program will better prepare candidates for teaching in urban schools. Statement of Problem Alternative certification programs like the New York City Teaching Fellows program are not adequately preparing teacher candidates to work in urban schools with predominately African-American and Latino student body populations. 2 Coursework and fieldwork requirements in such programs insufficiently address the issue of race and its impact on pedagogy, curriculum, and student-teacher relationships. Alternative certification programs do little to disrupt static, stereotypical beliefs that may exist 1 This policy brief is directed to program officers of alternative certification programs. 2 In this paper, I use the term students of color to refer to urban schools' majority African American and Latino students.

ABSTRACT Our contemporary apprenticeship model of teacher education often places preservice teachers in learning environments where they never witness the types of dynamic and engaged practice they desire to emulate. Either there are structural limits within the classroom placed by school or district leadership or there are preselected veteran mentor teachers who do not value the same kinds of critical practice. These challenges necessitate a radical rethinking of how and where preservice teachers learn their craft. We pose an anticolonial model of teacher development, one that situates teachers and students in collaborative networks where they work powerfully together via Youth Participatory Action Research on projects that have significant social, cultural, and digital relevance. The purposes of this article are (a) to propose the essentiality of anticolonial approaches to reimagine the preparation of preservice teachers and (b) to demonstrate how these approaches are enacted in our own practice within critical, project-based clinical experiences with preservice educators toward the development of an anticolonial model for urban teacher preparation.

One of the ideas for getting more teachers of color into the classroom has been to look at fast-track alternative teacher preparation programs such as Teach for America.  These kinds of programs are based on the spaghetti model: Throw enough spaghetti on the wall and some of it will stick.  In other words - throw a bunch of low-paid, poorly prepared teachers into the classroom and some will eventually stick around, making it to a second year. 

            Let me ask you this: Would you go to a fast-track dentist?  What about a dentist who was part of a Dentists for America program?  Most would say no.  We expect a certain level of training and expertise from those in whom we entrust with the care of our teeth.  Why would we think it appropriate to expect anything less of those who we entrust with the care and education of our children?

In this Brown Bag session we will discuss "The Neoliberal Agenda and the Student Debt Crisis in U.S. Higher Education" (Routledge). Capturing the voices of Americans living with student debt in the United States, this collection critiques the neoliberal interest-driven, debt-based system of U.S. higher education and offers alternatives to neoliberal capitalism and the corporatized university. Grounded in an understanding of the historical and political economic context, this book offers auto-ethnographic experiences of living in debt, and analyzes alternatives to the current system. Chapter authors address real questions such as, Do collegians overestimate the economic value of going to college? and How does the monetary system that student loans are part of operate? Pinpointing how developments in the political economy are accountable for students' university experiences, this book provides an authoritative contribution to research in the fields of educational foundations and higher education policy and finance.