Partnering to Prepare Urban Teachers

As you begin to experience the rich intellectual content of this important volume, be prepared for a compelling, hopeful, and sobering encounter with some of the most challenging circumstances imaginable on the part of teacher education to meet the needs of learners. You will be presented with honest reports of comprehensive and determined efforts to understand and respond to the realities of urban schools. You will read of programs that address the complexity of urban settings that influences teacher preparation and retention and, ultimately, student achievement. These experiences present in powerful terms one of the most significant challenges to the professional efficacy of the teacher education enterprise that exists today. That challenge is one that teacher educators cannot - must not - ignore. This book could not be more timely, nor its call to action more critical... The contributors make one point very clear: urban teaching is not missionary work but work that is possible only when it is grounded in a personal and professional commitment to the mission of social justice. (Excerpt from the Introduction by Sharon P. Robinson) As someone who has become increasingly suspicious, indeed downright weary, of calls to activism that do not give the reader any tools for the activism, I found Partnering to Prepare Urban Teachers a refreshing change. For those of us whose professional lives are immersed in the preparation of urban teachers, this book is an invaluable guide. It is both a call to action and a repository of examples of good curriculum and best practices. And, for anyone who cares about the teachers in the city schools of the twenty-first century - be they teacher educator, teacher, parent, policy-maker, or concerned citizen - the passionate yet practical call to activism embedded here is essential reading. (Excerpt from the Conclusion by James Fraser)