Project Nueva Generacion and Grow Your Own Teachers: Transforming Schools and Teacher Education from the Inside out (Report)

In a speech on October 9, 2009, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued a call to teachers and teacher educators, stating that "Many ed schools do relatively little to prepare students for the rigor of teaching in high-poverty and high needs schools"(U.S. Department of Education, 2009). Many of the high-poverty, high-needs schools to which Duncan refers are located in urban districts that suffer from high student mobility, displacement in and out of neighborhoods, overcrowding, high teacher turnover, and shortages of qualified teachers. Duncan's observation is not new to colleges of education that strive to adequately prepare teachers to work with a racially and linguistically diverse student body within the context of the complicated social, political, and economic conditions that impact schools, families, and urban communities. Colleges of education have responded to the need to better prepare teacher candidates, who are largely White and female (Zumwalt & Craig, 2005), for the realities of urban schools by adapting their traditional programs and implementing community-based models that essentially immerse the teacher education students in a community that is culturally different from their own (Sleeter, 2001). Such programs have merit and it has been demonstrated that the cross-cultural experience "... may aid students' cultural awareness and solidify aspirations to teach within such communities" (Gallego, 2001, p. 313). In spite of such teacher preparation innovations, there continues to be a need for teachers and teacher candidates to understand not only the importance of connecting with the communities where they work but also the complex nature of the relationship between the school and the community and the marginalized position of the individuals who live there. (Koerner & Abdul-Tawwab, 2006; Murrell, 2001).