One City One Goal: Preparing Teachers Alongside Community Scholars

• In Event: Critical Turn in Teacher Residencies

Abstract

Purpose and framework
Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, with deep histories and connections. At the University of Chicago Urban Teacher Education Program the “context-specific” approach to urban teacher preparation is designed to facilitate learning experiences to bring teacher candidates into the historical, cultural, linguistic, economic, racial and geographic knowledge interwoven into the fabric of Chicago, emphasizing the wealth and richness of local communities. Context is not simply the setting for new teachers’ work and their learning but context is the content for beginning teachers to learn as they make the transition into their new careers (Matsko and Hammerness, 2014, Hammerness and Matsko; 2013, Feiman-Nemser, Tamir & Hammerness, 2014). This chapter highlights the critical turns from traditional teacher preparation in UTEP’s residency model, specifically highlighting the collaboration in learning beside Community Scholars and the specific impacts on teacher candidates in Chicago. The chapter begins with a brief history of the program, provides an explanation behind the thinking and intention of the critical turn towards collaborative teacher preparation alongside community scholars, presents Critical Urban Theory as the theoretical framework, showcases the impacts on teaching and learning from the collaboration, and concludes with the importance of community-university partnerships. The purpose of this work is to share the structural components that built a critical, geo- historical -socio-political and economic specific, residency program while emphasizing on the role of community building inside and outside teacher preparation.

Conclusions and implications for future work
The work of preparing candidates for teaching in urban classrooms alongside community scholars was a critical turn towards collaboration that was invaluable to our residency program. Candidates were able to experience humility and recognize their unfinishedness, acknowledging the possibility that they had much to learn from students, families, and communities as much as they had to offer. As teachers, we must have a mindset of solidarity not charity, understanding that we are not in positions to save anyone, but that we work towards self-empowerment and self-actualization and building our students up to reach their highest potential to their full capacity as human beings. Our partnerships with Community Based Organizations were vital to the development of teachers as we consider building a more equitable, just, and anti-racist society. It was through their models of self-determination, leadership, and growth that our teacher candidates expanded their understanding of what is possible. The lived experience that creates community knowledge can and should be utilized by teachers to make classroom learning relevant, applicable, and intellectually challenging. The self-reflection, introspection, and praxis of teachers offers an opportunity to rethink how we understand teaching and learning, that we work together in a practice of love and humility, and that we strive towards a world that is not yet by any means necessary.

Author

• Kay F. Fujiyoshi, University of Chicago