Becoming With: Supporting Future Teachers and School Communities Through Collaborative Engagement

• In Event: Engagement Is a Practice: Rethinking Equity in School-Community Partnerships

Abstract

Objective

This session explores innovative strategies for pre-service teacher preparation, focusing on holistic in-classroom experiences at community schools and fostering school-family-community engagement.

Perspectives

This session applies Critical Pedagogy (Freire, 1970) and Antiracist Education (Love, 2019) to shape collaborative engagement strategies. Critical Pedagogy frames education as transformative, emphasizing shared power and dialogic relationships that position families as co-educators and key stakeholders. This aligns with the Community Schools model, which integrates holistic learning and meaningful community involvement. Antiracist Education centers the lived experiences, histories, and brilliance of marginalized communities while actively challenging systemic inequities. This framework fosters partnerships that value intergenerational wisdom and treat families as equal collaborators in shaping learning environments. Community Schools create transformative spaces that prioritize resistance, joy, and meaningful engagement with approaches that foster thriving classrooms that empower students and strengthen connections with their communities.

Methods

Over the past three years, data has been collected from new teacher candidates who participated in semester-long service learning experiences in Community School contexts. This larger data set included feedback from school partners, parents, site supervisors, and teacher prep students. From this macro level of data collection, there was a clear opportunity for a closer examination of the impact of service-learning experiences for undergraduate students. A sequential explanatory mixed methods study (Fetters, 2020) was conducted in the Spring of 2025 that closely investigated the ways in which Community Schools can serve as spaces of critical reflection and transformation.

Results

The qualitative data consisted of one-on-one interviews with undergraduate students prior to and at the conclusion of their service-learning experience in a local Community Context. The results revealed that previously, undergraduate students were not aware of the Community School strategy. However, at the end of the semester, students reported, “This really changed how I think about teaching and what it could be in the right environment. You hear so much negativity about choosing to go into education, but when I saw the kids smiling and running toward me every day, I just know it’s what I want to do.” When asked to elaborate on their perspective of Community Schools, a student shared, “I think that the teachers knowing they have the support of community members really makes a difference.”

Significance

This research contributed to the broader field of education by illustrating the potential of service-learning to not only enhance awareness of issues of social justice but also support the development of social justice oriented educators (Harkavy et al., 2021; Laughter et al., 2025). Implications include the need for intentional curricular integration of community engagement as well as a shift to viewing service-learning as a social-justice driven pedagogical practice. Evidence of this can be seen through a recent student who was hired for a teaching position at the school that served as their service-learning experience site. This suggests that strong long-term relationships are being built between both schools and students as a result of their early engagement in the work of Community Schools.

Authors

• Janine Al-Aseer, University of Tennessee

• Megan Mundi, University of Tennessee