Project "Nueva Generacion" and Grow Your Own Teachers: Transforming Schools and Teacher Education from the Inside Out.

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). The on-going quest to more effectively connect teacher candidates with urban communities and schools drives the examination of the role of colleges of education within the school/community context. Given that most community-based teacher education programs originate on campus and then move into communities, it is not surprising that a disconnect persists between colleges of education, their students and the communities they strive to serve. In this article I will describe a nine-year old partnership between a teacher education program and a community-based organization that is a viable and complementary alternative to campus-based and community-based teacher education programs. The unique partnership between the Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA) and the Bilingual Education Program at Chicago State University (CSU) essentially brought the university to the community at the community-based organization's request. The collaboration was initially funded as a federal Title VII grant. Since it began nine years ago, between 60 and 70 neighborhood residents, many of whom already worked in the community as teacher assistants, school volunteers, and community leaders, have had the opportunity to attend college and work toward a bachelor's degree and teaching credentials. Founded on LSNA's core belief that the members of their urban community can and should serve as resources in schools, Project Nueva Generacion (New Generation) is the model for the Grow Your Own teachers initiative in Illinois. The Grow Your Own teachers initiative provides funds to consortia consisting of a community based organization, a college of education, and a school district to recruit and prepare community leaders to become teachers. Presently, Project Nueva Generacion continues with Grow Your Own funding from the state. Through a documentary account of the of the evolution of the partnership and the mechanisms by which Project Nueva Generacion was organized and implemented, I hope to illustrate what can happen when a teacher education program partners with a community based organization because, "One success tells us what is possible"(Payne, 2008, p. …