Voices from the Field: Preparing Teachers for High Need Schools

The purpose of this study is to take a critical look at the experiences of beginning teachers who have completed a five-year program focused on preparing teachers for high need districts. Twelve graduates at various stages in their teaching careers were interviewed. They were asked about the process of finding a teaching position and transitioning into their new career as well as reflecting on their preparation and offering ideas and advice for the program from which they graduated. Through their stories we learn about the connections and disconnections between their preparation and the reality of their positions. This article provides insights into the teacher education program and its philosophy and then compares that to the lived experience of its graduates. Insights from the alumni offer valuable information about where we may see gaps in teacher preparation and suggest some areas for preparation and development.Analytical and Theoretical PerspectivesThis project utilizes an arts based research approach (Levy, 2009). Research findings were translated into performance texts as a way to challenge and disrupt the conventional ways that teacher education has been informed. Research on teaching is often fraught with problematic representations of teachers and their practice. This method allows the teachers to speak for themselves and thus is a more direct way of communicating participants' words and meanings. As Worthen (1998) explains, performance can be both an investigation and a representation. For this presentation, the performance will be both a way to represent and investigate the data. The lived experience of these new teachers are represented and at the same time the audience can make meaning of these data by experiencing word, image, gesture and sound (Leavy, 2009). Denzin (2006) writes about the ways in which performance can be employed as critical pedagogy because it can be used as a form of instruction that helps people think "critically, historically, and sociologically."Discussions about how to best prepare teachers for positions in historically underperforming, low resourced, and largely minority districts have been a staple in the education literature for many years. Haberman (1995) outlined the qualities needed to be a great teacher for children in poverty, Ingersoll and May (2011) discuss the reality of shortages and the graying and greening (Ingersoll, 2010) of the teaching force. Geneva Gay (2010) and Christine Sleeter (2009) remind us of the importance of cultural responsiveness, LadsonBillings (2007), Duncan-Andrade (2009) and others challenge teacher education to be critical educators for social justice, Noddings (2010) highlights the importance of ethic of care and Antonia Darder (1991) calls for a pedagogy of love, and Cochrane-Smith and Lytle (2009) know that valuing the knowledge that classroom teachers have and produce is key to sustained and meaningful change. As we work to create teacher education programs that prepare future teachers for success in under resourced and over-burdened classrooms, it is important to include a myriad of perspectives - all of which are important and deep and sometimes difficult to synthesize and understand in ways that translate into solid classroom practice that serves all children well.This project seeks to help the participants and audience engage critically, historically, and sociologically with some of the realities of the transition from a teacher education program into the early years of teaching. It also asks new teachers to reflect back on both their teaching experience and their preparation and offer insights and suggestions about what would have helped them be more prepared for the urban contexts in which they teach. The work is presented as enthno-drama because it allows us to explore multiple, simultaneous, and overlapping dimensions of this experience in ways that representation in traditional text does not allow.Personal PerspectiveI have multiple roles in this work. …