A University-Community Partnership in Teacher Education From the Perspectives of Community-Based Teacher Educators

Abstract

This article examines the experiences of a group of nine community-based mentors of teacher candidates who partnered for several years through a local, community-based organization with the graduate elementary and secondary teacher education programs at a research university in the Pacific Northwest. Following a brief discussion of the history of partnerships between teacher education programs and local communities, we report the findings of a study of the perspectives of these community mentors on their work with teacher candidates and university teacher educators.

Keywords

community teacher educators multicultural teacher education preservice teacher education social justice

Teacher Education and Communities

Schools cannot teach children well if teachers lack an understanding of their students’ cultures and lives, and if they lack meaningful relationships with their families. (Warren, 2005, p. 134)

For nearly 70 years, recommendations about good practice in teacher education have included the preparation of teachers to work with students’ families and to learn about their communities, and to structure teacher education programs in ways to enable teacher candidates to access the expertise within families and communities. For example, the influential 1948 “Flowers Report,” sponsored by the American Association of Teachers Colleges, argued that clinical experiences in teacher education should include experiences for teacher candidates in both K-12 schools and in the broader communities served by these schools (Flowers, Patterson, Stratemeyer, & Lindsey, 1948). This report gave much attention to various kinds of community experiences for prospective teachers to enable them to better utilize community agencies and resources in the school program, to help them learn about their students and their families, to foster a greater sense of community service among both teachers and students, and generally to help break down the barriers between schools and communities by creating more community responsive schools.

Similarly, the Association for Student Teaching’s¹ publication, “The Student Teacher’s Experiences in the Community” (Blair & Erickson, 1964), outlined a rationale for expanding clinical experiences beyond schools into local communities as well as a set of suggested activities for doing so. This report asserted the importance of teachers knowing and using the community and its resources designing the school curriculum and planning learning activities, and it argued that the student teaching experience needs to be used, in part, to help teachers learn how to do these things.

Other influential reports such as AACTE’s Institute for the Advanced Study of Disadvantaged youth, “Teachers for the Real World” (Smith, 1969), addressed another dimension of community engagement in teacher education and advocated for the inclusion of local communities in teacher education programs on an ongoing basis where community members share responsibility for organizing and operating the programs in a school-, university-, and community-owned structure called the training complex. The complexity of engaging the community as a partner in college and university teacher education is highlighted in this report.

Though it is important that the community play a responsible part in planning and conducting the training complex, this is often more easily said than done. Even a university that is most sympathetic with the needs of the community, and is eager to get the help of the population might find it difficult to actually work together with members of the community . . . Faculty people have to learn, therefore, how to involve community members early in the planning stage rather than later, and how to demonstrate their own sincerity rather than merely talk about it. (Smith, 1969, p. 97)

Finally, in 1969, educational historian Larry Cuban published an important paper “Teacher and Community” (Cuban, 1969) in which he articulated the values and commitments about the connections between teacher preparation and local communities that undergirded the Cardozo Project in Urban Education in Washington, D.C., schools. The Cardozo project in which Cuban participated (Cuban, 2016) became the basis for the National Teacher Corps program. The National Teacher Corps was established in the Higher Education Act of 1965 and lasted until 1981. The focus in this national program that consisted of partnerships between colleges and university education schools, local school districts, and communities was to improve the quality of teaching in communities highly impacted by poverty. A community component existed in this program that encouraged or required interns to live in the communities in which they were learning to teach and to engage in projects in the broader community in collaboration with individuals and organizations in the community (Edelfelt, Corwin, & Hanna, 1974).

Cuban’s (1969) articulation of the commitments underlying the National Teacher Corps included the belief that there was a great need to “expand the vision of teachers to see that their role requires active involvement with parents and participation in community life” and that “effective teaching is intimately related to how well a teacher knows his charges and the nature of their surroundings” (p. 255). Cuban argued for a tripartite conception of teacher education that included a focus in preparing teachers for instruction, curriculum development, and community involvement and for shifting the center of gravity in teacher education from the university to the classroom and community.

Despite these and other calls for greater attention to preparing teachers to work with the families and communities of their students and to utilize expertise in local communities as resources in the education of community teachers,² and the existence of several notable short-term efforts in university teacher education programs to help preservice teachers learn from and about the communities in which they learn to teach (e.g., Lee, Nelson, Auffant, & Perveiler, 2012; Seidl & Friend, 2002; Stachowski & Mahan, 1998; Zygmunt & Clark, 2016), there has been relatively little attention to the issue of teachers and families and communities in teacher education programs in the United States (e.g., Epstein & Sanders, 2006), and home-school relations is frequently cited by teacher education graduates as an area they feel ill-prepared to address in their teaching (e.g., Graue, 2005). One of the most widely discussed reports on teacher education in recent years, “Transforming teacher education through clinical practice” (National Council of Accreditation for Teacher Education [NCATE], 2010), called for making clinical experiences the center of teacher education programs, but it did not present any discussion of the importance of communities as sources for teacher learning or provide examples of teacher education program-community partnerships.

Most of the research on community-based components in teacher education that has been reported over the years has focused on the impact of these experiences on the learning of teacher candidates (e.g., Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2016; Sleeter, 2008; Zeichner & Melnick, 1996). Very few studies on teacher education program and community partnerships have examined the idea of hiring community-based teacher educators on a long-term basis (see Hayes, 1980; Hyland & Meacham, 2004; Mahan, 1983, 1993, for example), the importance of teacher candidates’ building relationships with community participants (Seidl & Friend, 2002), or have viewed these partnerships from the perspectives of the community-based participants (see Lees, 2016, for an exception).

Community-Based Teacher Educators

The programmatic innovation examined in this study began with an idea of partnering with families and communities to create more democratic, less hierarchical teacher education programs that would give teacher candidates greater access to the knowledge and expertise that exists in the local communities served by their schools in Zeichner, Bowman, Guillén, and Napolitan (2016). It was also designed to give local community members, including the parents of public school students, a more active role in preparing the teachers of their children. This work included an expanded definition of teacher educators as those who embody hybrid identities and hybrid roles and who are able to work effectively across institutional boundaries (Zeichner, 2010). The programs’ goals included honoring the students, families, and communities³ that preservice teachers, and by extension teacher educators, hoped to serve. Through the partnership, the programs hoped to provide opportunities for preservice teachers to engage with community mentors in authentic ways co-designed by local community members and university teacher educators to gain the dispositions and skills necessary to be able to learn from their students’ families and communities in their future teaching.

The current study explores the perspectives and experiences of community mentors⁴ in their work partnering with an elementary and secondary, university-based teacher education program in one research university in the Pacific Northwest. The partnering community mentors were a diverse group of people representing a variety of organizations including educational institutions, cultural centers, private sector industries, and advocacy groups from around the region. They identified themselves as specifically coming from “communities of culture and color,” highlighting their focus on preparing predominantly White teachers for their urban communities of color.⁵ They came to the work of partnering with these teacher education programs through a shared goal: to improve the conditions, situations, and opportunities for youth in historically underserved communities.

Few studies of community members working alongside university teacher educators have included the voices of the community partners (see Lees, 2016; Seidl & Friend, 2002, for exceptions). Thus, the question guiding this research was: How do community mentors experience the work of partnering with two teacher education programs within one university-based teacher education institution in preparing teachers for their schools and communities?

The Community Teaching Strand

The Community Teaching Strand (CTS) was one component of the four-quarter elementary and secondary masters’ in teaching programs at Pineridge University,⁶ a research university in the Pacific Northwest in a city with a population of about 700,000. The CTS was primarily housed in the field-based seminars in both elementary and secondary programs that met throughout the four-quarter programs. A total of 230 preservice teachers participated in the CTS in these two programs during the 2 years of our research. Some community learning activities were also connected to the teacher residency program in which this university was a partner. Building on previous efforts in these programs to include community-based experiences outside of coursework, the strand evolved into a yearlong series of events and curricular links to foundations and other courses in the teacher education programs.

Initially, the work revolved around changes to the curriculum of teacher educators including added guest speakers in courses, small group discussions at partnering K-12 school sites, and what would become the signature piece of the work—a panel of family and community members sharing their hopes and dreams for their children’s education and for their communities. Over the course of the next 2 years, the strand grew to include a variety of panels, community forums, regionally based small group discussions, mini-conferences focused on current topics of debate in education including the school-to-prison pipeline, community-guided walks, home visit training, and visits to hosting community-based organizations (see Zeichner et al., 2016).

University teacher educators and community mentors in the strand generated a set of five learning goals⁷ based on the Community Teaching Framework (Murrell, 2001), and grounded in family, community, and the work of teaching. These goals were to prepare effective community teachers who:

See students as members of families and cultural communities;

Work to connect their classrooms to community knowledge, community leaders, and community organizations;

Recognize that schools are political institutions with a multitude of stakeholders;

Are able to work with colleagues, families, communities, and other stakeholders to create equitable, humane, and culturally responsive classrooms and school environments; and

See their role as teachers as part of the broader constellation of work in communities.

Due to a number of logistical challenges, programmatic tensions, changes in program leadership, and challenges to the development of trusting relationships between university-based educators and partnering community mentors, the strand was considerably reduced after the second year and is no longer operating in these programs.

Community Contexts

The scope of the work, that is to say the goals and purposes listed above, revolved and evolved around the local and national contexts in which the schools and communities existed. Consequently, it is necessary to map a few of the pressing issues at the time of the partnership to understand the ways the curriculum and these events became a type of response to perceived injustices, as well as a vehicle to change deficit narratives about low-income communities and communities of color.

At the time of this study, some of our collective work revolved around the uprising in Ferguson, MO, longstanding injustices in Black and Brown communities across the country, and the increasing spotlight on police brutality against Black bodies. The rallies and protests across the nation would evolve into the current Black Lives Matter movement. At the same time, there were a number of articles in the local newspaper highlighting the disproportionate rates of suspensions and disciplinary actions in the local school district against Black and Brown students. Community mentors were outraged by the school-to-prison pipeline and saw it as being connected to ongoing discussions about civil rights as well as to the Black Lives Matter movement. Accordingly, the content in both elementary and secondary programs was adjusted to prepare teachers for conversations about these issues with the community mentors.

In addition to the examination of these injustices, a number of educators in local K-12 schools began protesting against state-mandated standardized tests through organized boycotts. The boycotts garnered national attention, sparking similar boycotts and protests across the nation. Also of note was the passage of state legislation allowing the opening of new charter schools, a first in state history after several ballot measures had previously failed. Both policies generated ongoing changes, debates, and funding controversies that divided and polarized the larger community. Confusion, fear, and the need for discussion around these policies fueled the creation of a small 1-day conference involving teacher candidates, teacher educators, and community mentors with various workshop sessions addressing educational policy and politics in schools, communities, and society.

Soon before the time of this study, the state issued rules mandating the inclusion of alternative pathways into teaching for each of the public, state-approved teacher education institutions. Shortly after these rules were issued, the College of Education at Pineridge University and Teach for America entered into a partnership and jointly started a local Teach For America (TFA) program. Discussions and debates about the local TFA partnership took place both within the teacher education programs studied here and throughout the city in town halls, school board meetings, and in social media.

Finally, school-based issues such as discussions around K-12 ability grouping and tracking, parent-teacher interactions, school climate, and cultural relevancy in classroom practice informed the goals and purposes for the variety of activities in the CTS. The community mentors shared their hopes and dreams for their children’s education with preservice teachers through conversations that were both personal and simultaneously connected to issues in their communities. Ultimately, local and national contexts, historical and contemporary, shaped many of the interactions between preservice teachers and community mentors.

An Ecological Approach to Partnerships

The larger social context during the work and the learning goals are important because they influenced the curriculum, beliefs, and values that community mentors brought to the program. The reality is that there are very few frameworks for community-based teacher education programs that begin from the perspective of partnering community members (see Hyland & Meacham, 2004). Fortunately, studies of school-family partnerships have begun the work of shifting and reframing the ways we understand partnerships to begin with the perspectives of families and communities.

In a longitudinal ethnographic study of one school-community partnership in Chicago, Hong (2012) builds on the work of Barton, Drake, Perez, St Louis, and George (2004) and argues that successful models for school-community partnerships, although rare, are possible, and that the complexity of such work requires a more active role for families and communities in a process in schooling and teacher education. To begin successful collaborations, Hong suggests that our very definitions of family, school, and community must reflect the complex multiple, and hybrid identities within each category. Hong suggests that although discussions about student academic success and improved teacher/family communication are positive outcomes, they often still fit into a school-centered framework. The curriculum and learning goals for teacher candidates that our partnering community mentors brought to the partnership reflected what was happening in their communities and became an important part of the CTS curriculum that resulted from their engagement with university teacher educators. The initial learning goals brought to the discussions by university teacher educators based on the work of Murrell (2001) were redefined by the three leaders of the partnering community-based organization from a community-centered position.

Hong argues a shift toward an ecological approach that challenges “schools and communities to make radical shifts in values and beliefs” toward “truly transformative practices” (p. 30). Through an examination of family organizing in Logan Square in Chicago, Hong identified three core processes that moved the focus away from a traditional school-centric model to an ecological model through: (a) developing mutual forms of engagement, (b) building authentic and trusting relationships, and (c) genuine sharing of leadership and power.

This work requires teacher educators to move beyond the typical “guest speaker” experience when working with family and community mentors and to partner with families and communities in the shared creation and ownership of the work with teacher candidates. It also requires moving beyond the typically skills-based approach to help teacher candidates communicate more effectively with families (Goldstein, 2013) to also help teacher candidates learn how to listen to and learn from families. To understand the work from the perspective of our partnering community mentors, we begin with Hong’s (2012) assertion that the partnership must also be mutually beneficial to partnering mentors and must involve a shift.

Method

During the time of this study, the authors observed and built relationships with preservice teachers through their work in the program. Author 1 taught a field-based seminar course in the secondary program, often working alongside colleagues and community mentors to co-design, co-plan, and co-facilitate a variety of events and experiences. Author 2 worked as the supervising faculty member, often speaking and engaging with community members at CTS activities, and coordinating budgets and meetings behind the scenes.

Both authors closely worked alongside two other university-based colleagues and the three leaders of the Family and Community Mentor Network (FCMN) to reflect on events and activities associated with the CTS. Most of the interactions between community mentors and university-based teacher educators were limited to this team, though at times the three leaders of the FCMN met with a few other university-based teacher education faculty as the scope of the work grew to include program-wide events and work within other courses in the programs. While the core planning team worked toward solidarity⁸ in co-planning and co-facilitating teaching and learning, some interactions with other university-based teacher educators highlighted the tensions and challenges associated with enacting this type of practice in university-based programs (Guillén, 2016).

Participants

The FCMN (2014) is a self-described group of community advocates connecting the “grassroots to the grass-tops.” Although most community mentors affiliated as members of the FCMN, they also represented various ethnically and community-based organizations, Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) members, members of organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), church groups, youth organizations, and private businesses. FCMN leaders selected specific mentors for an event based on the focus or topics of discussion. Community mentors were compensated for the partnership work, initially through endowment-based funds and later partially through program budget funds. Among more than 70 community mentors involved in the partnership over the 2 years, individuals participated at varying levels ranging from attending one event to co-facilitating sessions multiple times throughout the year.

Researchers collected individual and group interviews with nine partnering community mentors who were involved with the partnership between 2013 and 2015. All community mentors were invited to participate in the initial group interview; however, the logistics in scheduling the group limited the number to eight participants. These eight mentors were among those who were most involved in the work over the 2 years. The selection of individuals for follow-up interviews, with the addition of another individual who was not included in the original group interview, was based on (a) their variety of perspectives on the work; (b) themes that emerged from the focus group upon which they had particular insight, experience, or knowledge; and (c) greater levels of engagement with the work as measured by the frequency of planning and/or participating in meeting, classes, and events. Three of the nine who were ultimately interviewed were the co-founders of the FCMN organization (see Table 1). These individual interviews provided illuminating, confirming, and/or disconfirming experiences for the present study of community mentors as a group.

Table 1.

Demographics of the Nine Community Mentors Interviewed.

Community mentor	Ethnicity	Gender
Charel (G)	African American	Female
Faith (GI^a)	White	Female
Jovonna (GI^a)	African American	Female
Juana (GI)	Latina/Mexican	Female
Minh (G)	Filipina	Female
Richard (G)	African American	Male
Saba (G)	East African/Kenyan	Female
Shelley (I)^a	African American	Female
Veronica (G)	Latina/Mexican	Female

Family Community Mentor Network leader. G indicates participation in the group interview. I indicates participation in the follow-up individual interviews.

Data

Both individual and group interviews utilized an open-ended questioning technique. Interview questions reflected our interest in focusing on the perceptions and experiences of the partnering community mentors.⁹

We recorded, transcribed, and then analyzed the interviews through an open-coding approach employing the constant, comparative method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Subsequent phases of coding focused on the most significant or frequently occurring codes. Our analysis revealed four overarching themes in the community mentor experience working alongside preservice teachers. Community mentors experienced (a) fluctuation of expectations in their understanding of the work of teaching, (b) positive ways in which they could build “critical hope” alongside preservice teachers, (c) frustration and dehumanization in working with some preservice teachers, and (d) a shift in their roles as they took up the work of educating preservice teachers.

Findings

We focus here on presenting our major findings related to these four overarching themes. During their many discussions and interactions with preservice teachers, community mentors often took up the role of facilitator in mediating or attempting to address what they perceived as problematic thinking among preservice teachers. At other times, community mentors felt aligned with preservice teachers thinking and were able to move beyond surface-level conversations into complex discussions around their shared work in educating children in their communities. Although these conversations did not always end with a sense of resolution or conclusion, all of the mentors interviewed ultimately felt that the partnership was a positive and important endeavor.

Community Mentor Expectations and Understandings of the Work of Teaching

The ways in which community mentors understood the work of teaching and schools greatly influenced how they approached their interactions with preservice teachers. Their expectations of preservice teachers also influenced the ways they understood or made sense of their experiences. Community mentors gave the following reasons for entering the partnership: preparing teachers to be more successful with their children and other children in their communities; improving relationships between teachers, families, and communities; wanting teachers to understand their hopes and dreams for their children’s education and their communities; and wanting to support teachers in their work instead of blaming them or putting them down. Although mentors shared these reasons for wanting to partner with the program, their individual motivations for participation, and subsequently their experiences in the program, varied widely.

Shelley, for example, often spoke of her firsthand experiences witnessing the school-to-prison pipeline and the damage it was doing in her community. Shelley was a local artist in addition to working as a lawyer in the criminal justice system. She had worked with a number of youth and community organizations seeking justice for the Black community. Her memories growing up in Pineridge and attending her local public schools, particularly high school, were mostly negative. Although most of these memories were negative, she remembered one teacher, a White, male, history teacher, with whom she had a positive and transformative education. She hoped to prevent the negativity she experienced in high school from happening to her sister, for whom she was the primary guardian.

Juana was the president of the PTSA at one of the local, partnering elementary schools during the time of this study. Juana had immigrated to the United States from Mexico 13 years prior to the study. Much of her involvement with the school, and consequently the program, stemmed from her experiences in organizing families in the community around her children’s elementary school. She was passionate about amplifying the voices of the growing Latinx community surrounding the school. In Juana’s view, the teachers and administration at her school were not in touch with families, particularly Spanish-speaking families. This was most evident to her when observing teachers who were reluctant to smile or greet family and community members visiting the school building, and she often felt personally dismissed or disrespected by some teachers and administrators in the building.

Another PTSA member and co-founder of the FCMN was Faith. Before her work with the FCMN and subsequent partnership with the teacher education program, Faith worked as a community activist and organizer in several local educational and political campaigns. She had also worked as a talent agent in Los Angeles, where she said that her eyes were opened to the double-standard for Black artists in the business. Through her many conversations, Faith came to understand White privilege and dedicated herself to working with communities of color as a White ally.

Jovonna, the other co-founder of the FCMN, a longtime resident and respected member of the Black community in Pineridge, and community activist, primarily worked with youth in after-school programs offered through the city Parks and Recreation department. Although her work was primarily in the Black community, Jovonna had many connections to other ethnic communities across the city. One of the most heartbreaking memories for Jovonna was remembering one evening during the 1990s when she witnessed a police raid in her community. She recalled watching young Black men running, scattering up hillsides, and jumping fences for fear of police brutality and targeted arrests. What most motivated her in this work was changing the narrative about her community and supporting teachers in valuing the knowledge and wisdom of communities of color. In her mind, the only reason why the FCMN was partnering with the teacher education program was “because we’re genius.” Jovonna explained,

I call people of Color “genius” all the time. The only reason why we’re here is because we’re genius. Only. Including our babies. And that’s not talked about enough . . . When you talk about whiteness and how of that is causing problems, they then want to talk about the problem. N, n, n, no! We got the problem. We’re trying to make the problem better by helping you come along. Come along with us . . . We’re talking about how you can come along with us in our genius. That’s what’s not talked about.

Many of the reasons why community mentors joined the work revolved around either their own or their children’s experiences in schools. These experiences were sometimes positive but were often negative. The ways in which community mentors experienced their own schooling in turn influenced their expectations for teachers. This was foundational to the ways in which they interacted with preservice teachers. What was most clear was that all of the community mentors interviewed felt a sense of responsibility to their community, to represent the hopes, dreams, and fears of those in their community. Mentors also felt a sense of striving for greater social justice for their communities in this work.

Experiences Working Alongside Preservice Teachers: Building Critical Hope and Solidarity

Community mentors felt humanized and understood when they experienced preservice teachers who listened and validated their thoughts, reflections, and histories. They wanted to share positive aspects of their cultures to change the ways they often saw teachers and schools treating students of color. Similarly, they also wanted to share negative experiences so that they might work toward changing the ways teachers and schools treated students of color.

For example, Juana was very involved in her children’s schooling. Mario, one of the elementary preservice teachers, was placed with a teacher in her son’s classroom during the first year of the CTS (Napolitan, 2016). Much of Juana’s involvement with preservice teachers was incredibly positive. Besides her interactions in creating a strong relationship with Mario, her son’s student teacher, she often participated in panels and in small group discussions sharing her hopes and dreams for her children’s education and for her community. Through these discussions and her relationship with Mario, Juana felt a sense of “critical hope” (Ginwright, 2016) around the possibility of changing the ways teachers interacted with families at her school and in her community.

When I went to Pineridge University and I saw all of them [the preservice teachers] trying their best, working hard, asking those questions, I was like, “Oh my God. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to come and share and talk to them. [And for letting] them know what we need as a parent and that we’re always going to be there to support them. And [thank you] to the people who have been helping them to be a great teacher . . . For me as a parent the way I see it is, “Oh my . . . I think we’re getting the best for our children. Maybe they’re not going to be my children’s teacher, but someone will . . .”

Juana felt that the preservice teachers in the first year’s elementary cohort were eager to greet her as well as the many families around the school. The contrast with the teachers in this school was quite visible to her in the ways that preservice teachers asked questions and showed genuine care for the families they met. To Juana, asking questions signaled an investment and interest on the part of the preservice teachers. This gave her hope and signaled a change for future teachers in her school and community.

Faith was also very enthusiastic about the partnership between the community mentors and the teacher education program. As one of the co-founders of the FCMN, her role along with Jovonna and Shelley revolved around co-planning, co-facilitating, and reflecting upon the many events throughout the year with the university teacher educators. Faith, Shelley, and Jovonna acted as liaisons between the many community mentors and the program, developing and strengthening relationships, and communicating and checking-in with mentors through many phone and in-person conversations. Faith echoed the feeling of hopefulness and joy, but also the solidarity she felt in building relationships with preservice teachers.

. . . being a teacher, even a community teacher, is a joy. As much as we tell those teachers that there’s such joy in connecting with their students and families, and what that can do for them, it is for us too as teachers. . . . we’re going to have solid teams of people who “get it” because it’s going to be a fight no matter where you go. Because that’s where we are again in this country with race and social justice. It’s not about academics and curriculum, how the university views teaching and learning; it’s how universities honor the communities in which they send their teachers.

In reflecting on her work with preservice teachers, Faith compared the joy she saw in preservice teachers working with their K-12 students to the joy she felt being a teacher educator. In her mind, the K-12 classrooms, teacher education program, and the need to honor communities in the fight for racial and social justice were all connected. Here, Faith is also speaking about the need for people to come together, in teams, to fight racial and social injustices. She is particularly inviting university-based teacher educators to join the fight and to honor the history, wisdom, and values of the “communities in[to] which they send their teachers.”

Veronica too felt that preservice teachers genuinely cared, not just about their future K-12 students, but also about the mentors and their experiences with schools.

I think they were asking a lot of good questions and they were really genuine how they were paying attention . . . They would ask to clarify things and then they would ask, “well, what’s your opinion on this? What’s your opinion on that?” . . . For me it felt really sincere that they are truly, truly wanting to be the change and that they are going into this willing to do what it takes to make it easier for . . . not easier, but just give the kids a chance at liking it [school] and succeeding.

Experiences Working Alongside Preservice Teachers: Frustration and Dehumanization

Community mentor experiences working alongside preservice teachers were not always positive. They reported feeling frustrated after speaking with some preservice teachers. These negative experiences were connected to expectations they had that preservice teachers would be further along in their maturity or in their critical awareness. Some of the mentors had unfortunate experiences feeling judged or even “dirty” after speaking with some preservice teachers.

For example, after discussing an exercise around a privilege walk¹⁰ with preservice teachers, one mentor expressed extreme frustration and anger around what she perceived as a lack of investment in the conversation on the part of some preservice teachers. At the time of the activity, the cohort of secondary preservice teachers was 76% White and 24% people of color. Shelley felt that some of the preservice teachers she talked to had a lack of awareness and sense of responsibility for their part in upholding White privilege. During an interview, Shelley took out a pen and notebook to illustrate her thinking around ways some White preservice teachers were backing away from confronting privilege and power in this country (Figure 1).

There’s this box. And the box is called white privilege. And the privilege walk happened inside of this box, to move people towards this imaginary opening . . .

But what I witnessed when we were in those circles was people being comfortable staying inside of the box. I heard comments like, “you know, well, I guess I’m lucky.” And to me it’s like, okay, if white privilege was the lottery, right? Then it would be a lotto where some people were given tickets . . . no, everyone’s given a ticket, whether you paid for the ticket or not, everyone is given a ticket. But the winners are already pre-determined.

Figure 1.

Shelley’s conceptual framework for analyzing preservice teacher behavior. She observed these behaviors during the privilege walk.

Shelley’s drawing illustrates what she saw as preservice teachers who live with privilege, specifically White privilege, and were unaware of it. She describes the privilege walk activity as moving preservice teachers toward a door, or opening, as an awaking of sorts. Those that chose to walk through could see the box and either stay outside or relapse back into the box. Those who were forever changed experienced a type of death of their old self, a funeral, and saw the world differently from what they had previously known. Others might relapse into the box, often unknowingly. One of three indicators signaled these relapses: (a) language, (b) silence, and (c) disciplinary practices used in the classroom. Shelley’s line of analysis reflects a field of research on White studies, particularly around stages of grief and recognizing White privilege (Leonardo, 2009).

Some preservice teachers, Shelley explained, might use deficit language when talking or referring to students, families, or communities, indicating a relapse. Another indicator would be silence, or the decision not to engage with difficult and complex discussions around intersections of race and privilege. The final indicator of a preservice teacher experiencing a relapse was most evident in classroom discipline procedures and practices. Teachers might express an understanding and awareness of privilege, but might continue to over-discipline Black and Brown boys. Shelley gave the example of the “wiggly boy syndrome” where some boys find it difficult to sit still for long class periods. Unfortunately, teachers might over-discipline these boys and use the excuse that it was for their own good or in the best interests of the child to learn to follow the rules.

Another community mentor reflecting on the same privilege walk exercise echoed the need for preservice teachers to recognize their own privilege. During the reflective discussion after the activity, a few preservice teachers shared their discomfort with the activity, asking Jovonna what she thought about going through the exercise as a woman of color. She identified this question as a deflection, a way for White preservice teachers to protest the exercise as inappropriate or disrespectful to people of color. The solution, in Jovonna’s view, was to help White people do better.

Well, I think that when young people do privilege walks . . . they’re not understanding that this is about them. We just need you to stop, get outside that dage-gone box! So the deflection, like what would you do . . . you know, no. It’s about you. It’s about whiteness. It’s about white people. Don’t ask about us. We’re fine. But we need you to do better.

Community Mentors as Teacher Educators

The experiences of community mentors partnering with the teacher education program also were affected by the extent to which they took on roles as teacher educators. To be clear, it was not the intention of the partnership to have mentors do the job of the university-based teacher educators, but by the positioning of community people as mentors, the team intentionally positioned them as teachers, as knowledge holders and respected leaders in the community. Some community mentors, often unconsciously, took on the role of teacher educator and attempted to mediate White fragility¹¹; a need that they had not anticipated. In taking up the role of teacher educator, community mentors began to process ways in which some preservice teachers were moved to change deficit thinking about students, families, and communities of color, or not. They articulated a sense of responsibility to their communities in having difficult conversations with preservice teachers now rather than later when graduates would be in their future classrooms.

One example of this process was the ways in which two community mentors understood the very real teaching dilemma some preservice teachers felt about a practice advocated by many mentors, making positive phone calls to the homes of their students. Shelley expressed feelings of frustration with one preservice teacher and her fear of calling the homes of her students’ parents/guardians. This, in Shelley’s view, was simply unacceptable. Although Shelley listened and asked questions to help this preservice teacher, she could only go so far. Shelley was prepared to have difficult conversations, but she was frustrated when preservice teachers were not far along in their thinking, or when she sensed that they were not also committed to having difficult conversations. Faith felt sympathetic when speaking about the same preservice teacher who admitted to feeling nervous about making phone calls to her students’ homes. She understood how difficult it must have been for the preservice teacher to admit this fear. Both Shelley and Faith hoped to support the preservice teacher in making positive phone calls. However, Shelley understood the responsibility of calling home as a given, whereas Faith understood it as something to be learned.

All of the mentors interviewed felt it necessary to challenge problematic or deficit thinking when they encountered it. After one small group discussion, for example, a number of mentors questioned one preservice teacher who shared his thoughts on college which he believed was not for everyone. This disturbed a number of mentors who had been talking with one another after the session. It did not appear to bother this preservice teacher when a mix of mentors from a variety of ethnic backgrounds challenged his statement. They were most concerned that for many in their communities, college was an educational goal that they had historically been discouraged or barred from accessing, and teachers were often the gatekeepers. Although many understood the argument that success need not be defined by only a college degree, they found it most frustrating that the preservice teacher did not understand their perspectives in attempting to highlight the dangers in his thinking.

Richard is a retired school administrator and had worked with a number of youth empowerment programs during his time as an educator in the district. Because of his experiences as an educator in school buildings, preservice teachers often sought his advice on curriculum and ways to think about student behavior in the classroom. Richard understood some of the places where preservice teachers were coming from, connecting their comments to his own experiences in understanding the power that teachers have in their own classrooms. He believed that “sometimes even we in our own oppression will just re-oppress.” He shared the dangers in understanding the role of community mentors as those who could “rescue” struggling teachers. He felt it important to teach preservice teachers “how to build those networks within their own schools.”

There were a number of occasions where mentors identified the need for translation for preservice teachers who were not “getting it.” If a preservice teacher did not understand an issue, or a mentor felt he or she was not being understood, the mentors looked to each other or to other preservice teachers to translate the meaning to the teacher. Similar to the ways that cultural brokers¹² act as a bridge between teachers, K-12 students, and families, translators, either community mentors or other preservice teachers, would try to understand the logic of the one who did not “get it” and to help them reframe their thinking to begin to engage in the discussion. Although it was an unspoken negotiation, Faith sometimes operated as mediator, or translator, for White preservice teachers and communities of color, a role with which she was not comfortable. She felt compelled, however, to speak about White privilege, about her experience as a White parent, and to respond to preservice teachers when questions arose around social justice in predominantly White classrooms. On one occasion, she shared with preservice teachers that as a parent, she would hope her White son would have the opportunity to learn about and reflect upon the complex and painful history of slavery and racism in this country.

Jovonna also took up the role of teacher educator in advocating the need for preservice teachers to meet with community mentors on a regular basis—as a way to practice talking to families and community members. Jovonna explained to preservice teachers on more than one occasion that she would rather have these conversations now, rather than have them become problems in their future practice. She thought that through the CTS, preservice teachers had the opportunity to develop relationships with families and communities across the city, she often saw the work as a place/opportunity to teach preservice teachers about the richness of local communities and to see family and community members as both resources and allies.

Finally, community mentors created powerful learning spaces for teachers of color. For example, Juana and the preservice teacher named Mario mentioned earlier, she of Mexican and he of Equadorian descent, worked closely together on a culturally responsive unit for Mario’s elementary classroom (Napolitan, 2016). The unit focused on interviewing family and community members, writing their stories, and creating a shared classroom narrative. Mario, who strongly identified as a community teacher, first modeled how to interview for his students by interviewing his mom via Skype during class time. Juana’s son was in Mario’s class at the time. Juana and many of the families involved in the project were brought to tears when the final projects went on display during the culminating celebration. Both mother and son, and parent and teacher, grew closer through the community-based project. Many of the teachers of color in the program thought that the addition of the CTS and the voices of community mentors shifted the perspective of the program toward valuing the knowledge of communities of color and valuing the cultural capital that many preservice teachers of color bring with them to the program (Yosso, 2005).

Experiencing the Role of Community Mentor

In their desire to support schools, teachers, and ultimately the students in their communities, mentors sought to move toward working in solidarity with the elementary and secondary teacher education programs at Pineridge University. Both Jovonna and Faith consistently told preservice teachers that supporting teachers in positive ways, lifting them up rather than tearing them down, was why they, the FCMN, were there.

The following discussion is organized into three areas that capture the ways in which community mentors experienced their partnership with the teacher education program at Pineridge. Each area maps onto one of the core processes (mutual engagement, authentic relationships, and shared leadership and power) found in an ecological approach to partnerships. First, the roles, responsibilities, and boundaries around their work in the teacher education program began to blur as both community mentors and university-based teacher educators worked together to help preservice teachers learn how to learn about their students, their students’ families, and their communities. Second, as the partnership progressed and boundaries were blurred, community mentors confronted some of the dilemmas of practice regularly faced by university teacher educators. Third, community mentor experiences, both promising and problematic, varied within both the elementary and secondary preservice programs and between teachers of color and White preservice teachers.

Blurring Roles, Relationships, and Responsibilities

Hong (2012) argues the need for partnerships to remain mutually engaging for both parties. As the partnership and the CTS grew, the roles and responsibilities of both university-based and community-based collaborators began to blur, thus creating opportunities for all parties to contribute to the co-creation of the work. The blurring of roles and responsibilities led to a re-centering of the physical and metaphorical places/spaces where the work occurred. The three lead organizers of the FCMN, as well as a number of community organization leaders, devoted many hours to co-designing, co-planning, co-facilitating, and reflecting upon the increasing number and type of events with the core group of three university teacher educators.

The initial partnership focused on bringing together local community mentors to share their hopes and dreams for their children’s education. The community mentors organized and facilitated the family panels. They later incorporated feedback to add question and answering sessions in the field-based seminar courses to better share their experiences with schooling, stories which included their own, that of their children, and/or of other youth in their communities. The goal, both of university-based teacher educators and partnering community mentors, was to develop a shared understanding of the realities in local schools and communities, to better prepare and support teachers for their future classrooms.

The partnership grew to include connections to other university-based courses, leading to the evolution of the CTS woven throughout the program. For example, an intersection between classroom management, culturally responsive teaching, and special education courses was evident in a powerful community panel on ability and culture. Another example was the after-school, regionally based, small group discussions around family-teacher partnerships in and outside of the classroom. These sessions were also co-planned and co-facilitated by university-based and community-based teacher educators. Based on feedback and their own reflections on facilitating, community mentors began incorporating warm-up activities as well as share-outs to create a sense of community in each small group discussion.

As the teacher education-community partnership grew, priorities and experiences were increasingly community-generated. Events reflected current topics and debates in education, and by extension in communities such as: a panel focused on the school-to-prison pipeline, a documentary screening co-hosted by the local African American League, a discussion on teaching for social justice within current contexts, and a mini-conference focused on local and national policies affecting schools, communities, and state offices.

Community Mentors as Teacher Educators—The Challenge and the Promise

Through shared leadership and power (Hong, 2012), community mentors felt ownership and were both encouraged by and joyful about working with preservice teachers. They believed they were moving toward repairing some of the harm they felt or experienced in their schools and communities. They also felt a moral obligation to engage or disrupt the power dynamics they saw and felt from some preservice teachers.

Simultaneously, some mentors generally struggled because they expected preservice teachers to be at a certain level, or at least to be willing to engage in difficult conversations to get there. Community mentors expected that preservice teachers and university-based teacher educators were prepared, ready, and willing to engage in difficult conversations. Some community mentors felt that the fact that some preservice teachers did not seem to be “getting it” was one of the reasons why the partnership was necessary. They felt frustrated or impatient when encountering preservice teachers who did not get it, or did not understand that the dominant narrative was not always the truth of the situation for marginalized P-12 students and their respective communities.

Instances where preservice teachers did not seem to “get it” were usually occasions for mentors to teach, or to explain. Sometimes they were able to explain, or to tell a story, in such a way that preservice teachers were moved to rethink their perspectives, on other occasions a translator was necessary. If a preservice teacher wasn’t getting it, a translator, usually a fellow community mentor or another preservice teacher, could help. Sometimes a preservice teacher walked away not getting it; they remained unmoved or left with a feeling that they had a bad experience as evidenced in some exit tickets collected at the end of events. The data revealed that these instances occurred when the press for time prevented an extended dialogue and discussion between mentors and preservice teachers. This press could be attributed either to the structure of an event or to a lack of openness that preservice teachers brought to the conversations, or both.

Community mentors expected all preservice teachers to be ready and willing to engage in difficult conversations, and they were disappointed when this did not occur. For example, Shelley left a discussion about White privilege feeling so disgusted that she reported needing to “detox” after leaving the class. She acknowledged that the preservice teachers were perhaps protecting themselves and noted her realization that she had been spending time in communities where she did not have to confront whiteness in such a way. Later interviews indicated that other mentors felt the same need to detox, engage in some form of self-care, or to check-in with one another at various points during the partnership.

Mentors wanted to continue to support preservice teachers in becoming strong, confident, and prepared teachers, but they also felt frustrated when preservice teachers were not there already. However, all of the mentors that at some point or another felt frustration or even dehumanized, reported wanting to continue the work with preservice teachers. Some mentors were ready when challenging preservice teachers’ deficit thinking, others expressed frustration at having to repeat the same conversations. They would have preferred to dig deeper into issues around racial injustice connected to schools and society and to talk about what was happening in the classroom of the preservice teachers. They wanted to continue primarily because they felt the responsibility to do right by their communities and the students in K-12 classrooms and because they expected better for their communities.

Because community mentors were asked to give so much of their time and energy, it became apparent to us that part of the work of the teacher education program was to attend to supporting them in their work. As community mentors took up the role of teacher educators, they began generating curriculum, facilitating student learning, and taking on secondary trauma from preservice teachers. This was not entirely unexpected, but the implications and ramifications were something for which the university-based teacher educators were unprepared. Although the mentors often took up the role of teacher educators, we understand that university-based teacher educators cannot ask for or expect community-based teacher educators to make the same level of personal sacrifice as university teacher educators when it comes to taking on the secondary trauma of preservice teachers.

Community Mentor Experiences in the Elementary and Secondary Programs

In working toward authentic relationships (Hong, 2012), mentors began to challenge some of the norms among preservice teachers in the programs. Many of the frustrating and dehumanizing experiences for community mentors were primarily around experiences with secondary preservice teachers as opposed to their elementary counterparts. Although negative experiences also occurred during conversations with elementary preservice teachers, the majority of incidents of frustration and dehumanization shared during the interviews were with secondary preservice teachers.

Some of the reasons for the differences between the two programs reflect the general shift in dynamics and relationships between families and teachers in elementary versus secondary schools. As the relationships between families and their students change as students grow older, so too do the relationships change between families and teachers. Mentors and preservice teachers struggled with the less engaged roles of families in schools as children grow into young adults.

Unless a community mentor had some experience in classrooms or working in schools, they were disappointed by the difference in conversations around curriculum between elementary and secondary preservice teachers. Many preservice teachers, like Mario, aligned closely with community mentor understandings and expectations of strong, culturally responsive or socially just teaching (Zeichner et al., 2016). Through her work with Mario, Juana’s experience with preservice teachers was one of the most positive ones in the partnership. However, mentors’ understandings of community-based teaching and culturally responsive teaching were at odds with some preservice secondary teachers’ understandings of family and teacher relationships.

At first glance, some school subjects did not appear to preservice teachers to lend themselves to culturally responsive teaching, such as in physics. These were areas of challenge for community mentors, and they began to intentionally seek out teachers and other educators who were able to speak to these differences in curriculum and instruction.

Conclusion

Ultimately, community mentors partnering with the elementary and secondary Pineridge University teacher education programs wanted to continue working with preservice teachers despite or because of both positive and negative experiences with preservice teachers, and their feelings of responsibility to their communities. They felt that these events, conversations, and relationships were valuable and important. They also expressed the feeling that the partnership still wasn’t doing enough—They saw a need for more frequent (quantity) and in-depth (quality) discussions and experiences.

The community mentors felt that preparing teachers who “get it” and were committed to being community teachers were essential to addressing historical and current injustices in schooling. They understood their roles as community mentors to include the responsibility to help preservice teachers understand, to teach them so that they might begin to “get it” and learn how as teachers to work in solidarity with families and communities.

The hope was that through these structured events and discussions, preservice teachers could develop relationships with families and communities across the city before they even began as full-time teachers in their classroom. Through the many social connections of the FCMN, preservice teachers met multiple community leaders from all over the city. These connections often resulted not only in the beginnings of relationships but also in possible resources, supportive places, and introductions to communities that then might become their partners in their future classrooms. The hope was that the preservice teachers would become committed to and skillful at forming these kinds of relationships in their future teaching. A number of exit tickets and reflective writings indicated that many preservice teachers felt a weight lifted in knowing that they were not alone in the work toward social justice in their current schools, communities, and in their future classrooms (Zeichner et al., 2016).

Care and respect on the part of university teacher educators are necessary when beginning this work. Spaces for community mentors to reflect, support, and encourage one another as teacher educators became an important part of the partnership. Mentors took risks in sharing, explaining, and putting aside their own feelings to attend to those of preservice teachers. These experiences left some mentors feeling exhausted and questioning whether or not to continue. On these occasions, fellow community mentors provided spaces for reflection and support for one another immediately following the event. Because of their position of power, it is the responsibility of faculty and staff in teacher education programs wishing to partner with communities to listen to, value, and honor the family and community knowledge in working as colleagues.

Although the CTS strand no longer exists at Pineridge University, all community mentors stressed the need and urgency, now more than ever, to better prepare teachers through this type of partnership. They felt a responsibility to return to conversations with preservice teachers who remained unmoved or didn’t “get it.” Rather than walk away, they saw these experiences as places where they needed to dig deeper.

Community mentors also felt connected to and invested in the future classrooms of preservice teachers. Positive experiences with preservice teachers indicated places where they were just getting started with possibilities. They had many ideas for curricular units that could be introduced in the classroom, including experiential learning connected to relevant and current issues in the community of national importance. They were willing to share resources, and connections, and they were willing to listen to, support, and champion the work of the preservice teachers in their communities. To be clear, some of these were topics that university-based teacher educators in these two programs would not have otherwise engaged had it not been for partnering with community mentors.

Finally, another positive and initially unexpected impact on preservice teachers was the impact of the CTS in supporting preservice teachers of color in the cohort. Exit tickets indicated that preservice teachers of color reported feeling supported and affirmed in their visions of teaching because of the CTS and their relationships with community mentors. Community mentors of color took great pride in seeing preservice teachers of color, often connecting on different levels and in different types of conversations about what it means to be community teachers.

If teacher education programs wish to remain responsive and relevant to their local communities, while challenging preservice teachers to become the best our society has to offer to our children, we must continue to work toward meeting communities halfway. Our partnering community mentors felt that this was important work, not only for their own children but also for other children and youth in their communities. Based on their own experiences in schools, or that of their children, they hoped both disrupt negative experiences and to support positive ones. Community mentors brought knowledge and wisdom about their children and the youth in their communities, and they shared that wisdom with the preservice teachers in the two programs. They brought multicultural approaches and knowledge of culturally responsive teaching. Mentors entrusted this knowledge to preservice teachers in the hope that they might better help prepare and support teachers for schools in their communities.

These approaches suggest the need for future research focused on community-based teacher education programs. This work, like most similar work in university teacher education programs across the United States in the past where attempts were made to partner with community-based teacher educators in co-planning and co-teaching preservice teachers, lasted for only a few years and then disappeared. We need more research on how to build and sustain these teacher education and community partnerships so that both the needs of preservice teachers and community teacher educators are supported, and community-based teacher educators become an expected part of all teacher education programs.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Lorena Guillen is an assistant professor of education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA.

Ken Zeichner is the Boeing professor of teacher education at the University of Washington.

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