Loving Out Loud: Community Mentors,Teacher Candidates,and Transformational Learning Through a Pedagogy of Care and Connection

Abstract

Although there has been significant research examining the practice of culturally responsive teaching, little empirical work to date has examined the role that community-engaged, teacher preparation models play in shaping prospective teachers’ orientation toward cultural responsiveness. This study of 60 preservice teacher candidates enrolled in a program of community-engaged teacher preparation at a midsized Midwestern public university specifically examined the ways in which caring relationships between preservice teachers and volunteer community mentors scaffolded candidates’ contextualized understanding of culture, community, and identity of children and families. Findings provide evidence that as candidates experience authentic caring within the space of supportive relationships, they emerge equipped to care in more authentic, culturally responsive ways for their students.

Keywords

care culturally responsive teaching community-engaged teacher preparation community mentors

The traditional black church service is an emotion-packed blend of sacred and secular concerns, [and] informality is the order of the day. It is not a lax, anything-goes kind of informality, though, for there are traditional rituals to be performed, and codes of proper social conduct must be observed. For instance, if the Spirit moves you, it’s acceptable to get up and testify even though that’s not on the church program. On the contrary, when the preacher is “taking his text,”¹ a hushed silence falls over the whole congregation, and it is most out of order to get up, move around in your seat, talk, or do anything until he finishes this brief ritual in the traditional structure of the sermon. As the traditional black church is a social as well as a religious unit, the preacher’s job as leader of his flock is to make churchgoers feel at home and deal with the problems and realities confronting his people as they cope with the demands and stresses of daily living. Thus, preachers are given wide latitudes as to the topics they can discuss and the methods of presentation. Indeed the congregation virtually demands digressive commentary and episodic rappin as a prelude to the big event. I mean, if you a preacher in a traditional black church you just don’t be gittin up and goin right into yo sermon like they does in them other churches.

—Geneva Smitherman (1997, p. 87)

For the past 9 years, we have been privileged to situate our work with preservice teacher candidates in Whitely, a historically Black neighborhood in Muncie, Indiana. To understand this neighborhood, one must appreciate the ways in which faith gives meaning to people’s lives and anchors their continued struggle for survival. Whitely, a neighborhood of approximately 2,500 people, is served by nine churches, which additionally act as meeting places that birth mobilization efforts. Church on Sunday begins with a service, often followed by fellowship that lasts into the afternoon, and Wednesday evening Bible study is a neighborhood norm. It is rare to enter into a conversation with neighborhood elders where someone does not express being blessed, bless others, or extol the goodness of God. In Whitely, it is faith that has informed the navigation of past and present oppression, and fed the patience, perseverance, and resilience required to address current issues of social (in)justice. It is faith that pilots members of the neighborhood through celebration and despair, and it is through faith that individuals are able to reconcile past and present wrong with a spirit of optimism.

As our work with preservice candidates is also situated in neighborhood schools, we frequently find ourselves juxtaposing Smitherman’s vivid description of religion with children’s experience in mainstream American classrooms. Throughout our combined years in traditional public schools, we have seldom seen instances where “if the spirit moves you, it is acceptable to get up and testify,” or where “digressive commentary” or “episodic rappin” are accepted or celebrated. More often, we see classrooms where children are expected to check their culture at the door—where spontaneity and physicality are met with disciplinary referrals or suspension, and where the language of community is labeled at best nonstandard, and more frequently slang or ghetto speak. We wonder how much different things might be if we likened teachers’ responsibility to their classrooms to Smitherman’s portrayal of preachers’ bond to their congregations. We envision a transformation of classroom spaces, where, in enacting their principal charge of facilitating academic success for children, teachers seek to become “leaders of the flock,” making their students feel at home.

To make students feel at home, our preservice teachers’ must first develop relationships with neighborhood children and families, a capacity predicated on understanding the contexts of their lives, as well as their own (Gay & Kirkland, 2003; Howard, 2003). In the absence of such cognizance, they will interpret their interactions and experiences through the lens of the White middle-class communities in which they have been raised (Monroe, 2006), and all signs point to the great likelihood that they will get it wrong. The present study is necessitated by the cultural myopia far too common among many preservice and practicing teachers, and a quest to reposition teacher preparation within the contexts in which children live and learn. Our goal is to get this right.

In this article, we examine our efforts to develop community-engaged, culturally responsive teachers who will not only know and understand but also elevate and privilege the wisdom and expertise of communities in the education of children. Specifically, we focus on one aspect of this program—the relationship between preservice candidates and community mentors, who serve as cultural ambassadors (Szasz, 1993) throughout the semester. In conjunction with a program intentionally designed to prompt examination of candidate biases, systemic oppressions, and positionality relative to systems of power and privilege, we assert that the mentor relationship is pivotal in providing an authentic and intimate space in which candidates secure contextualized experiences with culture, community, and identity of children and families. In so arguing, we extend the scholarly literature in two critical ways: We provide empirical analysis of a community-engaged program of educator preparation and its attempts to develop culturally responsive teachers and we expand upon Rolón-Dow’s (2005) construct of authentic care by applying it to the relationships between teacher candidates and community mentors. As candidates experience authentic caring within the space of a supportive relationship, they emerge equipped to care in more authentic, culturally responsive ways for their students.

Review of Literature and Theory

Scholars have argued that caring relationships play a significant role in culturally responsive teaching and learning (Curry, 2016; Rivera-McCutchen, 2012; Rolón-Dow, 2005; Valenzuela, 2005). Other scholars point to the importance of culture in shaping educational experiences and outcomes, asserting that a cultural disconnect between teachers, students, and families and a limited understanding of culture (both their own and others) on the part of teachers can negatively affect nondominant students (Gay, 2000/2010; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995; Villegas & Lucas, 2002). This qualitative study sits at the nexus of these bodies of research, seeking to further understand the manifestation of care in the development of culturally responsive teachers.

Culturally Responsive Teaching

The fundamentally segregated nature of Black and White lives has “attitudinal, emotional, and political implications” (Bonilla-Silva, 2003, p. 125) in our contemporary landscape, implications with far-reaching consequences given the marked racial and cultural imbalance between a predominantly White (82%), female (76%), middle class, and monolingual teaching force and a more racially, culturally, economically, and linguistically diverse student population (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013a, 2013b). A prevailing response among educators is to remain “colorblind,” and “difference-blind” more broadly (Segall & Garrett, 2013). Although potentially well-intended, difference-blindness ignores the structural inequalities and dynamics of power that shape teaching and learning, and allows teachers to uncritically perpetuate deficit perspectives of students while leaving themselves, their positionality, and systems of oppression unexamined. Furthermore, this stance belies research on the imperative of connecting content in meaningful ways to lived experience (Hammond, 2014). As a result, many children experience a disconnect between home and school that is both alienating and unresponsive to the ways that they “think, behave, and believe” (Gay, 2000/2010, p. 9).

Teaching that bridges children’s home and school lives, while still meeting the curricular expectations, has gone by many labels, the most important of which are culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 1995), culturally responsive (Gay, 2002; Villegas & Lucas, 2002), and culturally sustaining (Paris, 2011). Common among these definitions is the critical paradigm from which they operate and the utilization and affirmation of children’s backgrounds, knowledge, and experiences to inform both content and pedagogy to support student success. For the purposes of this article, we use the term “culturally responsive,” as “responsive” denotes an interactive element, which presumes a bidirectional exchange between teachers and students, and captures the intersections of context, content, and pedagogy.²

Because most White teachers were brought up in schools that were racially affirming and reflected their middle-class values, the proposition that culture is an issue in the education of children can be less than intuitive. If teachers have not engaged in explicit preparation that underscores the importance of honoring children’s culture and critically examining their own positionality, strategies to “tame and train” by “kindhearted educators doing right by the less fortunate” (Emdin, 2016, p. 4) surface as prevalent narratives that act to deny children opportunities. The literature on culturally responsive teaching, while limited to mostly small case studies, shows promise for increased academic outcomes for children (Paris & Alim, 2017).

Role of Caring

The construct of care is complex, complicated by dimensions of race, culture, class, and gender. Furthermore, as Milligan and Wiles (2010) argue, “care and care relationships are located in, shaped by, and shape particular spaces and places” (p. 736). Research has argued that care can be a powerful force in disrupting the way in which schooling is done in and to historically marginalized communities (Rivera-McCutchen, 2012; Rolón-Dow, 2005; Valenzuela, 2005). Yet, despite being a critical component of successful teaching, caring and its politics often remain unexamined in teacher education (Pennington, Brock, & Ndura, 2012). Although problematic in any setting, it is particularly troubling in instances of White, middle-class teachers working in historically marginalized and minoritized communities, wherein notions of care are often tied up in colonial, deficit orientations desiring to “help” students of color (Gay, 2000/2010). White privilege and care are thus inextricably linked in a juggernaut; one that more frequently works to oppress than to liberate. As Bonilla-Silva (2003) argues, “people cannot like or love people they don’t see” (p. 141) and given that we tend not to “see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs” (Delpit, 2006, p. 46), it is imperative that preservice and inservice teachers interrogate their cultural lenses and positionalities (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2011). The present study, thus, is situated within the complex dimensions of care, the subsequent power and privilege structures shaping these dimensions, and the outcomes predicated upon the caring relationships forged within this particular landscape.

Rolón-Dow (2005) asserts that “authentic caring” involves the concerted examination of power, social location, culture, and access to resources in any relational context, to minimize inequity and maximize the extent to which relationships are reciprocal and justice-oriented (see also Beck & Newman, 1996; Nakkula & Ravitch, 1998). This is juxtaposed against “rhetorical caring” (Toshalis, 2012) and “aesthetic caring” (Rolón-Dow, 2005) which are characterized by “paternalistic and infantilizing ethics, [which] appeal to the archetype of teacher-as-savior, [and] employ deficit scripts as a way of framing the students’ need for care, ultimately producing symbolic violence” (Toshalis, 2012, pp. 27-28). Valenzuela (2005) demonstrates the consequences for students when teachers fail to engage in authentic caring. When teachers do not recognize students’ expectations for care, they abet the process of subtracting resources from students and undercut their academic success. Thus, care cannot be separated from high expectations, funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992), and the community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) that students possess, a point reinforced by the recent work of Rivera-McCutchen (2012) and Curry (2016). Authentic, critical caring can (and should) be a countervailing force to subtractive schooling.

We draw on this work and the construct of authentic care in our interpretation of the interactions between community mentors who acculturate candidates into the neighborhood and the context of children’s lives. Thus, we seek to understand the extent to which authentic, caring relationships emerge between mentors and preservice teachers and serve to shape candidates’ transformation from deficit to asset orientations, as well as their development as culturally responsive teachers.

Given systems of culture and power, it would be indefensible to neglect the politics of care in our present situation, and how historically the required caring for other people’s children by women of color was often a “new type of slavery”—one in which the responsibility for others’ well-being was at the expense of oneself and one’s family (“More Slavery at the South,” 1912). We remain critically conscious of the dynamics of such care, and its social and historical relationship to the abuse of power and privilege. We are intentionally steadfast in redefining this dynamic, aspirationally transforming it to a space that elevates and privileges funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) and community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) in lieu of “using” such strengths for personal or professional gain. Instead, we have sought to construct a “hybrid space” (Zeichner, 2010) where power is renegotiated, shared, and comaximized toward the end of ensuring a new and more committed cadre of future teachers, an enhanced educational setting for children, and indeed, a stronger community, having mutually benefited from true school–community–university collaboration.

Method

Our research examines the ways in which relationships forged between community mentors and preservice teacher candidates shape candidates’ orientation toward culturally responsive practice. Specifically, our research question is as follows:

Research Question 1: How do caring relationships between preservice teachers and community mentors scaffold candidates’ contextualized understanding of culture, community, and identity of children and families and inform their development as culturally responsive teachers?

Study Design

We designed a qualitative case study, as it would allow for an in-depth analysis and examination of numerous data sources (LeCompte & Preissle, 2003). A case study design provided the opportunity to intensively examine the perceptions and reflections of candidates and mentors; observe candidate interactions with their mentors, with students in their practicum settings, and in the larger community; analyze candidate lesson plans (the creation of as well as the delivery); and, given our own relationship to the community, draw upon our own knowledge of the neighborhood and relationships with mentors and families to theorize what we uncovered.

Program description.³

Ball State University’s Schools Within the Context of Community program removes preservice teachers from campus and immerses them in a community setting for an entire semester’s coursework. This community-engaged approach introduces and engages future early childhood and elementary school teachers in the complex interplay of factors that influence children’s learning. The term “community-engaged” underscores the joint nature of our collaborative effort with the neighborhood. A community-engaged model is comprised of distinctive elements that contribute both to the development of culturally responsive teachers and assist in furthering the priorities of the communities in which candidates work.⁴

At the local community center, and under the direction of six faculty members, candidates complete 18 credits in content related to classroom management, child development, literacy, foundations, integration of technology, and social justice, all of which is integrated to provide a seamless experience. In addition, candidates participate in a practicum placement in an early childhood program or elementary school, spending 10 hr per week participating in classroom life and experiencing school culture. They plan and teach lessons under the guidance of a cooperating teacher, and participate in additional family engagement activities. At least 1 day per week, candidates plan and implement enrichment experiences for children in the after school program at the elementary school.

Each candidate is matched with a community mentor or mentor family who engages the candidate in a process of “facilitated acculturation” (Lee, Showalter, & Eckrich, 2013). Research demonstrates the benefit of community mentors as cultural ambassadors (Catapano & Huisman, 2010; Lee et al., 2013; Szasz, 1993; Zygmunt & Clark, 2016). Absent this guidance, candidates are likely to misinterpret experiences, applying their own “cultural map,” which is likely to be inadequate and possibly damaging. Volunteer mentors, many of whom have been acting in this role since the program’s inception, were recruited from neighborhood churches and the local neighborhood council. With their mentors, candidates attend family gatherings, worship services, and community meetings and events, gaining additional perspective and experience with children’s lives outside of school and garnering insight into the values of families within the community. The inclusion of mentor families in our model was conceived by members of the local neighborhood council as a means to welcome candidates and impart essential knowledge about children’s lived experience. Mentor families are positioned as essential members of our team of teacher educators.

Throughout the semester, candidates also participate in critical service learning (Mitchell, 2008; Rosenberger, 2000) alongside their mentors and members of the neighborhood community council. This model provides the vehicle through which the typical “outside-in” view of a community can be transformed. Differentiated from more traditional models of university service learning characterized by “doing for,” and which tends to favor those who serve over those being served (Sandy & Holland, 2006; Tryon & Stoecker, 2008), candidates participate with and alongside residents in programs and projects integral to community revitalization identified by members of the neighborhood. Critical service learning provides an opportunity to position candidates as coagents of social change. Reflection on this participation within the frames of race, power, and privilege provides additional opportunities for significant and meaningful learning.

Participants

Data reported herein derive from 60 preservice teacher candidates (56 female and four male) enrolled in a 16-week immersive experience at Ball State University and their community mentors.⁵ Data were collected from three separate cohorts of 20 candidates, over the course of three distinct 16-week semesters, between 2014 and 2017, respectively. Candidates were traditional-aged students in their junior year of an undergraduate initial licensure program (55 pursuing degrees in elementary education, and five in early childhood education). Of the 60 candidates, 51 identified as White, five as Black, three as Latina, and one as biracial. Candidates volunteered for participation in the program and were subsequently selected for admission. Criteria for selection included junior level status, completion of prerequisite courses, and successful completion of an application and interview.

In addition, we include data from 12 mentors, many of whom are community elders. Recruitment of mentors was heralded by two researchers’ participation in community committees related to issues of education and poverty, alongside a prominent and well-respected neighborhood matriarch, years in advance of the initiation of this program. This relationship provided a bridge to our entrance into the neighborhood, which afforded us opportunities to build relationships with neighborhood leadership. Through these relationships and attending neighborhood gatherings, discussions about education emerged as a neighborhood priority, and the conception of mentorship was borne by residents expressing a desire to intentionally partner in the training of teachers.

Finally, given that the researchers are also instructors in the Schools Within the Context of Community program, it is important that we identify ourselves as participants as well. The politics of the researcher–instructor dyad in the present study are important considerations relative to findings. As instructors as well as researchers, we shared the power of negotiating and mediating candidates’ experience through introducing new readings, conversations, and experiences that we coidentified as tools through which to address issues of disequilibrium.

Our team of six researchers is comprised of five females and one male who are faculty at Ball State University. Of the six researchers, five are White, and one is Black. Awareness of our identities as primarily White, university faculty in a historically Black neighborhood is of critical importance as we strive to equalize the power structures that typically exist among university–community collaborations. Although our work has resulted in lasting friendship and trust, we are keenly aware of the power and privilege inherent to our collective identities, and use this lens as a constant filter through which to guide our participation, processes, and partnership.

Data Collection

Sources of data for this article include candidates’ written weekly reflective journals and one postsemester focus group with community mentors, conducted in 2015.⁶ Each candidate completed 15 written journal entries throughout the semester. Journals were open-ended, with candidates advised to reflect upon critical moments, wonderings, and their growth resulting from the tensions between old and new ways of thinking. Faculty members read the journals and responded, creating an intimate dialogue through which to reflect upon and process new learning. In addition, one focus group session (Morgan, 1997) was held with mentors at the conclusion of the semester. Twelve mentors were present as were two researchers. The focus group interview, provided feedback on both university–community collaboration and on mentors’ view of their roles as teacher educators.

Data Analysis

Data reported herein were analyzed using a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2008; Glaser, 1978; Strauss & Corbin, 1998), as this approach “keeps the researcher close to the participants through keeping their words intact in the process of analysis [in order to] maintain [their] presence throughout” (Mills, Bonner, & Francis, 2006, p. 7) and affords researchers more liberty in communicating “how participants construct their worlds” (p. 7). Glaser (2012) argues that grounded theory recognizes the “mutual creation of knowledge by the viewer and the viewed” (para. 1), which is important given the researchers’/instructors’ dual roles.

An independent researcher, untethered to the experience, assisted with the analysis of the data. He read through all journal entries, extracting narratives relative to interaction with community mentors. Two of the researcher/instructors then began the process of open coding, independently reading the excerpted journals line-by-line. This was followed by focused coding, in which each researcher read a quarter of the documents, synthesizing open coding into a more concentrated, focused system of descriptors. Researchers met to discuss the focused codes to develop a common system. In areas of a disagreement, another team member was consulted to review the data. Two of the three members needed to agree on the focused code before it was added to the codebook, for an initial interrater reliability score of .66. This focused coding schematic was additionally employed to code the transcript of the mentor focus group, to distill key elements across data sources. Subsequently, five assertions—more detailed explanations of each of the focused codes—were developed to explicate elements that were salient to candidate–mentor relationships and their impact on candidates’ development as culturally responsive educators. This then led to a theoretical construct, crystallizing what Strauss and Corbin (1998) label the “centrality of the story” (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Data Analysis.

Data source
Candidate dialogue journals	Mentor focus group	Courageous conversation	Lesson plans	Teaching observations
Open coding
hospitality¹; caring¹; genuine²; kindness¹; concern¹; wisdom²; community²; loving¹; gratitude¹; mobilization²; assets²; family²; race³; power³; privilege³; persistence²; perseverance²; resilience²; faith²; culturally responsive pedagogy⁴; action and agency⁵	feel valued¹; feel like experts^2,3; feel like teachers^1,2,3; pride²; family¹; joining¹; lasting; mutuality¹; conquering stereotype⁵; undoing racism⁵; reciprocal¹	expressions of caring¹; significant concern regarding inequity⁵; connecting content to experience⁴; developing commitment to action⁵; systemic racism/classism³; neighborhood strengths²	culturally responsive literature⁴; reference to neighborhood landmarks⁴; narratives privileging children’s experience⁴; reference to / invitation of community members⁴; incorporation of neighborhood images / history⁴; education for social justice⁵; community members as coteachers^3,4	call and response pedagogy⁴; infusing interactivity⁴; spaces for physicality⁴; emphasis on personal connection and caring relationships¹; allow for children’s input¹; flexibility¹; commitment to social justice⁵
Focused coding
Care¹	Community²	Consicousness³	Curriculum/pedagogy⁴	Commitment⁵
Assertions
1. Mentors’ care, concern, and hospitality provided candidates a connection to community values and beliefs
2. Authentic, caring relationships with mentors allowed candidates to view the community in terms of its strength and resilience, replacing an original deficit orientation
3. Caring relationships with mentors allowed for meaningful conversations on race, power, and privilege, through which a beginning critical consciousness emerged
4. Candidates were able to begin connecting community learning to classroom curriculum and pedagogy.
5. Candidate learning in a caring community reinforced a commitment to culturally responsive practice and equity in education
Theoretical construct
Authentic relationships between candidates and community mentors—relationships where candidates feel cared for and thereby connected to the community—provide a transformative space for becoming culturally responsive teachers.

Findings

Through authentic participation in Whitely, and in particular, through authentic, caring relationships with community mentors, candidates engaged in a space that fortified their emerging orientations toward culturally responsive teaching. To develop and enact such beginning stances, candidates engaged in deep and critical reflection, deconstructing preconceived deficit notions and reconstructing new asset-oriented schema. Exemplars of candidate reflection relative to each of the five assertions are offered below as evidence of their cognitive and affective reorientation, made possible through authentic and caring relationships with community mentors.

Assertion 1: Experiencing Care, Concern, and Hospitality

According to Noddings (2003), all humans want to feel welcome, particularly in new settings. Candidates in the Schools Within the Context of Community program offer no exception to this tenet, and although they are voluntarily participating in this program, being off-campus, and in novel environs, they present somewhat apprehensively as the experience commences. During the first week of the semester, faculty lead candidates in community-building activities through which they begin to develop relationships with each other, and through which faculty can begin to become acquainted with candidates’ personalities, individual interests, and orientations toward the work ahead. We intentionally structure these experiences not only to model the imperative of developing classroom community but also so that we can know enough to carefully match candidates to mentor families. On Friday of the first week, we host a breakfast where candidates meet their mentor family for the first time. Following the breakfast, mentor families lead candidates on a walk throughout the neighborhood, stopping at points of pride, and contextualizing the spaces where much of our learning will occur over the next 15 weeks. Functioning as an official “welcome to the neighborhood,” the hospitality extended by neighborhood mentors is not lost on candidates. In their first reflective journal of the semester, candidates often speak to the significance of this event, as is illustrated in Candace’s entry:

Once we met our mentor, I wasn’t nervous anymore! He was so friendly, and it was so nice to meet him and his wife. As we walked around the neighborhood, I just kept hearing faculty reminding us to pay attention to things that surprise us. Well immediately, I was surprised at the waving cars driving by. I know we have been told that Whitely is a neighborhood that is welcoming and hospitable, but I hadn’t yet had a chance to experience it myself. It almost made me sad that people in my own neighborhood at home wouldn’t slow down, roll down their window, and yell kind greetings to each other like they did here. I was blown away by the really nice, gorgeous churches they have and the importance of generational connections that people discussed as we walked. In my neighborhood, there isn’t that deep love for one another, which made me feel really alone. When we stopped at one of the churches, however, the pastor’s wife invited us to come back in the evening to play black light dodge ball with people from the congregation. Several of us decided to attend, and we were met by loving people that graciously welcomed us to join in. It makes me long for a community like this one to invest in. I feel so fortunate that I am already beginning to feel at home!

Although primed to view the community through an asset lens, Candace’s response is imbued with the persistent language of deficit, as evidence in her surprise at the depth of community connection and grandness of the churches. Yet, Candace’s emblematic reflection is evidence of how mentors’ hospitality created a welcoming space that put her more at ease in this new and unfamiliar terrain. After only this first encounter, she has begun to appreciate the generational legacy of the neighborhood, as well as the social and familial capital that connects and sustains individuals in their life and work. Although she will come to learn much more about the neighborhood, its history, and its collective vision, this warm reception to the neighborhood provides fertile ground for this future exploration and a space where deficit perspectives can be critically challenged.

Additionally salient is the extent to which this caring context sets the stage for candidates’ self-imposed accountability for the remainder of the semester. Mentors’ concern for and commitment to candidates’ success can be action-provoking, resulting in increased effort. Faculty mediation of the parallels of the impact of this original hospitality on candidates’ orientation toward learning during the semester, and how they might structure a similar environment of care and connection in their future classrooms both reinforce and bolster candidates’ understanding of principles foundational to culturally responsive teaching as they move forward in the semester.

Assertion 2: Interpreting Community Strength and Resilience

As is true for many communities of color in the United States, Whitely is plagued by stereotypes that negatively affect outsiders’ view of it—this despite a rich history of successful community mobilization efforts. A recent example from the local city newspaper, in which a reporter altered the name of a main thoroughfare to include “ghetto,” is illustrative of the pervasive nature of these stereotypes. Unsurprisingly, students on campus, many of whom are drawn from the local area, subscribe to these stereotypes (Kreamelmeyer, Kline, Zygmunt, & Clark, 2016) and have been advised to avoid this part of town—the implication, of course, is that the neighborhood is “bad,” and/or “dangerous.” Countering this narrative, Makenzie reflects,

Although I am now horrified at the comment in the newspaper, I am ashamed to admit that I probably would have believed it before this program. At the beginning of the semester, I didn’t really know what to expect. I have heard so many times from others on campus that you should never “cross the tracks” and I am sure that impacted me, even if I didn’t think it did. I have caught myself being surprised, over and over again, at the tremendous wealth of this “poor” community, which tells me that I thought something different coming in. My relationship with my mentor has allowed me to experience the spiritual strength of the community through participation in church, and through her expression of faith in almost every conversation we have. I have also been able to experience amazing mobilization efforts through participation with my mentor at community council meetings, which show me the strength of the neighborhood in working together to make things happen. My mentor has shared important history that helps me understand how these things have evolved over time, as well as the barriers that have been overcome in order to make the gains I see today. Without my mentor, I wouldn’t see the perseverance and resilience of this neighborhood throughout history, how oppression continues, and how residents continue to persist. Our open and honest conversations show me a past that I was privileged to be personally unaware of.

Makenzie’s comments, representative of those of her peers, illustrate her shifting schema, which she attributes to experiences in the community and her relationship with her mentor. Her metacognition is evidence of how she is juxtaposing previous conceptions with emerging understanding, thus illustrating a process through which deconstruction of prior schema is complemented by rebuilding a new lens through which to view (Gay, 1985). This is made possible by an authentic and caring relationship with a mentor who provides a voice that challenges the traditional and frequently racist/classist narrative of marginalized communities. In relation with her mentor, Makenzie is not only hearing about but instead experiencing community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) which can be absent in all-too-common, deficit-laden descriptions of marginalized neighborhoods where the strength and fortitude that inform individuals’ collective struggle for survival is rarely acknowledged. Here, we see the emergence of an asset orientation that will serve Makenzie well when developing future relationships and will shape expectations she will hold for the children and families with whom she will work.

Assertion 3: Developing a Beginning Critical Consciousness

Each semester, we explore opportunities to enrich candidates’ experience in general, and the candidate–mentor relationship in particular. During one semester, we were fortunate to take a field trip to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Manageable as a day trip, the bus drive provided opportunities for candidates and their mentors to further their relationships. This trip afforded the occasion for significant learning, outside of the museum experience, as noted by Natalie in the reflection below:

On the way home, my mentor and I were discussing the exhibits at the museum. While a lot of this was new learning for me, it was clear that this was not the case for my mentor. I wonder why this was not a part of my education. The heaviness of the day resulted in moments of quiet reflection on the way home. As we drove through the small towns at one point, I said: “don’t you just love small towns?” and my mentor responded, “no—not at all.” . . . Without judging me, she then told me about growing up, the fear she and her family felt driving through small towns in Indiana, and how they would intentionally go around such spaces to avoid danger. I never considered this perspective, as this was not part of my personal experience. I will never forget this conversation, and I’ll never look at small towns the same way again.

In this example, the construct of authentic care is illustrated by Natalie’s mentor, who, with the intent of educating, carefully explains the racist legacy of the state, interrupting the privilege Natalie has enjoyed in experiencing the beauty of Indiana small towns. To further mediate this learning, faculty were able to direct Natalie to James Loewen’s (2005) Sundown Towns as a means through which to support her continued reckoning with her own privilege and the lens it has afforded her. The authentic and caring exchange between Natalie and her mentor reinforces the reality of disparate positionalities, further facilitating the development of her critical consciousness.

Assertion 4: Connecting Community Learning to Classroom Practice

Throughout the semester, candidates are encouraged to participate in the community to the fullest extent possible. At the community center, we keep a calendar of events which include the following: family nights at the elementary school, community clean up days, neighborhood council meetings, community festivals, school board meetings, and other opportunities to engage in the neighborhood. Early in the semester, we also encourage candidates to attend church, preferably with their mentor families. Many of our candidates come from Christian families; however, the rituals at their home churches contrast significantly from the spiritual traditions in the Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal churches in Whitely. Prior to their first encounter in church, we examine work on the pedagogy of preaching (Emdin, 2016). During their visit to church, we ask candidates to carefully observe the teaching techniques used by the pastor and the ensuing level of engagement among members of the congregation.⁷ Reflecting upon her first visit, Mallory shares,

On Sunday I attended church [in Whitely] for the first time. I feel as if fun is not always a word used to describe church, but honestly I had fun. I truly enjoyed myself, and the opportunity to get to observe how other people worship. This was the first time that I had really been to a predominately African American church in America, except for attending a funeral. It was certainly a new experience, and it allowed me to learn a lot, specifically about preaching pedagogy. I noticed how my mentor, Pastor Johnson, truly engaged the crowd. He asked questions or made comments, to which many of the church-goers would respond with “Amen,” “Yes Lord,” or “I know that’s right.” It was so different from my church. My pastor [at home] engages the church body, but not like this. The crowd was so tuned in that people would randomly stand up, and yell out. At some points, it was almost a call and response between them and Pastor Johnson. He truly worked the room. He would move from one side of the stage to the other, and occasionally move down a few of the stairs towards the audience, scanning the room with his eyes. His preaching was also a full-body presentation. He motioned with his hands, giving the message not only with his voice, but also through his movements. Additionally, he started out more quiet and reserved. However, as he approached a main point, his voice would grow louder, and the emphasis could be physically seen and heard. At several points he was yelling, overcome with passion, to really drive his point. It was certainly powerful. The service was two hours long, and yet I was engaged the entire time. That is not something that often happens for me. Pastor Johnson was an excellent example for teaching. He made references to the community, the church members, and to other topics that they could relate to. He was culturally relevant. He was passionate. He was knowledgeable. And he certainly cared about his job.

Mallory’s reflection is evidence of the connections she is making between community learning and classroom teaching. This reflection, and other similar reflections from the cohort, provide faculty an entrée to extend candidates’ considerations of their future practice based on this learning. For example, faculty can encourage candidates to reflect on permissible expressions of engagement in church and in the classroom, how these differ, and how they might be more aligned. Additional attention can be directed to the pedagogies the candidate observed on the part of the preacher and opportunities to integrate movement, volume, and “working the room” into classroom teaching. Underscoring the relationship between the pastor’s knowledge and passion and the candidate’s engagement can additionally inform the significance of preparation and enthusiasm for teaching. Finally, the extent to which the pastor connected his message to the congregations’ experiences, making it culturally responsive, lays the foundation for how candidates will develop activities and experiences, practice delivery strategies, and ultimately implement lessons for children in their classrooms in the weeks ahead.

Assertion 5: Committing to Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies and Educational Equity

A powerful example of enacting constructs of social justice sprung from the curricular decisions of one of our candidates who was placed in a first-grade classroom and who, along with her class, attended a field trip to our local children’s museum (see Bell, 2014). During the visit, the candidate was observing one of the exhibits—a train that encircles a mock up of our city, complete with miniature townspeople—with a young Black student who, after observing the display, asked, “Why aren’t there any Black people?” At first caught off guard, the candidate walked around the display with the child, hoping to find at least one figurine representing a person of color, only to confirm the child’s initial observation. When returning to the classroom, our candidate asked the child to share what she had observed with the other children, at which time the class decided together to write a letter to the children’s museum asking them to remedy the injustice. Together, the class embarked on a search for Black miniatures, and upon finding some, returned to the museum, where the child was invited by museum staff to place the first figurine in the display. The child did so, proudly, pronouncing, “Now they can all be happy together.” Sylvia reflected on her experience, stating,

Had I not been in this program and this had happened, I probably would have told the little girl that “I guess that’s just the way the people made the display.” My experiences with my mentor in the community, and the examples I have seen of how people mobilize against injustice gave me the courage to take on this project with the children. The children felt strongly that they should be able to see people who look like them in a display that is supposed to represent their city. Through this, we all learned together that no matter what age you are, you can make a difference.

This, and other examples of candidates enacting activist educational experiences with children would not be possible without their authentic participation in the life of the neighborhood—participation that engendered their understandings of children’s lives outside of school, as well as the values and beliefs of neighborhood residents—and, more importantly, without their relationships with community mentors. The caring bonds established between mentors and candidates created a transformative space for significant learning to occur. Candidates’ relationships with mentors, coupled with meaningful experiential learning, resulted in opportunities to challenge and disrupt their preconceived notions, develop their critical consciousness, and, importantly, increase their capacity to care about such issues. The care afforded to candidates allowed them to care for students and the community in more empathic ways. With this vital cognizance, candidates were equipped with the knowledge of both content and pedagogy, and the will through which to make experiences relevant and engaging for the children with whom they worked. Their interactions and experiences in the neighborhood and with their mentors also elevated issues of race, power, privilege, and equity, informing the development of candidates’ agency and subsequent action to engage children in the work of social justice.

Discussion

In the present study, candidates’ encounter experiences with their community mentors—experiences that are intentionally and intensely scaffolded by faculty throughout the semester—lead to important reflection that challenged previous conceptions of race, culture, power, and privilege. It was the care extended to candidates by their mentors, however, that was pivotal, fostering a transformative space through which to dismantle prior schema and construct a new lens through which to view the world. The application of these cogent understandings to candidates’ teaching surfaces as evidence of the beginnings of “critical social consciousness” (Ford & Dillard, 1996), which is characterized by a call to action. The personal and professional change engendered through this context of caring is vast and is aptly summarized in Makenzie’s final reflection:

I came into this experience thinking that I was going to save children and families. What I never expected, and what I have come to understand, is that they saved me.

For candidates to become culturally responsive teachers, they must move beyond deficit perspectives that see students and families in need of “saving” and instead seek to learn and understand communities’ cultural wealth, as well as the larger social and historical contexts that shape people’s lives, including their own. When educators “engage the real-life experiences of their students, while simultaneously understanding and critically examining how their own experiences shape their understandings of students, the real work of social change and ending inequity happens” (Fasching-Varner & Seriki, 2012, p. 4). Only readied with this relational stance and ethical orientation will candidates be well-prepared to privilege the wisdom and expertise of communities as a decisive and essential element of their teaching, caring deeply about issues of justice, and committing to the ambitious, yet achievable agenda of educational equity for all children. Among all of the other data presented as evidence supporting our thesis, it is the potential of this future orientation toward teaching and learning that compels us to continue our efforts.

Lest it appear that the work of mentors is one-sided, data support the argument that relationships between mentors, candidates, and the larger program of community-engaged teacher preparation transcend an exchange of services, and rather speak to the weaving of lives around a common vision of preparing culturally responsive teachers. As one mentor explained,

What we have done is worked together—in unity—we have “joined” each other. Joining is different than working alongside each other. Our work has become entwined—inseparable—and because we are woven, our efforts are stronger than they would be otherwise. When you have joined, you don’t let go.

Further explaining the impact of these relationships, another mentor offered,

This program was birthed from the self-identified needs of a community, not a university coming in to “fix” us and then leaving after a semester. What we are doing works, because together, we have committed to the vision of developing the teachers that all children need. In true relationship, we work alongside each other to achieve this dream . . . we are valued as experts.

As valued community experts, mentors together with faculty, take their responsibility for training candidates to be culturally responsive seriously. Although we cannot not neglect nor alter the racialized history of caring, we are unceasingly conscious of this power imbalance and together, with the community, we continue to renegotiate and integrate our joint and separate agendas to construct a more “hybrid space” (Zeichner, 2010).

Implications and Limitations

At a time when the relevancy of teacher preparation programs is being fiercely debated, this study provides evidence for a transformation in the traditional pedagogy through which we build future teachers. The present study illustrates how a community-engaged model of teacher preparation can develop educators who are critically conscious of the power dynamics shaping teaching and learning and who recognize that honoring and affirming children’s lived experience is requisite to their success as educators. Preparation that focuses on authentic community engagement and that privileges the expertise of communities can influence the development of teachers who are prepared to effectively reach and teach an increasingly diverse population of children. With additional research to support these findings (Catapano & Huisman, 2010; Madda, Skinner, & Schultz, 2012; Sharkey, Olarte, & Ramirez, 2016; Whipp, 2013; Zygmunt & Clark, 2016), we assert that a paradigm of authentic community engagement in teacher preparation is a compelling and justifiable direction for the field.

It is imperative that more empirical work examining the preparation of culturally responsive educators be conducted. Although previous scholarship persuasively makes the case for the need for teachers with such orientations, we require more work that looks at how candidates are prepared and how they transition into practice. Although candidates in the present study demonstrated tremendous growth, it was beyond the scope of this study to investigate how these candidates will apply their new learning to their future classrooms. In addition, studies that look at how individual teachers navigate new community spaces (outside a structured program such as ours) would significantly contribute to the field.

Additional examination of power structures is also warranted as we consider the imbalance of responsibility in teaching White people about racism, and how this burden can frequently fall on the shoulders of the oppressed (Kivel, 2011). In consideration of such, we contemplate the implications of an education preparation program predicated upon members of a minoritized neighborhood educating predominantly White candidates, being critically conscious of the politics of such care, and adhering to principles of reciprocity through which such power is renegotiated, shared, and comaximized as we work to achieve our mutual goals: a new and more committed cadre of future teachers, an enhanced educational setting for children, and indeed a stronger community.

Finally, more data are required to understand the extent to which community mentors benefit from relationships with future teachers, and through their partnership with this community-engaged program of educator preparation. Yet, what is clear is that mentors, as valued community experts, take their responsibility for training candidates to be culturally responsive seriously. By building caring connections with candidates, they facilitate the conditions that allow candidates to appreciate the wisdom, values, and assets of the community. These relationships challenge candidates’ preconceived mind-sets of poor, minority communities, furthering their growth trajectories from deficit orientations toward a strength and resilience framework.

Conclusion

The sheer amount of love that pours out of this community is mind blowing. And it’s not that I didn’t have that kind of love where I’m from, I think it’s just muted. I think it’s held back and kept under moderation. But not in Whitely—here they love out loud. I do think it is a culture thing, something that I couldn’t have experienced if I wasn’t a part of it. (Candace, emphasis added)

Smitherman (1997) argues that given the social as well as religious purpose churches serve, the “preacher’s job as leader of his flock is to make churchgoers feel at home and deal with the problems and realities confronting his people as they cope with the demands and stresses of daily living” (p. 87). Teaching, though rarely conceptualized as such in practice, is also social and requires that teachers take on the role of “leaders of their flocks” where they foster deep, authentic, caring relationships so that students feel at home. Teachers cannot begin to do this work if they do not understand the contextual dimensions of caring relationships and if they themselves have not experienced that type of care themselves. As we continue our program of community-engaged teacher preparation, we do so convicted in our belief that authentic relationships between candidates and members of diverse communities can be transformative in the development of culturally responsive teachers, and therefore transformative for children whose lives depend on educators who are prepared to both reach and teach. Our program of community-engaged teacher preparation is predicated upon candidates being “a part of it” and on the community mentors who exercise intentional and authentic care in inviting them into the spaces where they can access and experience the cultural wealth that is a requisite component of their ability to become culturally responsive teachers. We continue to be grateful that we have been welcomed into this space, where we all have been made to “feel at home.”

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

Eva Zygmunt is the Helen Gant Elmore distinguished professor of elementary education, and cofounder of the Schools Within the Context of Community community-engaged program of teacher preparation at Ball State University. She is the coauthor of the book Transforming Teacher Education for Social Justice (Teachers College Press, 2015). She is also the current codirector of the Alliance for Community-Engaged Teacher Preparation, a network of teacher educators committed to the development of community-engaged, socially just, and equity-focused future teachers.

Kristin Cipollone is assistant professor of elementary education at Ball State University. Her two strands of research focus on the intersections of race, class, and schooling and their influence on the (re)production and maintenance of inequality, and the preparation of culturally responsive teachers. She is coauthor of the recent book Class Warfare: Class, Race, and College Admission in Top-Tier Secondary Schools (University of Chicago, 2014).

Susan Tancock is a professor and assistant chair in the Department of Elementary Education, where she teaches literacy methods courses. She is committed to preparing preservice teachers to serve racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse students and to address issues of equity in today’s schools.

Jon Clausen is associate professor of educational technology and secondary education. His work emphasizes teacher learning and development with an emphasis on technology integration within instructional contexts. His research focus is on addressing issues related to teacher development, technology integration, and preparing teachers to work in culturally diverse instructional contexts.

Patricia Clark is professor of early childhood education, chair of the Department of Elementary Education, and cofounder of the Schools Within the Context of Community community-engaged program of teacher preparation at Ball State University. Her research focuses on early childhood education and diversity. She is the coauthor of the book Transforming Teacher Education for Social Justice (Teachers College Press, 2015).

Winnie Mucherah is a professor of developmental psychology. Her research interests include classroom climate and reading motivation and achievement in middle school students, self-concept and achievement, self-concept and self-esteem among minorities, significance of native languages, perceptions of homosexuality, and cross-cultural research focusing on adolescents.

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