Expanding Elementary Teacher Education through Service-Learning: A Handbook on Extending Literacy Field Experience for 21st Century Urban Teacher Preparation

About the Book

Teacher education programs and colleges of education face a multilayered task of preparing teachers to teach in increasingly divergent environments where children of color encompass a significant number of urban school populations. Yet the teaching force remains predominantly white, middle-income, monolingual, and female. Compounding this complex issue, the racial and the socio-economic makeup of many teacher education faculty mirrors the teacher candidate population.

The goal of this handbook is to offer teacher educators a blue print for strengthening and extending traditional literacy field experiences to include service-learning components. As literacy teacher educators, Sulentic Dowell and Meidl demonstrate how teacher education can be transformed to include more authentic, meaningful, and preparatory field experiences. Adding service-learning components expands teacher education to more adequately prepare elementary education candidates to meet children’s needs in 21st century, urban elementary classrooms. This handbook considers the need to redefine and reconfigure teacher education in regards to literacy teaching and learning.

Table of Contents:

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Field Experience and Service-Learning: Preparing Elementary Teachers for 21st Century Urban Challenges
Chapter 2: The Efficacy of Service-Learning Embedded Field Experiences in Urban Teacher Preparation
Chapter 3: Considerations when Cultivating Partners and Establishing Field Experience Placements
Chapter 4: Collaboration and Commitment
Chapter 5: Organizing and Managing a Service-Learning Field Experience
Chapter 6: Embedded Service-learning Components in Educational Field Experience
Chapter 7: Alternative Partners and Placements
Chapter 8: Assessing Service-Learning Field Experiences
Appendix: Service-Learning Resources
Bibliography
About the Authors

About the Author :

Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell, Ph.D. is a professor of literacy and urban education at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, where she also serves as director of the LSU Writing Project and coordinator of the Elementary Grades 1-5 Teacher Education Program. Sulentic Dowell'sresearch agenda is focused on literacy in urban settings, specifically the complexities of literacy leadership, providing access to literature, writing, and the arts, and service-learning as a pathway to preparing pre-service teachers to teach literacy authentically in urban environs. She was editor of the Literacy and Social Responsibility ejournal from 2009-2014. Sulentic Dowell spent 15 years as an educator in the Waterloo, Iowa Community Schools and was a service-learning faculty fellow at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg. She is also former assistant superintendent for 64 elementary schools in the East Baton Rouge Parish School System.

Tynisha D. Meidl, Ph.D. is associate professor of teacher education at St. Norbert College in De Pere, WI where she also serves as the co-chair of the teacher education program. She earned her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from Pennsylvania State University. Meidl teaches literacy courses aimed at assisting pre-service teachers enter the classroom as proficient literacy teachers. Her research expertise includes curriculum planning for linguistically and culturally diverse student populations, service-learning as pedagogy, as well as Freirean-based approaches in literacy classrooms. Prior to joining the faculty at St. Norbert, she taught in the Baltimore City Public Schools and in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. Meidl is a Teach for America Almuni and current co-editor of the Literacy and Social Responsibility ejournal.

Review :
Sulentic Dowell and Meidl offer literacy teacher educators a handbook for considering, implementing, and assessing service learning preservice teacher preparation. By partnering with schools or alternative educational organizations, preservice teachers can hone their skills as culturally responsive literacy teachers, engaged in a partnership intentionally designed by their college/university and the schools. Engaging in service learning preparation provides preservice teachers with opportunities and reflections on their cultural backgrounds and those of the students whom they serve and will serve. In their handbook, Expanding Elementary Teacher Education through Service-Learning, Margaret-Mary Dowell and Tynisha Meidl ask the right questions about engaged literacy practice and meaningful teacher preparation, and their handbook offers a clear narrative on how to advance the redesign that is necessary to ensure that community youth have engaged learning opportunities. Importantly, Margaret-Mary and Ty identify ways to enhance teacher preparation through community-based field practice opportunities for developing teachers. By focusing on literacy development, the authors have skirted the concerns about high-stakes testing to focus on meaningful learning outcomes. Their handbook expands our thinking and affirms the importance of community-engaged practice and advances justice. It is a must read for literacy scholars, teacher educators, and service-learning practitioners. This handbook is accessibly written and provides current and future teachers with the critical skill sets necessary to be effective educators and reflective practitioners. The practical framework of this book will enable teachers to quickly and easily put theory into practice in a culturally nuanced way. Because the authors situate the act of teaching within the context of our complex democratic society, their knowledge and wisdom serves to inspire and inform all teacher educators. Ty and Margaret-Mary adopt a critical lens, capturing the realities for teacher educators when implementing service-learning pedagogy in urban contexts. They propose a vision for the future that opens the door to rethinking, what they term as medial field placements, as sites where service-learning can occur. They underline the fact that pre-service need to engage in authentic urban teaching experiences as part of their preparation. Post-secondary educators have discussed for decades the value of Service-Learning in our nation’s K– 12 classrooms, yet have failed to prepare pre-service teachers on the value or implementation of these experiences. Expanding Elementary Teacher Education through Service-Learning is a researched based, resource guide that supports university faculty as they embed Service-Learning experiences within the multi-leveled field experiences in teacher education programs. Focused on expanding the literacy learning of all students K–12 through Service-Learning; this handbook helps instructors identify and respond to the specific needs of the surrounding communities of our nation’s under-resourced schools. Practical, ongoing opportunities and first-hand experiences for pre-service teachers will increase how future teachers value and implement Service-Learning in their classrooms. These experiences will help emerging teaching professionals transform their teaching and commitment to authentic literacy learning experiences for the students they work with in K-12 classrooms; developing and transforming the efficacy of Service-Learning. In 1900, Dewey proposed that “the school itself shall be made a genuine form ofactive community life, instead of a place set apart in which to learn lessons.” Unfortunately, traditional teacher preparation programs can serve to rarify this disconnect between the school and community. In their dynamic and pragmatic book, Expanding Elementary Teacher Education through Service-Learning, Sulentic Dowell and Meidl offer a solution. By embedding pre-service elementary teachers in service-learning enhanced medial field experiences, the authors offer a pedagogical model which authentically engages students in serving urban communities while scaffolding instructional expertise and critical reflection of dispositions. This handbook serves as a practical guide for teacher educators and administrators as well as service-learning professionals to holistically develop, implement, and evaluate programs which produce culturally and linguistically responsive urban educators.