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Gloria Ladson-Billings

February 2004

Which teachers are most likely to be assigned to the nation's most challenging urban schools?

Young, inexperienced ones.

It doesn't seem to make sense. Medicine, law, architecture, and other professions have well-established systems of clinical preparation that support novices as they grow into greater responsibilities and more complex work.

Yet few new teachers in urban schools receive adequate training as they enter the profession. They face large numbers of students who are poor, who come from varied racial and ethnic families, and who speak a first language other than English.

In response to this crisis, UW-Madison education professor Gloria Ladson-Billings and colleagues developed Teach for Diversity (TFD), a graduate program for aspiring teachers who wish to teach in diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic settings.

New teachers are among the more vulnerable professionals in schools, says Ladson-Billings, and they need to be nurtured and supported. Despite their youthful and idealistic enthusiasm, most new teachers are frightened and overwhelmed by the demands of teaching, she says. They need well-planned and well-implemented professional development that helps them learn about their work as they take their first, tentative steps in the profession.

Teach for Diversity resulted from concerns Ladson-Billings and colleagues had about students' lack of clear understanding of the intellectual lives of teachers and lack of commitment to principles of human diversity, equity, social justice. A second concern was the fragmentation of preservice teachers' academic and professional course work. A third concern was the gap between course work and field experiences.

Three cohorts of students have completed the TFD program. Here's what Ladson-Billings and colleagues have learned:

1. Prospective teachers working in diverse communities need opportunities to learn about the students in the context of the community. Students' success at home and in the community rarely reflects itself in school tasks. The TFD students came to form different opinions about students' strengths and capabilities by participating in community-based programs like day camps and neighborhood centers.
2. Prospective teachers working in diverse community schools need an opportunity to apprentice with skilled cooperating teachers. Their placement with knowledgeable, experienced teachers gives them the opportunity to try new things in a supportive context.
3. Prospective teachers working in diverse community schools need opportunities to ask many questions about teachers and teaching.
4. Prospective teachers need the opportunity to do serious intellectual work. Ladson-Billings and colleagues emphasized to TFD participants that intellectual work was a major part of the enterprise. Participants were challenged to use, test, and challenge theory as they improved their practice.

Despite the excellent students recruited into the program, Ladson-Billings and colleagues continued to struggle with helping the students become well-prepared beginning teachers. Some students initially lacked an appreciation for the complexity of teaching. But before long, they understood that teaching is a demanding and stressful job. They learned that the responsibilities of teaching extend beyond teacher and student to include parents, communities, colleagues, and supervisors.

A program like TFD cannot cover all of the challenges prospective teachers face, says Ladson-Billings. Neither can such a program overcome the limitations of institutions like schools, universities, and state departments of education. But even with its shortcomings, TFD offers some promise for thinking creatively about teacher education.

Teacher education cannot reform itself by itself. It needs help from constituents across the educational landscape. It also needs help from an undervalued source—novice teachers.

For more information, see Ladson-Billings's Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms (Jossey-Bass, 2001) and The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children (Jossey-Bass, 1994). Ladson-Billings can be reached at gjladson@wisc.edu