The Art of Juggling: Preparing Preservice Teachers for Urban Schools

Abstract

Urban teaching, like juggling, requires specific attributes, and both preservice teachers and teacher educators must become skilled in the habits of mind and heart that help teachers juggle the realities of the urban educational context. This article describes a university-school partnership that prepares teachers for and in this context, delineating its philosophical foundations, candidate selection criteria, and program components. It details the program's intentionally constructivist emphasis, which is aimed at a singular, vital yield: strong urban teachers who are expert jugglers, who simultaneously demonstrate effective practice, resist burnout, and dramatically influence urban students' achievement while contributing to educational reform. The juggler is both skillful and artful, performing feats that, although they look effortless, are difficult for most people. Juggling demands a repertoire of knowledge and skills. It also demands something less tangible: consistent focus and vision. Teaching, like juggling, requires these same attributes, and both preservice teachers and the teacher educators who prepare them must demonstrate these attributes. However, teaching in urban schools requires a special set of skills and attitudes because there are apt to be more balls to keep in the air and more contingencies to consider. Teacher education programs that prepare urban teachers must therefore be especially mindful of and deliberate about addressing these additional complexities. Several features in common define the trajectory of the urban secondary school juggling act: (a) higher percentages of youth placed at risk for school failure due to the low expectations held of urban secondary school students and weak pedagogical practice in these schools (Haberman, 1995b; Howey, 1998); (b) higher percentages of youth placed at risk because these youths' own loci of control frequently vacillate and their attributions about what they can or cannot control in their lives are skewed toward luck or fate rather than effort (Weiner, 1994); (c) multiple forays into school reform that have produced limited successes (Heneg, Hula, Orr, & Pedescleaux, 1999); (d) a climate that is often counterproductive to student learning (Bowman, 1994); (e) economic contingencies that negatively affect the services that can be provided to the urban secondary student population as well as to teachers (e.g., salary, staffing, and infrastructure support; Quality Counts, 1998); and (f) an increasing awareness of the so-called digital divide, which causes urban teachers and students to fall woefully behind their more affluent suburban peers in the acquisition of technological skills (Benton Foundation, 2000; U.S. Department of Commerce, 1999). Added to these concerns, high levels of teacher attrition and retirements are causing shortages of teachers in all types of school settings, but special education and urban contexts are the areas most dramatically affected.1 It is within this milieu of macro- and micro-issues that teaching and learning must improve and that the teacher, like the juggler, must become knowledgeable, skillful, and committed to the vision that this complex feat is possible. More than ever, urban teachers need to be able to handle yet another decidedly sensitive ball, that of advocating for social justice and, concurrently, for teacher preparation programs that intentionally address issues of equity with regard to race, class, gender, and ability. Given that good teachers typically and actively engage in ongoing collaboration and reflective working relationships with their colleagues and other educational stakeholders, teacher educators should develop and support multifaceted preparation programs that include rigorous courses of study and meaningful intensive internships for the teachers who will serve in our nation's urban school systems. The goal of such programs should be to help urban teachers develop and maintain a provocative vision of their own teaching-along a continuum from its ultimate purpose to its immediate objectives-- despite any obstacles that may come their way and despite the complex and sometimes debilitating context of urban schools. …