What Teacher Preparation Programs Can Do to Better Prepare Teachers to Meet the Challenges of Educating Students Living in Poverty

Abstract

Because of the present, increasing economic circumstances, poverty is fast becoming a crisis, and teacher preparation programs must begin to prepare teachers to explicitly address the needs of poor children. The inclusion of poverty in this discourse is in no way intended to discount the issues of race, ethnicity, and gender. The intention here is to highlight the fact that some social issues are excluded from the teacher preparation curriculum—and to the detriment of students' education. Given the changes in student demographics, there is a need for educators to rethink how discussions of diversity can be integrated into the teacher preparation curriculum. Clearly, we cannot continue in the same old way. The question for future studies is how to broaden the discourse on diversity to include poverty, without stereotyping children living in poverty. The discourse must change to reflect the realities of society while guarding against stereotyping and thus creating self-fulfilling prophecies.