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(I. 4,311.1: $1: :— 33: .1 39:31.... .1 . x... .. 1.1 . 1 ‘ «A .1? . . , .1 .1! f . .... . , 12...... 1931mm flunk}... a ! : O . .x‘ . : ll . .1. 1 7- 3 ob O - :---- a r“, Micmy: 11 State University This is to certify that the dissertation entitled TELLING THE FUTURE: NARRATING URBAN TEACHING IDENTITES presented by MARINI CALETTE LEE has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirementsfor the degree in Curriculum, Instruction and Ph.D. Teacher Education 101:6! M WLWJW 911.41ch [ Major Professor's Signature) ) O 'l - l « ,9 cm . Date MSU is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer I..---I-I-'_"Qv- -OOCOO-ago-------o-o-o--o------ _..—-q—. .. _. . _.._ PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record. TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due. ! MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE 5/08 K:/Prolecc&Pres/ClRC/Dateoue.indd TELLING THE FUTURE: NARRATING URBAN TEACHING IDENTITIES By Marini Calette Lee A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Curriculum, Instruction and Teacher Education 2010 IELl If constructmr. Mghhghttht dispositions. which lhlS nc of ldcntlt} u lhisstud} 1m. presen’ice lea. Specific conrcx nine-month urb Cine studies. {hr Process suppon focused; cache: ll 15 dissertaliu: generative [00}. ABSTRACT TELLING THE FUTURE: NARRATING URBAN TEACHING IDENTITIES By Marini Calette Lee This dissertation is a qualitative narrative study of preservice teachers’ construction of urban teaching identities. While studies of urban teacher preparation highlight the need for teacher education programs to foster certain requisite knowledge, dispositions, attitudes, beliefs and skills, more studies are required to illuminate ways in which this need can be operationalized successfully. Based upon sociolinguistic theories of identity construction in which identifying is defined as oral and written storytelling, this study investigated the construction of urban teaching identities primarily narrated by preservice teacher candidates and assisted by a teacher educator/researcher within the specific context of the teacher candidates’ experiences lead-teaching in the latter half of a nine-month urban student teaching internship. Utilizing narrative analyses to produce case studies, this study illuminates the ways in which a narrative writing and exchange process supported teacher candidates’ reflection, analysis and integration of urban focused-teacher education experiences and knowledge into an urban teaching identity. This dissertation seeks to contribute to educational research concerned with the use of identity and narratives as analytic lenses by revealing the possibilities of utilizing both as generative tools within urban teacher preparation specifically. COPYRIGHT BY Marini Calette Lee 2010 lo the low To my first 12.. To my Grann; I promix To my Dun To my gudp; DEDICATION To my God, Who is love. To the loving memory of my father, Calvin Lee. Thank you for watching over me. To my first teacher, my mother, Brenda Lee and her teaching assistant, my sister, Alisha. Thank you for your unconditional love and support. To my Granny, Mrs. Exollar Murray Williams, a strong tree whose fruit I am proud to be. I promise to follow your motto, “When in the crowd, be positive or be quiet.” To my Dad, Mike Utsey. Thank you for adopting me and loving me as your own. To my godparents, Dottie and Walter and my extended family. Thank you for keeping me grounded in love. I hope I have made you all proud. I dedicate this dissertation to my ancestors who taught me how to teach. I dedicate this dissertation to my mentors who taught me how to teach. I dedicate this dissertation to the children of Odyssey School who taught me how to teach. iv lmllst gt" Artai-‘I’mIL Dem“it on Thank you educamr. lam also If Dr. _\[ar}' 'h Thank .WU 1 Career. lam extrem; teacher and i Sharon O§ICL Matthews. \l Rttkfurd. Dr. To m} Xllt‘hh Lexa..~\l\e.\h.1. u‘tth me. and i To my] \llchlu. l?" ' 1‘1 - s I must thank m‘ Angela. Judy. P appreciated. T0 my OhlU My home at SL'PW. lam also thanlf flurch familiex ms gaduate se‘ To my little six? la ~ It. also extret‘; ducatlonal Rex sate ofllichio . ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must give special thanks to Dr. Sonya Gunnings-Moton, Dr. Dorothea Anagnostopoulos, and Dr. Christopher Dunbar, Jr. whom prophesied in a mini-van ride to Detroit on a cold January morning in 2004 that I would one day complete my PhD. Thank you for mentoring me and supporting my development as a committed urban educator. I am also thankful to my Dream Team of a committee: Dr. Dorothea Anagnostopoulos, Dr. Mary Juzwik, Dr. Susan Melnick, Dr. Avner Segall and Dr. Dorinda Carter Andrews. Thank you for your guidance and support during this project and throughout my doctoral career. I am extremely thankful for the teachers that nurtured me as a student, subsequently as a teacher and inspired me to become a teacher educator. Thank you especially to John & Sharon Osteen, Suzanne Smith, Hillary Darst, Vickie, Karen, Ms. Oline F loe, Mrs. Matthews, Mr. Rick Alatorre, Mrs. MaryLou Flannery, Mr. Andrew Kjera, Dr. John Rickford, Dr. Arnold Rampersad, Joyce Kelly and Dr. Suzanne Wilson. To my Michigan Sista Circle: My “uswe” Audrey, Rashida, Tray, Danielle, Melissa, Stef, Lexa, Akesha, Marita & Nia: Thank you for laughing with me, crying with me, praying with me, and having my back! I love you ladies with all of my heart! To my Michigan Brothers: Tommy, Dramaine, & Jim: Thank you for setting the standard high! I must thank my many wonderful Sistagirlfriends from home: Kyla, Ebony, Rikki, Gen, Angela, Judy, Pam, Tamika, Cara & Dora. Your love from afar has been greatly appreciated. To my Ohio Mom, Jeni Utsey: Thank you for providing me with a home away from home at SUPWA Island! I am also thankful for my BGSA, Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church and Brookins A.M.E. Church families who have supported me mentally, spiritually and emotionally throughout this graduate school adventure. To my little sisters: Claricha and Christian, I love you! I am also extremely grateful for the financial support I have received from The American Educational Research Association’s Minority Fellowship in Education Research and the State of Michigan’s KingChavezParks Future Faculty Fellowship. V USIOFTAI USIOFFKJ CHAPTERI. PHRODLCI Resear Organ: CHAPTLRll SharT, SharT. Dream Sunnn. Tth} Teach; SlUrch Sunun. CHAPTER m :kfgan Congc] Dumas anar Phficn RCUHM SeCUnt Other 3 ‘Dau1Q Rafion Data A Defihl COdiI15 Anah; TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................... x LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................. xi CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1 Research Questions ........................................................................... 6 Organization of the Dissertation ........................................................... 8 CHAPTER 11. REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURE ................................... 10 Star Teachers and Dreamkeepers Think Differently .................................. 10 Star Teachers ................................................................................ 1 1 Dreamkeepers .............................................................................. 14 Summary .................................................................................... 18 The Teacher Identity Crisis in Education. ........................................................... 22 Teacher Identity Research in Urban Teacher Education .............................. 24 Storied Inquiry .............................................................................. 27 Summary and Conclusion ................................................................. 32 CHAPTER III. METHODS & METHODOLOGIES ......................................... 34 A Narrative of Inquiry ..................................................................... 34 Conceptual Framework .................................................................... 41 Data Sources ................................................................................ 45 Primary Participants ........................................................................ 45 Placements .................................................................................. 48 Recruitment ................................................................................. 49 Secondary Participants ..................................................................... 50 Other Participants ........................................................................... 53 Data Collection ............................................................................. 54 Rationale for Data Collection ............................................................ 56 Data Analysis ............................................................................... 59 Defining Stories and Narratives .......................................................... 59 Coding ....................................................................................... 61 Analyzing My Stories ..................................................................... 62 vi CHAPTER I A Sn. A Res The C Come HalfI Racial Gentn Comm A L'nit Subtle [than 111ch Forest 1 Pnncip \l'ilsort Mrs. K, Hyde l’. .\1r.\. 5.. Educunt lvy Lem Concluc CHAPTER \r’, EStablh “11y Tc ACtual .1 D3) D1"; COlorin; Slimmi- CHAPTER VI. Enabhg Acumlu “llma l_ [1130] 1‘ L... SOClal S" Summar‘l CHAPTER IV. NARRATING THE STUDY’S CONTEXT ................................. 63 A Snapshot of a City ....................................................................... 63 A Researcher’s Initial Thoughts ......................................................... 64 The Community Speaks .................................................................. 64 Contested Spaces .......................................................................... 64 Half Truths ................................................................................. 65 Racial Shifts, Racial Tensions ............................................................ 65 Gentrification .............................................................................. 67 Community Response to Neighborhood Decline ...................................... 68 A Unique Position ......................................................................... 69 Subtle Differences ......................................................................... 70 Urban Renewal ............................................................................. 70 Mixed Income Housing ................................................................... 73 Forest Green Elementary School ......................................................... 74 Principal Bill ................................................................................ 75 Wilson Elementary School ............................................................... 76 Mrs. K ....................................................................................... 78 Hyde Park Elementary School ............................................................ 79 Mrs. S ........................................................................................ 81 Educational Policy Climates .............................................................. 82 Ivy League Careerists ..................................................................... 84 Concluding Thoughts ...................................................................... 85 CHAPTER V. APRIL ............................................................................. 86 Established Identities ...................................................................... 88 Why Teach in Urban Schools ............................................................ 89 Actual and Designated Identities ......................................................... 90 Day Dreaming .............................................................................. 92 Coloring Stories ........................................................................... 103 Summary and Conclusion ............................................................... 111 CHAPTER VI. BECCA ......................................................................... 114 Established Identities .................................................................... 114 Actual and Designated Identities ...................................................... 115 Wilma Unlimited ......................................................................... 115 Unsolicited Ai ............................................................................ 122 Social Science Review .................................................................. 127 Summary .................................................................................. 130 vii CHAPTER‘ Eshfit \Vhy AcRm Takin Comn A.Snc Sumnt CHAPTER.V. Troubl Esudfli llhy I Deficn Lou Li LaCk (ll Sunnna CHAPTLRIX_ Leanun Clhldrc Rcknhn lellt'tl Sumnru lbhuut lKnou lKnou Dlscugt- Acadcn, Radahy Smhma: 5% P. Sumnwr Indjlld_| CrOSS (4| lSCUSs: CHAPTER VII. KIM ............................................................................ 132 Established Identities .................................................................... 132 Why Teach in Urban Schools .............................................................................. 133 Actual and Designated Identities ...................................................... 134 Taking Turns Lead Teaching ............................................................ 134 Community Helpers ...................................................................... 139 A Sticky Situation ........................................................................ 142 Summary ................................................................................... 146 CHAPTER VIII. ABBEY ........................................................................ 148 Troubling Old Waters: The Perfect Storm ............................................. 148 Established Identities ..................................................................... 149 Why Teach in Urban Schools ........................................................... 151 Deficit Thinking about Urban Students, Parents and Communities ............... 152 Low Expectations for Student Success ................................................ 159 Lack of Preparation and Support from Teacher Education ......................... 164 Summary ................................................................................... 169 CHAPTER IX. CROSS CASE ANALYSES ................................................ 171 Leaming-to-Teach in Someone Else’s Classroom ................................... 171 Children’s Response to Candidates’ Changing Role ................................ 173 Relationships with Cooperating Teachers ............................................. 176 Limited Responsibility as Explanation and Escape ................................. 180 Summary and Discussion ............................................................... 182 ' I Know I’m White, Now What ............................................................................ 185 I Know I’m White, I Took a Class ..................................................... 188 I Know I’m White, But the Kids Don’t Treat Me Differently ..................... 195 Discussion ................................................................................. 198 Academic Preparation for Diversity ................................................... 198 Racialized Experiences in the Classroom ............................................. 200 Summary and Conclusion ............................................................... 202 CHAPTER X. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ........................................ 206 Study Purpose Revisited ................................................................. 206 Summary of Findings .................................................................... 209 Individual Cases .......................................................................... 209 Cross Case Analyses ..................................................................... 212 Discussion and Implications ............................................................ 215 Stars and Dreamkeepers .................................................................. 215 viii Exper C urrei Xarra: The R Xarrat ther Limim Future Conclt. APPE\DlCli‘. REFERENCE? Experiences with Culturally Relevant Teaching ...................................... 218 Current Urban Teacher Education Efforts ............................................. 218 Narrative in Teacher Education and Teacher Education Research ................ 220 The Role of Second Person Identifying Stories ....................................... 222 Narrative Identity Construction as Urban Teacher Education Research .......... 223 Other Implications ........................................................................ 224 Limitations ................................................................................. 225 Future Research Agenda ................................................................. 226 Conclusion ................................................................................. 228 APPENDICES .................................................................................... 234 REFERENCES .................................................................................... 246 ix Till-lie I.Cth.; LIST OF TABLES Table 1.Characteristics of Primary Participants ............................................. 49 Figure l.L'rb.:‘ LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.Urban Teaching Identities as Established, Actual, and Designated Identities...46 xi LIT .l‘ H {I ’I I, [It The n‘ outcomes of .~ 3003; Rist. l 9 and exacerbat; teacher placed The teacher'» i families as she than she did to: Inequalitiey. re Limited xi CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION “T here are no people that need all the benefits resulting from a well- directed education more than we do. The condition of our people, the wants of our children, and the welfare of our race demand the aid of every helping hand. It is a work of time, a labor of patience, to become an effective school teacher; and it should be a work of love in which they who engage should not abate heart or hope. ” Francis Ellen Watkins Harper The myriad disparities in the academic, social and economic conditions and outcomes of students living in urban areas are well documented (Kozol, 1991; Noguera, 2003; Rist, 1970; Kincheloe, 2004). Rist (1970) found that schooling practices reinforce and exacerbate socio-economic hierarchies when he observed how an urban kindergarten teacher placed students in reading ability groups based upon social class distinctions. The teacher’s interactions clearly privileged children she knew came from more affluent families as she spent more time with them and better attended to their academic needs than she did for students from low income families. Some 20 years later, in Savage Inequalities, renowned educationist Jonathan Kozol documented how racial segregation and its deleterious effects persisted in urban schools some 40 years afier the hallmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Substandard learning (and living) conditions were the accepted status quo for the poor and Black children Kozol interviewed and observed between 1988 and 1990 in over 30 cities and neighborhoods across the United States. In 1991, Kozol noted: Liberal critics of the Reagan era sometimes note that social policy in the United States, to the extent that it concerns Black children and poor children, has been turned back several decades. But this assertion, which 1 is 3CL'. healtf‘ in put back .1 Baseti Berkeley. anti Noguera note and generally public school across the nut EXISIS. Kincl:. crisis criteria I Problemati/eti the tendency t. Which they are Indict and imp urban problem represent urbar contempt the la EquaHy lite quality: of 1, ttacher quality H0”! 1998). H. is accurate as a description of some setbacks in the areas of housing, health and welfare, is not adequate to speak about the present-day reality in public education. In public schooling, social policy has been turned back almost one hundred years (p. 4). Based upon his research in low-income urban schools in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond, California, during the late 19803 and early 19903, Pedro Noguera noted that “low test scores, low grades, high drop-out rates, poor attendance, and generally unmotivated students usually top the lists of failings” of today’s urban public schools (Noguera, 2003, p. 3). It is from these grim realities, which are pervasive across the nation’s urban centers, that Noguera asserts a “crisis” in urban public schools exists. Kincheloe (2004) adds teacher shortages and inadequate funding to the list of crisis criteria for urban schools. Interestingly, much like Noguera, Kincheloe problematized the crisis oriented research on urban schools and communities because of the tendency to solely blame urban students and families for the subpar conditions in which they are forced to live and learn. While Noguera questioned the will of society to indict and implicate itself for the inequitable social and economic structures that cause urban problems, Kincheloe brought attention to how researchers and the mass media represent urban communities and schools in ways that create and feed the disdain and contempt the larger society has for them. Equally researched is the connection between the aforementioned disparities and the quality of teachers and instruction in urban classrooms. Citing several studies linking teacher quality and student achievement (Wenglisky, 2000; Sanders, 1998, Sanders & Horn 1998), Hollins and Guzman (2005) asserted that the consensus within the 2 educational c school succe> family backgr 478). This c in urban settrr certification :1 enable them It dty'erse studct: Dexprt ltnoyyledge of being compete understanding yictim" for the Socialjustrce .1 llr't'ClULllttg cm; skillfully enact teachers" (Huh minom}. SChOt The C0)” Chg. u» | 406mm“ 199 educational community is that “teacher quality is the single most important influence on school success and student’s achievement, surpassing socioeconomic status, class size, family background, school context, and all other factors that influence achievement” (p. 478). This connection between student achievement and teacher quality is exaggerated in urban settings where the teachers are most likely to be the least qualified (in terms of certification and experience) and have less access to adequate resources that would enable them to meet the needs of their socioeconomically, linguistically and culturally diverse students (Berry, 2001; Haycock, 2000). Despite high levels of poor quality instruction in low-income urban schools, evidence of effective urban teaching has been identified. The dispositions, skills and knowledge of effective urban educators discerned by educational researchers include being competent in their content areas, having high expectations for students’ success and understanding economic and social inequities of urban communities without “blaming the victim” for the existence of such conditions. Exemplary urban educators subscribe to a social justice advocacy orientation and agenda, utilizing their cultural competence (including critical self awareness and knowledge of students’ cultural backgrounds) to skillfully enact culturally relevant teaching. With the above characteristics, “star teachers” (Haberman, 1995) and “dreamkeepers” (Ladson-Billings, 2009) of urban and minority schoolchildren consistently inspire high academic achievement. The connection between the quality (or lack thereof) of teachers and student achievement has been linked back to the quality of teacher education obtained by individuals choosing and/or recruited to teach in urban schools (F roning 2006; Haberman, 1995; Pugach, Longwell-Grice, & Ford, 2006). As such, preparing teachers 3 for today5 ”r education “I: knoyy'lé‘dge- d pedagoglfi of have docume: teacher candi . TO atlr. respond...hy . include attentt 478). While t. benyeen the i: etTectiyeness .. those seeking ' education are . adequately me | culturally dix C“ With 11' ”analiye idem: potentially Ope disDOSIIIQnS an C(lflcepmaliZed Process lit at In: I \ljv' for today’s urban schools is a monumental and yet significant task of colleges of education who are charged with finding ways to foster in teacher candidates the knowledge, dispositions and skills of effective urban educators. While practices and pedagogies of effective urban educators have been identified, educational researchers have documented few ways to successfully foster these characteristics among preservice teacher candidates. To address these problems, “teacher preparation programs. . .have attempted to respond. . .by altering courses, curriculum, fieldwork experiences, and other policies to include attention to diversity and multicultural education (Hollins & Guzman, 2005, p. 478). While the consequences of these efforts are discussed in greater detail later, a gap between the intended goals of urban teacher education efforts and the resulting effectiveness and persistence of the teachers produced has become the new challenge of those seeking to prepare successful urban educators. In other words, colleges of education are still producing large quantities of teacher candidates who are not able to adequately meet the needs of today’s academically, socioeconomically, linguistically, and culturally diverse student populations. With this educational dilemma in mind, this dissertation asks and explores how narrative identity work can allow teacher educators to simultaneously study and potentially operationalize efforts to cultivate within teacher candidates the requisite skills, dispositions and knowledge of successful urban teachers. Here, narrative identity work is conceptualized as the explicit construction of urban teaching identities in and through a process that involved teacher candidates and myself, as a teacher educator/researcher, in writing and exchanging a series of stories about their student teaching experiences in 4 urban elem?! urban teachit discussions 3 consider and experiences.) as diseursiy el educators to t. backgrounds. the det elopmr by prior resea I11 {Ills because it fills {Specially u it] SCholarship in that often son COllitructed an 15 intended to - beyond exp-la: “It“? mirror. “d Present id- - ‘r educators they urban elementary schools. In this dissertation, 1 hypothesize that the construction of urban teaching identities through storytelling, story writing, story exchanging and discussions about the aforementioned stories provides teacher candidates with a space to consider and analyze the many factors (e. g., their beliefs, attitudes, values, and experiences) that influence their teaching behaviors. This space is further conceptualized as discursively analytic moments, or opportunities for teacher candidates and teacher educators to think and talk about the ways in which teacher candidates’ cultural backgrounds, past and present leaming-to-teach experiences, and future goals can lead to the development of the essential characteristics of effective urban educators illuminated by prior research. In this dissertation, I argue that narrative identity work is significant primarily because it pushes upon the limits of current and previous conceptions of identity, especially with respect to teacher identity and urban teacher preparation. Identity scholarship in education tends to rely upon static notions of psycho-social development that often sort individuals into rigid deterministic stages. By emphasizing identity as constructed and continuously negotiated, the narrative identity work detailed in this study is intended to empower teacher candidates and teacher educators with tools to move beyond explanations of who individuals are presently and/or how they came to be (i.e., “White middle class teachers from culturally insular backgrounds”). Taking these past and present identities into account, the narrative identity work in this dissertation is offered as one way for teacher educators to help teacher candidates become the kinds of educators they need to be as indicated by prior urban teacher education research. (a Resear A Tl the one he areas. M3 were K-l: lm'fSllgatc fathers lit! till-i Pz'thct. Candidatcg l Oi‘lt’nltmcs C. IO imam”! It Séelts to addr: 1’ Him L ”3min and un. their le 3! ”Posy; Research Questions The aforementioned urban teacher preparation challenge is two-fold, at least. On the one hand, there is an issue of scarcity. Few preservice teachers want to teach in urban areas. Many would prefer to teach in suburban areas similar to the ones in which they were K-12 students (Boyd, Lankford, Loeb & Wyckoff, 2003). The other issue, investigated in this dissertation, is the lack of and/or inadequacy of preparation of teachers for urban school environments. While the scarcity issue is beyond the scope of this project, this study generally asks, “How can narrative be used to prepare teacher candidates in ways that foster the competencies deemed necessary for them to thrive in oftentimes challenging urban school settings?” Specifically, utilizing narrative analyses to interpret teacher candidates’ construction of urban teaching identities, this dissertation seeks to address the following questions through the production of in-depth case studies: 1) How can preservice teachers and teacher educators collaboratively engage in narrative identity work (via written and oral storytelling) as a means of viewing and understanding the ways in which urban teacher candidates make meaning of their learning to teach experiences? 2) If possible, in what ways can the narrative construction of an urban teaching identity be a space in which to cultivate the cultural competencies, pedagogies and practices of effective urban educators? 3) What can these stories and the story telling process reveal about the ways in which teacher education programs can assist and/or perhaps hinder preservice teachers’ development of the identities and pedagogies that can enable them to become effective urban educators? Essen teach and id: nmmmandu physicalsites dwlanerhah glimpse into ' reasons. it an: expenencezu. because diey' hhdeshuhe~ 300:). and C‘. urban setting meuungthdt_ reyeal the u a; Educatuin dile Contextually: Sltitnes has 19m tekhereduCat ll ho are the my academic and s The nar Per ; 6111.3] oftiar 311d . ‘m teacl Essentially, this dissertation explores the connections among stories, learning to teach and identity construction. This dissertation is a collection of stories about what it means and what it looks like to learn to teach in urban schools. The temporal and physical sites of the narrative identity work done in this study are within the context of the latter half of four teacher candidates’ urban student teaching internships. I present a glimpse into the learning-to-teach experiences of four individuals, who, for various reasons, wanted to gain practical experience in urban teaching. As examples of the lived experience and training of urban teachers, these stories are important to share and study because they have been missing from urban teacher education curriculum and research. While studies have shed light on the plight of student teachers (Britzman, 2003; Segall, 2002), and even the experiences of preservice teacher candidates and student teachers in urban settings (Leland & Harste, 2005; Mason, 1997), few have deeply probed into the meaning that urban teacher candidates make of their experiences. Such a probe would reveal the ways in which curricular and experiential attempts to address the urban teacher education dilemma can be enhanced by a narrative inquiry as a deeply personal and contextually-grounded analytic tool. The absence of these kinds of teacher education stories has lead to overgeneralizations (about the limitations of teacher candidates and teacher education) and other unintended negative consequences for urban school children who are the recipients of teacher candidates who are not prepared to address their unique academic and social needs. The narrative work conducted in this project is offered as more evidence of the potential of narrative inquiry to contribute significantly to teacher education in general and urban teacher education specifically. From these teacher candidates’ stories and the 7 narrative 0‘. and 5mm [h organizaitk” “I! Ii) 11 "I'll 1"! e’ttg’tl. trx‘litll umli rL’H'U' 5-1 llt l7 lllt'l't' (‘li'clf’l' (Phill: As na: analyze what presenting tit: tone or feel ti project. For ~ research liter.: toy . p ide an oy Three. utilizit: flew ‘ aunt ot hox I?" i .-' ' moutres. It etwl' y IC 3 alt the L a - 5bt’ft’tatton gt narrative of their stories that this dissertation tells, I believe teacher education can potentially expand the repertoire of pedagogical and research tools used to investigate and enact the preparation of successful urban teachers. Organization of the Dissertation “It is my hope that the dramatizations and other devices used in the writing created a ground so that my experiences, through active engagement on the part of the reader, partially become a reader’s experiences as well. At times my experiences felt fragmented, dislocated, and chaotic in some senses; my writing is reflective of these aspects of research. At other times my experiences felt harmonious, rhythmical, and synchronous; my writing is reflective of these aspects of research. T hus, there is no one prevailing feel or tone in this book; rather, diflerent chapters, and different parts within chapters, have different tones. " (Phillion, 2002, p.xvii) As narrative is both a key vehicle used in this dissertation to investigate and analyze urban teacher preparation and research, storytelling is also a key means of presenting this project. Much like Phillion (2002), there is no one prevailing rhetorical tone or feel to this dissertation, as different writing voices narrate different aspects of this project. For example, in this introductory chapter and Chapter Two, a review of relevant research literature, I use traditional academic language and writing conventions to provide an overview and outline of the premises and purposes of this project. Chapter Three, utilizing a less formal and more personal writing voice, begins with a first person account of how this project developed out of my own professional experiences and curiosities. It then shifts back into utilizing academic language and conventions to explicate the conceptual framework and other methodological considerations of the dissertation study. Chapters F our through Nine are presented as examples and cases of urban teaching narrative identity construction, in form and function. In Chapter Four, multiple n: pl’OVlth III; exchanging narrated by ateacher er the last pha- analysis of: similarities ; education by literature tha Ifat‘her CLIUL‘; Hanatiy‘e 1d,”. dissertation u [ht lesson, h. multiple narrators construct the identity of the study’s physical and socio-political sites to provide the context for the following four chapters. Much like the storywriting and story exchanging that compromised the method of this study, Chapters Five through Eight are narrated by the study’s primary participants, the teacher candidates, assisted by myself as a teacher educator/researcher, weaving together stories of how participants experienced the last phase of their formal teacher preparation. Chapter Nine is then a cross-case analysis of the four teacher candidates’ narratives, foregrounding the ways in which the similarities and differences in their experiences build upon and challenge urban teacher education discourse. Chapter Ten reviews the project, discusses connections to the literature that frames the study, and offers implications the study has for the field of urban teacher education. In it, I also discuss limitations of the study and future possibilities of narrative identity work as a research agenda. This concluding chapter also closes the dissertation with a story of one possible future for the narrative identity work inspired by the lessons learned during this project. identill' ll literature ‘ pnmary' re student tea Ollllfi SIUtly 2000 J- The on the char; ways in uh: highlighted t narrowing tl‘. this literature identity in get Specifically. I llhite teacher adequately pr. conceptual l e ”Wattle Inql accomplishrn. 1' Slur TEUC/Zc CHAPTER TWO REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURE A key premise of this dissertation is that the construction of an urban teaching identity through story-telling is contextual. As such, the following review of relevant literature will highlight and analyze prior research that is most relevant to the study’s primary research contexts. The schools in which the study’s participants completed their student teaching internships were 98 % (or more) African American with 82% (or higher) of the student population eligible for free and reduced lunch (Chicago Public Schools, 2009). Thus the teacher education research summarized and analyzed below will focus on the characteristics of teachers successfial with these student populations. Next, the ways in which colleges of education are attempting to prepare these kinds of teachers is highlighted with specific models of exemplary urban teacher preparation programs. In narrowing the scope of the educational dilemma at the center of this dissertation project, this literature review problematizes and challenges dominant conceptualizations of identity in general, and teacher identity specifically, within educational research. More specifically, I argue that urban teacher education’s conceptualization of the identities of White teachers (and White teacher candidates) has hindered teacher educators’ efforts to adequately prepare this population for urban teaching. To fill this pedagogical (and conceptual) gap, I consult the interactional sociolinguistic treatment of identity and the narrative inquiry tradition in teacher education as a means of reconsidering and accomplishing the intended outcomes of urban teacher education. 1. Star Teachers & Dreamkeepers Think Diflerently 10 Er that are cl tladson-l stadents tr addition tc include an lack of pre‘ resistance r. 3006; Hollii teachers to t adyersely at and 30cm-“ Star ] interyieyy in g are indit tdua ...\t} Educational researchers have discerned many skills, dispositions and knowledge that are characteristic of “star” teachers” (Haberman, 1995) and “dreamkeepers” (Ladson-Billings, 1994) who consistently inspire and lead low-income African American students to academic success within today’s challenging yet promising urban schools. In addition to content area competency, requisite dispositions of effective urban educators include an openness to cultural diversity, a willingness to teach in urban schools despite a lack of previous experience and/or exposure to urban people and environments, and resistance to viewing urban children, families and communities in deficit ways (F roning, 2006; Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Howey, 2006; Kunjufu, 2002). These dispositions allow teachers to resist negative judgments and refrain from lowering expectations that adversely affect their practice and subsequently urban students’ academic performance and socio-economic outcomes. Star Teachers. According to Martin Haberman’s insights from over 35 years of interviewing and observing successful teachers of low-income children, “star teachers” are individuals, “. . .who, by all common criteria, are outstandingly successful: their students score higher on standardized tests; parents and children think they are great; principals rate them highly; other teachers regard them as outstanding; central office supervisors consider them successful; cooperating universities regard them as superior; and they evaluate themselves as outstanding teachers.” (Haberman, 1995, p. 1) Haberman juxtaposes star teachers against those who he labels as “quitters” and “failures.” The latter do not persist in urban schools for a variety of reasons but mainly 11 becauSe [l Smdenls 3 10.1in? and learning in deriVé‘d ITO socioefl‘m‘ failures' net fundamenta‘ standards to In CU discipline IIlt design home: they don't in aren't obsess. task" to meu-~ assessments I retards and r tttablish or t. Haber build their re, Occasionally - d L‘ because they subscribe to ideologies and methodologies that simultaneously blame urban students and communities for the less than desirable conditions in which they are forced to live and learn and absolve quitters and failures of assuming the responsibility to inspire learning in such conditions. For example, Haberman argues that a focus on discipline is derived from the need quitters and failures (and most teachers irrespective of the school’s socioeconomic descriptor) feel to control their students. Specifically quitters’ and failures’ need for control is rooted in their belief that poor minority, urban children are fundamentally abnormal, needing social remediation to fit the middle class-normed standards for education and behavior that they believe are required to succeed in school. In contrast, Haberman contends star teachers don’t use and/or think about discipline the way most teachers do. They don’t punish their students. Star teachers design homework so that it can be done independently and successfully by the child or they don’t assign it at all. Star teachers don’t speak disparagingly about parents and they aren’t obsessed with tests and grading. They don’t readily use assessments like “time-on- task” to measure students’ learning, opting for more comprehensive formative assessments like large group discussions. Most importantly, star teachers do not use rewards and reinforcements to motivate students to comply with the few rules they do establish or to complete academic tasks. Haberman’s point is not that star teachers never do the things that most teachers build their teaching philosophies and practice upon. He contends that even if they do occasionally discipline, punish or administer a state mandated standardized test, star teachers think much differently about these common practices and therefore are able to mitigate their negative effects on urban school children. For example, star teachers expect 12 children U fundamct' meanif‘tillL mUCh Illllc lessons ans teachers al.- to better pry presents itsr year as a pa of student n: that they hl' logical con sc school year. In L‘tit| quo that deer. success. The be same u of. “problems“ that create r. lf'i'cl. stars at at . .- 63 3am abr» It“. p em many children to misbehave, however, they believe in a proactive approach to discipline. Fundamentally, star teachers believe that children who are actively engaged in meaningful learning are less likely to act out. They don’t anticipate needing to spend much time on discipline because they spend their time designing and implementing lessons and activities their students find interesting and relevant to their lives. Star teachers also spend time building caring relationships with students so that they are able to better predict individual warnings and triggers before an “emergency” situation presents itself. Star teachers have very few rules that are established early in the school year as a part of conscious and consistent classroom community building. If an instance of student misbehavior or classroom disruption does occur, star teachers are able to take what they know about their students to resolve the situation, usually referring to the logical consequences for behavior that have been established at the beginning of the school year. In contrast to quitters and failures, star teachers challenge the ideological status quo that deems low-income children unfit for school (and social, political and economic) success. Their social justice agenda doesn’t include concerns with controlling children in the same way as quitters and failures because they don’t view their students as “problems.” Instead they indict the dominant cultural, political and economic systems that create problematic living and learning conditions for their students. At the classroom level, stars accept the realities of their students’ backgrounds and use the information they gain about students to build authentic relationships that help them to ward off and prevent many of the discipline problems quitters and failures routinely face. This in turn 13 allO‘VS Ihc being ”m Sta and demon determlned training 1“ l teachmll an 1994. 1995i intellectudlij knou'ledgt’. for the succc as exemplars Dmi income stud-e American 5111 themselyes. :I 3009,) found T high self-este community: it. our students belreye that a 7 C0militarily”. r o t‘ U‘ OlSIUder' allows them to create learning environments that produce critical thinkers capable of being critical actors in their world. Stars’ ideological beliefs are foundational to the pedagogical skills they develop and demonstrate. Primarily, it has been the work of multicultural educationists who have determined that the necessary pedagogical skills of effective urban educators include training in multicultural education, culturally relevant pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching and culturally competent teaching (Banks, 2003, Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995). Culturally relevant teaching, “a pedagogy that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills and attitudes,” (Ladson-Billings, 1995/2009, p. 20) is the foundation for the success of the “dreamkeepers” Gloria Ladon-Billings has researched and offered as exemplars of successful teachers of African American students. Dreamkeepers. Similar to, but extending Haberman’s treatise on teachers of low- income students, Ladson—Billings’ seminal research on the effective teaching of African American students begins and is rooted in the ways in which these teachers think about themselves, their students and their work together in classrooms. Ladson-Billings (1994, 2009) found that dreamkeepers who utilize culturally relevant teaching practices, (a) have high self-esteem and a high regard for others, (b) see themselves as part of the community while viewing teaching as giving back to that community and encouraging their students to do the same, (c) view teaching as an art and themselves as artists, (d) believe that all students can succeed, (e) help students to make connections between their community, national and global identities, and (f) view teaching as ‘digging knowledge out’ of students instead of “putting in” (p. 37-56). 14 dreamke their CU}I (M! are ”i LadsOn'B 24). The" cultural b“ teacht’r 15 U with the ml students. C U “problem" It class yalues uonh)‘ Ol‘lllt about their b teachers that racism and cl smdent the s... minority sch fair. The out. C ony . best for their belieye that tr. to ~ I students According to Ladson-Billings (and the parents and principals that nominated the dreamkeepers she studied), successful teachers of African American students ground their culturally relevant teaching in understandings about themselves and their students that are much different from those who are not effective educators of Black children. Ladson-Billings contrasts dreamkeepers with teachers she labels as “assimilationists” (p. 24). These teachers are those who teach “without regard to the students’ particular cultural background..to ensure that students fit into society” (p. 24). An assimilationist teacher is one who disregards students’ culture if its values and behaviors do not align with the middle class values that this teacher privileges. Because they think their students’ culture is what hinders student success in school, the student then becomes a “problem” to be “fixed” by schooling. When the student can learn to accept the middle class values that are deemed acceptable and appropriate, then they become teachable and worthy of the assimilationist’s effort. Other assimilationist teachers are not so conscious about their bias against low-income and African American students. These are the teachers that King (1991) describes as being “dysconscious” about their participation in racism and classism. They are the ones who “don’t see color” and purport to treat every student the same. This same treatment tends to exacerbate the inequities low-income and minority schoolchildren face because it still assumes that the status quo is right, just and fair. The onus is on the student to change in order to fit into society. Conversely, dreamkeepers challenge the notion that fitting into society is what is best for their students. They are well aware of the inequities their students face and believe that teaching for social justice is a way to contribute to improving the quality of their students’ lives. They regard themselves as highly trained professionals whose job it 15 is to help confines 0 members c relationshr; teachers th. and Sunday All“ students" cu students” cu. boat to the r for students of the drearr; mathematics in” play Wt: .ilTlCan Amt students and ; pI€\.10US eXt‘: Grille award- Whit. '~ I this study bee 33mm“ ma l is to help students critically interrogate and become responsible for the communities in which they live. Dreamkeepers achieve this by viewing their own jobs beyond the confines of their classrooms and school buildings. They consider themselves to be members of the school and local community and work hard to build authentic relationships with their students inside and outside of the classroom. These are the teachers that come to work early and stay late. They are coaches, youth group leaders and Sunday school teachers. Another significant characteristic of dreamkeepers is how their thinking about students’ culture is translated into their practice. Whereas assimilationists disregard students’ culture, dreamkeepers believe that students’ culture is an important asset they bring to the classroom and “that that knowledge must be explored and utilized in order for students to become achievers” (Ladson—Billings 1994/2009 p. 56). For example, one of the dreamkeepers profiled for the second edition of Ladson—Billings’ seminal text regularly notes the contributions of Africans, Asians, and Latinos in the development of mathematics. Another dreamkeeper, a high school drama teacher, selected her school’s first play written by an African American playwright highlighting the lived experience of African Americans for her students to perform. Amongst complaints from White students and parents, this teacher demonstrated her understanding of the school’s previous exclusion of non-White students in school plays by insisting on the production of the award-winning play. While star teachers and dreamkeepers are utilized as model urban educators in this study because of their contextual applicability, other scholars have confirmed the assertions made by the research of Haberman and Ladson-Billings in relation to the 16 example. l 3000 Olmlr' school as t American acquisition SCI)“ 4. Er Ian“ (I ,. successful teaching of urban low-income and African American school children. For example, LeMoine (2001) highlighted six characteristics of effective teachers of the up to 80% of “inner-city” African American kindergarteners and first graders who come to school as fluent speakers of Afiican American language. These teachers of African American Standard English Language Learners (SELLS) support their students’ literacy acquisition when they: 1. Build their knowledge and understanding of nonstandard languages and the students who use them. 2. Integrate linguistic knowledge about nonstandard languages (African American language) into instruction. 3. Use second language acquisition methods to support student learning of school language and literacy. 4. Employ a balanced instructional approach to literacy that incorporates language experience, whole language/access to books, and phonics. 5. Infuse the history and culture of SELLS into the curriculum. 6. Consider the learning styles and strengths of SELLS in designing instruction. (p. 176-177). LeMoine found that effective teachers of urban African American learners resist pathologizing students’ home cultures and languages. Instead, by taking responsibility for students’ learning, these teachers find ways to modify their instruction to fit the needs of their students. They view what students bring to classrooms as assets with which to engage students in academic success. Similarly, Kunjufu (2002) conceptualizes “master 17 teacher: of 5115.1" “BY-bu bond is i profeSSl! learning 5 teachers : C hallen g: to see Vale communrt achieyeme justice and alongside u ll'h: they think. \I candidates. ' and colleges ll. Efforts n As 5t. tnoudes an 1, Areas and Illt‘ and mannn. teachers” of African American students as individuals who “understand the significance of subject matter, but they also believe that you shouldn’t teach the most comfortable way, but the way children learn” (p. 46). These teachers also “understand the need to bond with students first” (p. 46). Kunjufu’s master teachers combine their skills as professional educators with their relationships with students to inspire high levels of learning because they value what students bring and who students are. Summary. The most salient feature of dreamkeepers, star teachers, and master teachers is their thinking about their students in relation to the broader social structure. Challenging the social, economic and political status quo is vital to these teachers’ ability to see value in their students. This critical ability to not view children and their communities in deficit ways is the foundation of their high expectations for student achievement. They view their work educating students as the ultimate act of social justice and are able to inspire their students to participate as social change agents right alongside with them. While it is apparent what effective urban educators do and more importantly, how they think, what is less apparent is how to produce these characteristics within teacher candidates. The following sections explore how the discipline of education in general and colleges of education, specifically, are attempting to address this dilemma. II. Eflorts to Engender Dispositions, Skills & Knowledge of Effective Urban Educators As stated in the previous section, critical knowledge of effective urban educators includes an awareness of the complex social, political and economic contexts of urban areas and the effects these contexts have on the quality of life and education of the poor and minority children who live there. Additionally, scholars have determined that a 18 critical L (and lear academia 3001 t. It hindered V socioecoru Iandsman . lack ot‘criti American cl classroom 1 Ot‘their stud Prest site for the ri necessary- to Syhoolchildy- critical understanding of how one’s own socio—cultural background influences teaching (and learning) is vital to a teacher’s ability to successfully engage urban students in academic success (Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Howey, 2006; Kunjufu, 2002, Howard, 2001). In other words, not only do effective urban educators know their students and the communities in which they teach, they also know themselves. Much of teacher education and teaching research has been focused on the lack of self and/or cultural awareness of the 83% of school teachers who are of European descent. These studies highlight the ways in which teacher candidates’ Whiteness has hindered White teacher candidates’ ability to be successful in culturally and socioeconomically diverse classrooms. (Howard, 2001; Howey,2006; King,l991 ; Landsman & Lewis, 2006; Paley,l979). Being a teacher of color is not an exemption of lack of critical self awareness, nor is it a guarantee of success with teaching Afiican American children in high poverty schools. Many teachers of color also come to urban classrooms with middle class values that feed negative perceptions about the capabilities of their students (Kunjufu, 2002). Preservice teacher preparation has been deemed the most appropriate and critical site for the development of the critical self awareness and cross-cultural understandings necessary to engage in the culturally relevant teaching advocated for urban schoolchildren’s success. As Howey (2006) contends: “an especially critical factor for teacher success is the extent of congruence and intersection between the preparation program and the nature of the urban school communities - how knowledgeable the 19 Inal996r Rxmnmem mmmudm -Pn infl -.-\.\.‘ thro exph OfSc :Fur as tl‘. prospective teachers are of the urban culture and the expectations and demands of the school districts and schools therein.” (p. 5) In a 1996 report, the Urban Network for the Improvement of Teacher Education (UNITE) recommended that colleges of education designing coursework and field experiences for future urban teachers included the following goals: -Provide knowledge of sociocultural and economic political factors that influence students’ behavior both in and out of school; -Assist in examining their own cultural norms and behavioral patterns through scholarly analyses and in-depth experience with at least one other culture and language; -Aid them in exploring the interactions and relationship among culture, language, and learning; -Help them inventory resources and assets in urban neighborhoods and explore how these could be brought to bear to enable learning in and out of school; -Further their understanding of their own and others’ biases and prejudices as these relate to social class, race, gender, religion [and] sexual preference, as well as how students can be stereotyped because of their dress, physical appearance, ability, or behavior; and -Instruct them in engaging their students with subject matter from multiple perspectives, as represented in diverse setting. (Howey, 1996, p. 42). While the call for “congruence and intersection” has become a major focus of many colleges of education’s efforts to prepare urban teachers, the ways in which these 20 schools at: coursewOTr efforts car: students w teaching 11‘. experience tubanteac? candhhnes persistently pmcncesar inquiry neg. ofan urbar: confront the 011C Colleges of . “Tilt K-l: Udej Teac aCkIlOWledm I the -' m i‘HOWar schools attempt to engender the characteristics of successful urban practitioners via coursework and field experiences vary greatly and subsequently, the results of these efforts vary greatly. Many urban teacher preparation programs focus on providing students with a realistic idea of urban teaching through early field experiences, student teaching in urban schools, and reading teacher narratives and studies about early teaching experiences (Darling-Hammond, 2002; Michie, 2005; Nieto, 2005). Additionally, many urban teacher educators advocate the use of “reality therapy” to ensure that teacher candidates are keenly aware of the often-harsh realities and complicated constraints that persistently challenge urban educators (Steinberg, 2004). While these pedagogies and practices are promising, the high turnover rate of new urban teachers suggests that more inquiry needs to be made about the translation of these experiences into the development of an urban teaching identity with which new teachers could be better equipped to confront the challenges of urban teaching. One particularly ineffective way has been the route taken by far too many colleges of education. According to Zeichner (2004), “The typical response of teacher education programs to the growing diversity of K-12 students has been to add a course or two on multicultural, bilingual/ESL or urban education to the curriculum”(p. 493). Teacher educators who have incorporated multicultural theories and perspectives on racial identity into their educational foundations courses have routinely reported encountering the resistance of many of their White students to recognize and/or aCknowledge the unearned privileges their Whiteness and/or middle class status affords them (Howard,2001; King,199l; McIntosh, 1988; Sleeter, 1993, 2001). Or when there is 21 acknou'le \Khites. n multicultt Ill. The (l lire/titty \l'l education I scope of tl: funicular a are disti n gu inetlectiy e ltachers cor dissertation. elltctir'enes l5 L’OllC‘epma Concepluahx lders research. “,1 I b0“. ll 15 as; acknowledgment of privilege and an understanding of the implications of racism for non- Whites, many White teacher candidates report feeling guilt and shame that paralyzes them, stunting their ability to see themselves as potential agents of anti-racist multicultural education (McAllister & Irvine, 2000). III. The (Teacher) Identity Crisis in Education: Negotiating Remedies with Narrative Inquiry While the previous section focused on program level efforts that colleges of education have made to in order to better prepare urban teachers, this section narrows the scope of the urban teacher education challenge to focuses on teacher identity as a central curricular and pedagogical concern within the fieldJust as star teachers and dreamkeepers are distinguishable by their thinking about their students, they are also differentiated from ineffective urban teachers by their thinking about themselves. Identity, or “who” these teachers consider themselves to be culturally and professionally is the focus of this dissertation, asserting that identity has as much impact upon teachers’ pedagogies and effectiveness as their thinking about their students. To situate the ways in which identity is conceptualized for this study, it is useful here to consider how the term has been conceptualized in educational discourse more generally. Identity has become a widely used analytic lens within educational discourse and research, with anthropological, developmental psychological, cultural psychological and sociolinguistic strands. Anthropological definitions focus on culturally situated “ core selves” and identities as socially-constructed, external expressions of those selves (Hoffman, 1998).Similarly, psychologists consider the central question, “Who am I?” and how it is asked by individuals via “. . .a process ‘located’ in the core of the individual and 22 yet also in ofidentity account fo are impact from psycl progress It initiates tra Tilt education. r interactri in; thisdissert;1 ofidentrty t following it Who Pl'Uptlx mental lime In the “Otior bemee“ a c? SOltan‘ ant the conceptt. to be lGee a and bio _ i yet also in the core of his communal culture” (Erikson, 1968, p.22 ). A dominant strand of identity research within education includes theorists and researchers who attempt to account for the ways individuals develop “who” they are as racial and/or cultural beings are impacted by and shaped within educational contexts. This strand heavily borrows from psychological models that subscribe to the Ericksonian notion that individuals progress linearly through stages usually encountered after a predictable external stimuli initiates transition from one stage of development to the next. These developmental and/or stage theories that dominate identity research in education, especially within urban teacher education, are juxtaposed against a more interactional and less deterministic conceptualization of identity construction with which this dissertation project was designed and conducted. Specifically, the narrative notion of identity taken up in this dissertation project, which is explicated more fully in the following methodological chapter, is based upon the work of Lev Semenovich Vygotsky who proposed a “cultural-historical approach to the origins and development of higher mental functions and consciousness” (Wertsch, 1985, p. vii). This approach is grounded in the notion of a “zone of proximal development [can be described] as the distance between a child’s ‘actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving’ and the higher level of ‘potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.”’(p. 67). Here, the conceptualizations of identity focuses on the cultural situatedness in combination with the dialogic nature of how an individual decides and is told or taught how, rather, “who” to be (Gee, 2001; Sfard and Prusak, 2005; Wortham 2006). While the both the Erickson and Vygotsky conceptualizations describe progression toward so-called “higher” levels 23 of Cognitit ty‘ay's idem multiple 5“ dey‘elome below. rel} which iden TU; deyelopme contexts Us relation to 1 students” ra analyze the and or gene linguisticalf research has teaching for In We can .4 of cognition and behavior, what separates them and what is especially pertinent to the ways identity is taken up within this dissertation, is the latter’s ability to account for the multiple and practically unpredictable ways an individual can negotiate their development. The former model, and the educational scholarship based upon discussed below, rely on deterministic descriptions of stages that do not align well with the ways in which identity was conceptualized, investigated and observed within this study. Teacher Identity Research in Urban Teacher Education. Privileging cultural and developmental psychology, much of identity research with respect to educational contexts uses psychological models to explore and explain the implications of identity in relation to teaching and learning. Focusing much more on the experiences of K-12 students’ racial identity development, much of this scholarship attempts to explain and analyze the ways in which individuals develop a sense of themselves are predictable and/or generalizable. With respect to urban teachers and or teachers of culturally, “linguistically and socioeconomically diverse student populations, much of the identity research has focused on teachers’ race and social class., Given the demographics of the teaching force, much of this research has focused on the construction of Whiteness. Howard’s work on White identity development is a prominent example of this research. In We Can 'I Teach What We Don ’t Know, Howard (2001) draws on stage theories of identity along with social dominance and positioning theories to develop a model of White identity development that places White individuals along a continuum that moves from ”fundamentalist” to “transformationist” depending upon the degrees to which Whites are aware of the unearned privileges afforded to them by their position atop the social hierarchy. This developmental continuum also takes into account the individual’s 24 commim equitable are those hostility t the existc do so at a “emotion. from actir well" and lettered e.i color. Fin. resist the a indl‘ldUdls [he plOL‘t‘s‘s liberated as ldéntiry de\ Caterer”). Oi HOWard‘S .. tn. Hi Sliml- But i teachers in: I [ha “35's in commitment to working toward the social justice that scholars posit is necessary to equitable education within a culturally and racially pluralistic nation. “F undamentalists” are those that think “White is right,” feel superior to other races and tend to act with hostility toward non-Whites (p. 100-101). “Integrationists” are those who “acknowledge the existence and legitimacy of diverse approaches to truth (p. 103). However, they only do so at a superficial level. While they are open to intercultural interactions, their “emotional confusion” and deep seated acceptance of White dominance prevents them from acting in ways that are not assimilationist. As teachers, these individuals “mean well” and tend “not see to color” in their students. However, this attitude leads to lowered expectations and exacerbates the academic woes of many urban students of color. Finally, “transformationists” are Whites who actively acknowledge but actively resist the assumptions of White dominance and supremacy. As teachers, these individuals work toward “dismantling the dominance paradigm. As they participate in the process of liberation for others, they acknowledge that they themselves are being liberated as well” (p. 107). Though Ladson-Billings does not construct a continuum of identity development, her notion of “assimilationist” teachers resonates with Howard’s category of “integrationists”, while her notion of culturally relevant teachers aligns with Howard’s “transformationists”. While many scholars like Howard focus on race (King, 1991; Sleeter, 2001; Swartz, 2003), others focus on how social class as a significant identity marker of urban teachers intersects with race to impact teaching and learning. Kunjufu (2002) discusses the ways in which the majority of teachers’ middle class backgrounds negatively effects their teaching of low-income and Afiican American students. Kunjufu contends that 25 these te teachers ox-em'hl African of the la talues a his semi \th enat behat ion the relatit filters of academic ; alt? [lime ll these teachers are mostly White but does not exclude or excuse other middle class teachers from other racial backgrounds. Kunjufu finds that middle class teachers, overwhelmingly and across racial lines, lower their expectations of and for low-income African American students. Buying into the legitimacy of the socioeconomic hierarchy of the larger society, middle class teachers privilege those students who fit the norms, values and behaviors they deem acceptable for school success. Similarly, Rist (1970), in his seminal study of urban schools, found that teachers directed their attention to students who enacted middle class behaviors, providing them more opportunities to engage in challenging academic work than students they perceived as being poor or enacting behaviors they associated with working class communities. Within an argument about the relationship between social class and cultural capital Lareau (1987), discusses the effects of teachers’ middle class expectations for parental involvement on students’ academic achievement. Like Ladson-Billings, Kunjufu recommends that master teachers are those who have genuinely multicultural values and utilize culturally relevant pedagogies in order to inspire success for all of their students. While the focus on the ways in which racial and socioeconomic identity impact teaching and learning provides useful insights and explanations of the experiences of many students and teachers, a powerfiil criticism of these types of theories is that they tend to be overly rigid and deterministic. They often imply a linear model in which individuals move through clearly demarcated stages each separated from the next by distinctive attitudes, beliefs and practices. These models tend to overlook how social contexts shape how people interact and live out their everyday lives. They also do not adequately account for variability in or complexity of individuals’ interpretations and 26 internali integrati still able America: America: income A researche Sir educators the limita: from narra Prominent the natural Stor: and Th1". ed‘JCathD “ his 10]}. Olin~ internalization of their experiences. For example, how does one explain a seemingly integrationist White teacher who does not build deep relationships with students but is still able to conduct culturally relevant lessons and inspire their low income African American students to high levels of achievement? What do we make of an African American teacher from a low income community who has low expectations for his low income African American students? In consideration of these kinds of dilemmas, some researchers have turned to other conceptualizations of identity. Storied Inquiry: Towards a Narrative Approach to Teacher Identity. Teacher educators have recently turned toward narrative approaches to teacher identity to address the limitations and dilemmas identified above. Some of these approaches have emerged from narrative inquiry, with Connelly and Clandinin’s work being among the most prominent in narrative research on teachers. As Connelly and Clandinin (1990) assert, the natural fit of narrative inquiry in educational research is difficult to refute. “The main claim for the use of narrative in educational research is that humans are storytelling organisms who, individually and socially, lead storied lives. The study of narrative, therefore is the study of the ways humans experience the world. This general notion translates into the view that education is the construction and reconstruction of personal and social stories; teachers and learners are storytellers and characters in their own and other’s stories” (p.2) This focus on interpreting human experience unites narrative researchers in education with narrative researchers in other disciplines within the long intellectual history of narrative inquiry. However, the use of stories to witness and interpret the lived 27 experient practice \ researche within th; body of“ second-ha teachers a narrative r unaided n. "collahom and or teat PlUject. Lea COllaboratjt ETOund [he1 Where Pets. experiences of teachers and teacher candidates is a relatively new mode of inquiry and practice within teacher education as the 1980s and early 19905 saw a wave of narrative researchers with interests in teacher preparation begin to forage a distinctive identity within the educational research community. Connelly & Clandinin (1990) labeled this body of work, “Teachers’s Stories and Stories of Teachers. . .refer[ing] to first- and second-hand accounts of individual teachers, students, classrooms, and schools written by teachers and others” (p. 3). Similarly, Thomas (1995) identified two types of teacher narrative research. “The first, autonomous writing, which are the spontaneous and unaided narratives of individual teachers” ( p.6). The second type of teacher narratives, “collaborative accounts,” is where student teachers and/or teachers work with researchers and/or teacher educator create narratives together, as was the case in this dissertation project. Leading the way in conceptualizing the composition and collection of these collaborative stories as teacher education, F. Michael Connelly & D. Jean Clandinin ground their work with prospective teachers in a notion of personal practical knowledge where personal practical knowledge is “A term designed to capture the idea of experience in a way that allows us to talk about teachers as knowledgeable and knowing persons. Personal practical knowledge is in the teacher’s past experience, in the teacher’s present mind and body, and in the future plans and actions. Personal practical knowledge is found in the teacher’s practice. It is, for any one teacher, a particular way of reconstructing the past and the intentions of 28 th Cl Connelly knmtlt’tlg practice. ' teacher in 7). Like E reflection their perso interpretat heatily int Sin “translatin; embodied“ the mindf; adept at he "be suc- und cirt ln 0 better medi. £00 and r the future to deal with the exigencies of a present situation” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988, p. 25). Connelly and Clandinin differentiate personal practical knowledge from theoretical knowledge about teaching, though they see theoretical knowledge as informing teachers’ practice. With this foregrounding of lived experience, Connelly and Clandinin posit that teacher knowledge is thus simultaneously “biographical,” “embodied” and “enacted” (p. 7). Like Britzman (2003), Connelly and Clandinin conceive of learning to teach as reflection upon practice during which a teacher candidate constructs and reconstructs their personal practical knowledge. As this process focuses on the individual’s interpretation of their experiences in and outside of classrooms, learning to teach is then heavily influenced by the situations in which these experiences occur. Similarly, Field & Latta (2001) argue that learning to teach does not come from “translating (unsituated) theory into practice. . .but primarily from being mindfidly embodied” in the experiences one encounters as a student of teaching (p. 885). To foster the mindfiil embodiment of teacher candidates, teacher education must become more adept at helping them to “be in touch, intimately related with the processes of actual experience, such that they learn to be open to their experience, to be radically undogmatic — in touch with self, others and the character of the circumstances in which they find themselves.” (p. 885). In other words, teacher education needs to help teacher candidates find ways to better mediate their learning to teach experiences in order to bridge the gap between theory and practical knowledge that so many teacher candidates lament as the primary 29 disjunctur candidate settings it will learn to teacher Field and candidate learning It .gendent Bi.» utilized in research” explicitly : pSWl'lOlttg; informs ll) L Within in e. dial are "LR: ”mil p. nScllN and . anthmPOlt; | (lemma-0n if mastmk‘lit‘: disjuncture of their teacher preparation. This is especially true for urban teacher candidates who often experience (and succumb to) culture shock when placed in urban settings without adequate understandings of themselves and/or the context in which they will learn to teach and eventually teach (Kincheloe, 2004). As such, a narrative approach to teacher education, such as the one utilized by Clandinin and Connelly and endorsed by Field and Latta’s notions of experience, is then well positioned to assist urban teacher candidates make sense of their developing teaching identities within their context-specific learning to teach experiences in personally and professionally meaningful ways, thus engendering their development as effective urban educators. Building upon Clandinin and Connelley’s work, the conceptualization of identity utilized within this dissertation study also“ draws upon the scholarship of educational researchers who have rooted their work, specifically their work on identity, more explicitly in socio-linguistic and socio-cultural traditions. For example, akin to cultural psychologists interested in how individuals’ participation in communities of practice informs their identity, Gee (2001)’s highly influential work on identity development within in educational contexts, for example, proposes that people have multiple identities that are “connected not to [people’s] ‘internal states’ but to their performances in society”(p. 99). These notions of identity challenge Hoffman’s (1998) separation of “self” and “identity,” established within her seminal text analyzing identity and the anthropological study of education, while they become convergent with Hoffman’s definition in terms of the contextualization of culturally situating the processes of identity construction. 30 extcfld> within a situated airmail who 0m“ (3004 t. I. identit}~ 3 renegotia identit) a: dissertatit storj. tel liti "who" the; dispositior utilizingy at largue tha lmestigati understand profession. indiriduah Socializatit flare bfen t‘ 1 In this study, I draw upon a definition of identity and identity construction that extends the aforementioned perspectives on identity and considers those definitions within a discussion and investigation of teacher identity by combining the culturally situatedness and fluidity of interactional sociolinguistic definitions with a dialogic approach to storytelling which serves as a place to negotiate, construct and/or “work” on who one considers themselves to be in addition to who they want to become. Like Agee (2004), this dissertation asserts that “a teacher also brings a desire to construct a unique identity as a teacher and that in the various contexts of her work, she negotiates and renegotiates that identity” (p. 749). Also in alignment with Agee’s description of teacher identity as “a discursive space where an imagined role is negotiated” (p. 747), within this dissertation, I contend that the construction of an urban teaching identity through storytelling is a unique and important opportunity for teacher candidates to negotiate “who” they are and “who” they need to be in order to develop many of the requisite dispositions, skills and knowledge of effective urban educators. More specifically, utilizing and building upon a notion of storytelling as identifying (Sfard & Prusak, 2005), I argue that a narrative approach to identity construction can be an important investigative and pedagogical tool for urban teacher educators that pushes upon current understandings of the implications of and connections between teachers’ cultural and professional identities. Challenging static notions of identity, which tend to bind individuals to more rigid stages of development, narrated identities can allow individuals to move beyond who they have been (i.e. through cultural background, prior socialization, upbringing, etc). Thus, in this study teacher candidates were thought to have been provided with an opportunity to analyze who they have been, who they are 31 Sununat \l teachers star teacl ofeducat bmthehi preparatit Su requtsuc t urban teac expenenct “lute.fen education Zochnenl those'uith PidagOgic. uudentsir ill edictteacf and 01‘ Urh. “now”, who they need and want to become while assessing how these identities will be integrated into who they are becoming as effective urban educators. Summary & Conclusion While models of urban teacher education vary, their common goal is to produce teachers who are able to develop and enact the habits of mind exhibited by the veteran star teachers and dreamkeepers that we know exist. It is still debatable how well colleges of education are able to do what we have set out to do. The proverbial jury is still out, but the high turnover rate of urban school teachers has been linked to a lack of adequate preparation (Hollins & Guzman, 2005). Subsequently, teacher educators have struggled to find ways to incorporate the requisite (and researched) critical skills, dispositions and knowledge within an effective urban teacher education program. As such, urban-focused coursework and field experiences that focus on the cultural mismatches between urban students and a mainly White, female, middle class teaching force, have been the mainstay of urban teacher education (Recruiting, preparing, and retaining teachers for urban schools, 2006; Zeichner,1996). The aim of these experiences is to offer teacher candidates, especially those with culturally insular backgrounds, authentic opportunities to develop the pedagogical and socio-cultural competencies identified as necessary for engaging urban students in academic success. Most of the teacher identity literature focuses on White teachers, documenting the effect teachers’ Whiteness has on their teaching of culturally and linguistically diverse and/or urban student populations (Delpit, 1995; Howard, 1999; Kunjufu, 2002; Landsman & Lewis, 2006). As these studies highlight cultural conflicts, they tend to 32 present a identities int‘estigat teaching ( ln constructi identity 3 urban teat dlsst‘flallt of “hire t Ol lllSltJriL economic llIOUghl ll“ ldtlllllles g present a static conceptualization of identity, discussing how teachers’ socio-cultural identities adversely affect their abilities to effectively teach their students. Few studies investigate the ways in which teachers’ identities can and do change in response to teaching diverse student populations. In this dissertation, a narrative-based and discursive concept of identity construction is posited as a significant means of helping teacher educators to address the identity and cultural competence dilemmas of a majority White middle class female urban teacher candidate pool. In regards to Whiteness within teacher education, this dissertation seeks to move away from the “blame and shame” approach to the preparation of White teachers which does little more than making White students aware and ashamed of historical and contemporary examples of unearned White social, political and economic dominance. Thus the narrative identity work proposed in this dissertation is thought to be space for teacher candidates to grapple with and negotiate their cultural identities in relation to their teaching attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. 33 Ti L’tilizirtgy interest in For the re SlUtl}"S L‘t .4 tun-,1“ How I C}, Li li’flc‘hcr. I“ college tr. fiat-[1}. lit SHipa'C‘t‘lt: d6“ Cltipmr “he” F'Ou ”:1de l0 2‘ containced .r CHAPTER THREE METHODS & METHODOLOGIES “It is equally correct to say ‘inquiry into narrative ’ as it is ‘narrative inquiry. ’ By this we mean that narrative is both phenomenon and method... Thus, we say that people by nature lead storied lives and tell stories of those lives, whereas narrative researchers describe such lives, collect and tell stories of them, and write narratives of experience. ”(Connelly and Clandinin, 1990, p. 2) This chapter narrates the methodological considerations of this dissertation. Utilizing a personal writing voice, I begin with stories describing the development of my interest in using narrative inquiry to investigate identity within urban teacher education. For the remainder of the chapter, I use a more academic writing voice to explicate the study’s conceptual framework, data collection procedures, and data analysis strategies. A Narrative of Narrative Inquiry: How I Came to Study Narrative-based Teacher Identity Development Unlike the primary participants in this study, I am not a traditionally trained teacher. While I share with them a seemingly lifelong desire to teach, I did not go to college to become a teacher. At some point in my life, which I have yet to pinpoint exactly (in terms of time or reason) I resisted my calling to be a teacher. My third grade self proclaimed to want to be a teacher in an identity assignment called “All About Me” where, among other things, we discussed the somewhat profound and simultaneously developmentally inappropriate question we ask all children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I wrote that I wanted to be a teacher because I liked children and I wanted to help people. Somehow by the time I left home for Stanford University, I had Convinced myself that I wanted to be a pediatrician. As an undergraduate, my struggles 34 with the small pt commit: studying thesis er Identity interest i highlight racial tdc \\ lWasn't e career in r mfdical M While in h In}, life. I undergrad em'lSlQnt Underpm , with the pre-med curriculum led to an identity crisis. I was the proverbial big fish in a small pond suddenly drowning in a big pond with tons of other big fish. Postponing my commitment to a career in medicine, and “finding” myself and my academic strength in studying literature in the African American Studies Program, I completed an honors thesis entitled, “One Foot In and One Foot Out of the Ghetto: Rap, Poetry and Racial Identity Development as Cultural Revolutions.” It was here I first explored an academic interest in the connections between narrative and identity development. In the thesis, I highlighted the ways in which I understood rap music as representing the stories of the racial identity development of first generation college educated minorities. While my undergraduate identity and academic work were personally rewarding, I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do after graduation. I was no longer sure about a career in medicine, primarily because I knew I wasn’t competitive enough to apply to medical school at that time. Since I had enjoyed working with children at a daycare while in high school, I decided I would try teaching until I figured out what to do with my life. I applied to an alternative certification program known for recruiting talented undergraduates from prestigious institutions and placing them in under-served areas. I envisioned myself in an urban metropolis, teaching and being a positive role model to underprivileged children who looked like me and came from cities like the one in which I grew up. The rejection of not being accepted into the program was devastating and challenged the academic identity I had worked hard to rebuild after the pre-med fiasco. However, I began my teaching career anyway when a personal mentor asked me to be a substitute teacher at her small private preschool in my hometown, a culturally diverse, 35 predoni tnodeyt teacher: the kind prograni yearold‘ nautaho sunuhant expenent knowledg pracheall and teach- .At [0 ltat e if fl'llSIrallor “CEdEd m. in [he Edi“. memuflh COHflicrec Urban lear: alludesa; Cliff-“he! 1,. predominantly working class, urban enclave of about 100,000 residents. In five days a motley crew of three year olds introduced me to my vocation. Afler that one-week teacher education crash course, I was given the opportunity to be a classroom assistant in the kindergarten room. I also found a part time job teaching poetry in an afterschool program for “at-risk” middle school students. A few months later, the teacher of the four year old’s class at the private preschool suddenly quit, and I took over the class. The state allowed me to teach provisionally with a bachelor’s degree as long as I was simultaneously taking early childhood education courses. So, my leaming-to-teach experiences were foregrounded in experience and supplemented with theoretical knowledge. Subsequently, my non-traditional teacher education centered in personal practical knowledge largely shaped my views and thinking about the nature of teaching and teacher education. After three years of starting four-year olds on their intellectual journeys, I decided to leave the classroom to pursue graduate studies. I felt a combination of guilt and frustration because while I was grateful for my teaching experience, I realized that I needed more formal training in order to make the kinds of differences I wanted to make in the education of children from urban areas like the one in which I grew up and eventually taught. Interestingly, studying at the master’s level left me similarly conflicted. While I had grown tremendously in my ability to design curriculum with urban learners in mind, I became disturbed by some of my colleagues’ negative teaching attitudes and deficit oriented beliefs about their students from urban communities. Overwhelmingly, they spoke and thought about urban students, families and communities in ways that are highlighted in the literature as being especially and particularly 36 tradition which pr | 9‘. developi‘ deficit \ ' and com; citizens L byteach: agenda. L'ni\ersit focused ,. from CUrr detrimental to urban schoolchildren’s academic and social success. Since most of my classmates were like the majority of school teachers, having been trained within traditional teacher preparation programs, I became particularly interested in the ways in which preservice teacher education is implicated in teachers’ beliefs and attitudes. As such, one of my goals as an urban teacher educator is to assist in the development of socially conscious teachers, enabling them to recognize and challenge deficit views of urban learners. I believe these kinds of teachers are more dedicated to and competent in assisting their students’ (and their own) development as productive citizens committed to actualizing social justice. I have been able to work toward this goal by teaching courses within various urban teacher preparation initiatives with a similar agenda. I assisted in the design and co-taught a Freshman Seminar for Michigan State University’s Urban Educators Cohort Program (UECP) where the course curriculum was focused on introducing students to the ways in which power, privilege and poverty functioned within urban schools through urban teacher education theory and mentoring from current practitioners. I also co-taught a year-long service learning course in which second year UECP students begin engaging in anti-oppressive multicultural education. In the Fall of 2008, I taught a graduate level literacy instruction course for the first cohort of elementary MSU interns working in Chicago Public Schools from which I recruited my dissertation study participants. My teaching and learning-to-teach experiences coupled with my learning-to-be-a- teacher educator/researcher experiences led to my desire to study the potential benefits of narrative writing as a means to engaging in teaching identity work. As a new teacher in an urban school, without prior professional preparation, in addition to regular 37 comers. make sc of lessor differer; : do with t includetf addition. importai i came t., failures. pan Slur} conversations with my teaching mentor, I often used my personal journal as a way to make sense of and strategize about my teaching. These journals were filled with stories of lessons gone both well and awry, and my thoughts on what I could and would do differently in order to better serve my students. Additionally, much of my writing had to do with the kind of person and/or the roles I had to assume that I hadn’t anticipated being included in my job as a teacher. Early in my first year of teaching, I struggled with the additional roles of parental figure and advocate. However, as I came to realize the importance of embracing these roles and integrating them into my pedagogy and practice, I came to find that my teaching successes and rewards far outweighed my teaching failures. In my work within MSU’s urban teacher preparation program, 1 designed a two- part story writing assignment for the Freshman Seminar that engaged prospective teachers in seeing themselves as continuously reflective practitioners. Remembering how useful it was for me within my own teaching to reflect on my practice in writing, I asked students to think creatively about how they would address the urban teaching challenges discussed in the course. In the initial draft of the story, completed at the beginning of the semester, students were asked to write an imaginative story foretelling their first days as a teacher in an urban school. Students were to draw upon their own experiences as K-12 students and integrate their learning from a special urban focused teacher education course they’d taken during the previous semester in which they explored the construction of diversity and inequality in social institutions. The second draft of their “teacher story,” completed at the end of the semester, was envisioned to be an opportunity to incorporate ideas learned within our course into their emerging urban teaching identities. 38 educatit anuudex confront saw the:‘ sdenced delit'erit. and ther“ to comb. ot‘urban “llnCSsc. acknou 1; 006s 3b: balance 1 I pregmm “Tiling a: l n candid:1th Prior Tese; based Upo CODCCPIUa Summer ur HO: While co-teaching this course, I received compelling evidence that teacher education can and does play an important role in the development of the kinds of attitudes, beliefs and competencies that urban teachers need in order to effectively confront the myriad challenges they will face. In the teacher stories students produced, I saw them grappling and struggling with the “reality therapy” of urban theory, previously silenced histories, and mentoring from current practitioners our course was committed to delivering. As we mindfully challenged the ways our students saw the schooling world and their own identities, we also made sure to share models of successful urban teaching to combat the reinforcement of negative stereotyping and expose students to the rewards of urban teaching. Through this exercise of curriculum design and instruction, I witnessed within our students, the early development of a critical balance between acknowledging the unique constraints of urban teaching and building the confidence in one’s ability to competently and compassionately work within those constraints. This balance is what was missing from the veteran teachers within my master’s degree program. This experience further piqued my interest in the potential utility of narrative writing and teaching identity development. Interested in learning more about how composing narratives could assist teacher candidates in constructing the ways of being and thinking that have been identified by prior research as those of effective urban educators, I then designed my practicum study based upon discourse analytic notions of storytelling and sociolinguistic conceptualizations of identity. I worked with a teacher candidate participating in a summer urban teaching fellowship. I regularly observed her teaching and from field notes composed stories about her practice. She also wrote stories about the days I 39 ohsem practic: Study. 1 these e‘ factors direct l’t second: was in t space ft; Storytell etperieii urban ed had Dirt l rescarch Urban Cl]; llhite G,‘ the CUllUr p0l‘UlatiU force are “meme .‘ Dreggjn , 1 (IO observed her and each week we would exchange narratives and discuss how we saw her practice informing her emerging identity as an urban educator and vice versa. From this study, I saw how narrative recapitulation of experience and the subsequent exchange of these experienced—based stories revealed the strength of institutional and socio-cultural factors in the process of developing an urban teaching identity. I also learned that my direct role in the teacher candidate’s construction of an urban teaching identity was more secondary than I had originally anticipated. Where I seemed to have been most usefirl was in the proposing of the endeavor, in the asking of the questions, in the opening of the space for the emerging urban teacher to do this important identity work for herself. For my dissertation study, I wanted to further explore the ways in which storytelling could help urban teacher candidates make sense of their learning to teach experiences while (hopefully) developing the ways of thinking and being of effective urban educators. I was particularly interested in working with teacher candidates who had not had substantive urban teacher training as these individuals are portrayed in the research literature as having the most problematic approaches to and experiences with urban children, schools and communities. In other words, I wanted to investigate “The White Girl Problem” in urban teacher education which is based upon assumptions about the cultural mismatches between White teachers and culturally diverse student populations. Since the national trends of a majority White middle class female teaching force are not predicted to change much in the coming decades, I wanted to look at how a narrative approach to teacher identity construction could be a means of addressing this pressing dilemma. 4O C oncer 5 Design. the inter that the method. detelot‘: educator Which ti. the fund. culturall; “MID“ ( l fUlUre Ur [hen-hells Conceptual Framework: Urban Teaching Identities as Established, Actual and Designated Identities In this dissertation, I push upon the aforementioned preliminary understandings of the intersections of identity construction and narrative inquiry. For this project, I assume that the narrative construction of an urban teaching identity can be an important methodological and investigative tool in which to witness and potentially facilitate the development of the requisite dispositions, skills and knowledge of effective urban educators. Within the narrative definition of identity and identity construction upon which this study operates, written stories, oral stories and discussions of those stories are the fundamental units of analysis, serving as vehicles through which cognitive and socio- culturally influenced processes of identifying are thought to occur. In other words, “who” (i.e., the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors) the teacher candidates are becoming as future urban educators is “who” they are literally and figuratively narrated to be (by themselves primarily) in a particular context. Because of its foregrounding of the dialogic nature of identity and identity construction, the area of scholarship that more specifically inform the conceptualization of identity work explored in this study is Anna Sfard & Anna Prusak’s ideas of actual and designated identities (Sfard & Prusak, 2005). This study draws heavily upon a narrative conceptualization of identity and identity construction in which “who” one is, is the story an individual tells about themselves taking into account one’s past, present, and hoped for future, as well as one’s consideration of the socio-cultural context in which the specific identity is being enacted and/or constructed (Sfard & Prusak, 2005). Initially, this study drew upon Sfard and Prusak’s contention that identity is defined as the literal narration of oneself. 41 Interest problen' generah identni; idenut} torsett~ connect idennty luennuw nageth. respect: 200] j, } Ilpescn‘ and Gale, and. or c:. tranfom.‘ kl“dSof definitioy- I that the \' lnditidu£1 leachEr C“ t. l Interestingly, the literal equating of stories and identities becomes analytically problematic with respect to the issue of “fixation” and subsequently essentialization and generalization. Because I am following a dialogic conceptualization of identity in which identities are dynamic, fluid, situated, performed, emergent and evolving, to posit that the identity itself is somehow completely contained within the confines of a particular story (or set of stories), as opposed to being observable within the conversations and connections between stories, is akin to subscribing to the rigid conceptualizations of identity and identity construction that this study seeks to challenge. As mentioned in the literature review, much of identity work in educational research offers developmental stage theories and other psychological models to explore and explain “who” one is with respect to teaching and learning (F Iores-Gonzalez, 2002; Phelan, I998; Wijeyesinghe, 2001). Though often times helpful in interpreting and analyzing human experience, these types of theories are not taken up in this dissertation because their attempts to generalize and categorize experiences are thought to be too restrictive. Their emphasis on linear and/or cyclical progression (e. g. Gary Howard’s fundamentalist, integrationist, tranformationist continuum for White teachers) does not adequately accommodate the kinds of negotiation and flexibility within the identifying processes that are key to the definition of identity and identity construction to which I subscribe within this study. The narrative co-writing processes I envisioned for this project does not presume that the stories written and told by and about participants are the “final say” in who these individuals are becoming as urban teachers. They are meant to be spaces in which teacher candidates and teacher educators work together to provide teacher candidates the Opportunity to use story telling as an identification process to contemplate and potentially 42 develot setting. with re; Prusak' annale descriot hoped-f separate also Con states (it this stud K-lZ stu middle C Their (It lUDdre as. I) fOUndatir CircumSl‘k Jdellilties ”Went ; hearth. iii pIOhjbir develop the beliefs, attitudes and behaviors they need to be successful in urban school settings. Considering the urban teaching identity as a space of “becoming,” especially with regard to the leaming-to-teach space of student teaching, challenges Sfard and Prusak’s equating of stories with identities, however, it does coincide with their notion of actual and designated identities. Here, an actual or “present” identity is one that describes a current state of being while a designated or “future” identity describes a hoped-for state of being (Sfard and Prusak, 2005). Although not specifically named as a separate type of identity in the Sfard & Prusak conception of storied identities, this study also considered established or “past” identities as those stories about a person’s former states of being or current states of being resulting from past experiences. For example, in this study, the participants’ established identities included stories of their experiences as K-12 students. Their actual identities included stories about their statuses as White middle class females in addition to narratives about being preservice teacher candidates. Their designated identities included stories about how they envisioned themselves in the future as culturally competent, effective urban educators. Due to their reference to past occurrences, established identities tend to be foundational in nature, usually describing aspects of one’s identities that are given by circumstance of birth (e. g., race or socioeconomic status). As such, they are often used to make inferences about, interpretations of, and/or challenges to actual and designated identities which are more fluid, dynamic and more readily negotiable because of their respective temporal locations in the present and future. While established identities heavily influence actual and designated identities, their foundational nature does not prohibit them from being negotiated and/or altered. Thus an individual is thought to have 43 the por- an actu. study p from I'lc enable '. Sfard & endorse. 0frepe.; thertr the \\ DI. the stor; and Sig: pchun 1L identitic. Dennniik This dlss ”Ones: candida: [he idL‘nti‘ Nations} educailor the power to decide how much and if an established identity impacts the construction of an actual or designated identity. For example, a major argument of this dissertation is that study participants’ established identities as White and middle class did not preclude them from negotiating their actual identities as urban teacher candidates in ways that would enable them to construct and enact designated identities as effective urban educators. Asserting “that identities may be defined as collections of stories about persons,” Sfard & Prusak (2005) privilege those stories “about individuals that are reifying, endorsable and significant” (p. 16). By reifying, Sfard & Prusak refer to the translation of repeated actions into states of being. Endorsability describes the narrator’s perception of her own accuracy in the retelling of events that “faithfully reflect the state of affairs in the world” (p.16). An identifying story is “significant if any change in it is likely to affect the storyteller’s feelings about the identified person” (p.17). These reifying, endorsable, and significant narratives/identities are rendered within three types of stories: 1) lSt person identities about the identified person told by the identified person, 2) 2nd person identities about the identified person by a third party to the identified person, and 4) 3rd person identities told about the identified person told by a third party to a third party. This dissertation study is primarily concerned with the relationships between two of these stories: 1St person identities told by the identified person to a third party (teacher candidates to teacher educator/researcher) and 2nd person identities told by a third party to the identified person (teacher educator/researcher to teacher candidates). Additionally, relationships between lSt and 2Ml person identities and larger narratives from teacher education discourses were also examined. For example, a teacher candidate’s narration of herself as a strict disciplinarian could be interpreted as her taking up the narrative of 44 "tough teacher candida identitic compos Data St: “tough love” she has discerned about effective urban educators from her preservice teacher preparation experiences. As depicted in Figure 1, this dissertation study sought to illuminate how teacher candidates constructed and negotiated their various established, actual and designated identities during an urban student teaching internship as expressed through the composition and exchange of lSt and 2“‘1 person identifying stories. Data Sources Primary Participants - Teacher Candidates. The student teaching internship represents a critical point in teacher preparation, when teacher candidates are required to apply their initial training and preparation to a “real world” situation (Koerner, Rust & Baumgarter, 2002). As such, a major consideration for the recruitment of teacher candidates at the student teaching internship stage was that they had completed all coursework associated with their undergraduate teacher preparation. The nine month, fifth year student teaching internship in which study participants were enrolled provides a unique (and often times stressful) positioning dilemma that provides fertile ground to discuss (and investigate) the processes and implications of professional identity development as the teacher candidate straddles the lines between learner, apprentice and novice teacher. One of my goals within this study was to explore the ways in which the added layer of learning-to-teach in urban schools affected the ways the teacher candidates made meaning of their student teaching experiences. Specifically, this study’s primary participants were four Michigan State University teacher candidates who were completing their fifth year internship in the Chicago Public Schools. These individuals were selected for participation because of 4S Figurt ldenti Figure 1. Urban Teaching Identities as Established, Actual and Designated mpeMflflenflMMdOflq- Identifies 2|“personldentilylrrgstot'lé 4s their cl Also. t? urban s area at? within f Ihdllh: the ran. t’.\'ame~ and At andrap COUCge ent'irort COHCSC mOVedL. Candida‘ teacher k their for leachin: COmmlll‘f hmen‘ca Hi the na: their choice to complete their student teaching internship in an urban school setting. Also, three of the teacher candidates explicitly expressed a desire to pursue teaching in an urban school after their internships, with all four of them hoping to remain in the Chicago area after the completion of their internships. While more detailed information about the study’s primary participants is located within the presentation of their individual cases (Chapters 4-7), it is useful to note here that these individuals were purposefully selected to participate in this study because of the range of dispositions toward and experiences with urban teaching they demonstrated. (Names of individuals are pseudonyms and will be used throughout.) April, Becca, Kim and Abbey self-identified as being white and middle class. Kim and Abbey were born and raised in Michigan. Abbey grew up in what she described as a “metropolitan” college town. Kim spent most of her childhood in what she described as a diverse urban environment until she moved to the suburbs in high school. Becca grew up in a suburban college town in New York, while April was born in a large urban center in Nebraska but moved around the country several time because of her father’s job. All four teacher candidates reported choosing to attend Michigan State University because of its reputable teacher education program and reported being very excited at the opportunity to complete their formal teacher education as a part of the first cohort of Michigan State student teaching interns to work in Chicago Public Schools. April, Becca and Kim explicitly and consistently expressed a desire and commitment to exploring their roles as non-African American teachers of urban Afiican American children. I hoped this desire would make them more likely to be fully engaged in the narrative identity work proposed in this study as a significant aim of the study was 47 did not her Illllt extenua SCltotsI Primar‘: Coan “as tht Ideml‘ Ii allOIhC to provide teacher candidates with a space to negotiate established, actual and designated identities. April was placed at an elementary school utilizing an Afio-centn'c approach to curriculum and instruction and had previous teaching experience in an urban-focused summer fellowship with a student population very similar to the one in which she was student teaching. Becca and Kim came from families where their parents were educators with backgrounds in special education. These two also participated in field experiences during their undergraduate teacher preparation in a school district that has economic and demographic characteristics that are comparable to many urban school districts. Abbey did not have previous teaching or field experiences in urban schools and while she began her nine month student teaching internship in the Afro—centric elementary school, due to extenuating circumstances, she completed her internship at a traditional elementary school. Table 1 presents an overview of the aforementioned characteristics of the study’s primary participants. Placements. As a narrative based conception of identity construction is highly contextual, the type of institution in which teacher candidates completed their internships was thought to certainly influence the ways they constructed and enacted their teaching identities. Although all three elementary schools were within close proximity to one another and all had predominantly or completely African American student populations, these schools differed in significant ways, especially in terms of school culture. For example, one school utilized an Afro-centric approach to curriculum and instruction. This particular pedagogical and curricular focus was thought to provide unique opportunities and/or challenges for the teacher candidate to encounter norms and values not present in the other two more traditional elementary schools. 48 Pissibtc. COUI’Se :- reCTulleLi EIlons Tc “Literal... Table 1: Characteristics of Primary Participants April Becca Kim Abbey Racial/ethnic White White White (Welsh White background and Australian) (Ukmnian and English) Socio- Middle Class Upper Middle Middle Class Middle economic Class Class/Upper backggound Middle Class Hometown Born in large Suburban Diverse urban Metropolitan Characteristics urban center in college town in environment on college town in Nebraska, upstate New west side of Southeast moved several York Michigan Michigan times while young. Previous 2 summer urban Field placement Field placement None urban teaching in high minority in high minority teachinL fellowshijs school school Expressed Yes Yes Yes No desire to explore roles as White teachers of African American students Placement Small, Small, Small, Small, School Predominantly Predominantly Predominantly Predominantly Characteristics African African African African American, High American, erican, High American, High Poverty, Afro- High Poverty, overty, Poverty, centric Math & Science raditional Traditional curriculum magnet urriculum curriculum curriculum Recruitment. In adherence to the Institutional Review Board’s concern about possible coercion of the interns for which I was the instructor for a literacy instruction course in which they were enrolled during the fall 2008 semester, participants were recruited after the semester had ended and I had submitted their grades. Initial recruiting efforts resulted in six interns expressing interest in participating in the study. Due to budgetary constraints and because the study would also utilize a case study methodology 49 to rept from e compli a uniqt concep relegat. teacher l person 3Ugmer PIIOI It‘ “expert Ekperie Study, [ to report and analyze data, four interns were selected for participation, with at least one from each of the three elementary Chicago Public Schools in which MSU interns were completing their student teaching. Secondary participant — Teacher Educator/Researcher. I considered myself to be a unique institutional representative within this project in several ways. First, the conceptualization of urban teaching identities under which this study operates necessarily relegates my position as an institutional representative to be a secondary “author” of the teacher candidates’ emerging urban teaching identities. The purposes of the second person identifying stories I wrote and my questions during story exchanges were to augment (or challenge) the stories teacher candidates wrote about themselves. From my prior research and other teacher education experiences, what I thought I had to offer as an “expert” was always mediated by the teacher candidate’s own interpretations of their experiences in and beyond the classroom. However, as an observer within my practicum study, I was able to illuminate some aspects of the teacher candidate’s teaching that she was not always able to see or did not consider while she was in the midst of teaching. I envisioned the narrative exchange process within this study as not only a way for me as researcher to “see” teacher candidates’ interpretation and analyses of their learning to teach experiences, but I also considered myself to be an assistant to teacher candidates as they examined, challenged and corrected (if they deemed necessary), within themselves, their beliefs, attitudes and behaviors as future urban educators. My assistance was presumed to be different from other institutional representatives (e. g. cooperating teachers and field instructors). My position as a teacher educator/researcher interested in the teacher candidates’ development (or not) of the ways 50 ofddt obsen educa conter more t classrc instruct unprota byexr. tohen; heruue Placenta Smcetn fillstrat] lmpurta andtth of thinking and behavior of effective urban educator heavily influenced the nature of my observations, stories and discussions with the teacher candidates. I assumed other teacher education institutional representatives would focus their assistance and instruction on content area and classroom management competency while my assistance would attend more to socio-cultural interactions (e. g., intersection between race, class, gender, and classroom management). Additionally, as the teacher candidates’ former instructor, I believe we established a kind of rapport and trusting relationship that facilitated open discussions of sometimes difficult topics. For example, during the semester I was her literacy methods course instructor, I felt Abbey’s communications with me via electronic mail were unprofessional and quite demanding in tone. I brought my concerns to Abbey’s attention by explaining to her that I felt it was my duty as a teacher educator to help her learn how to better communicate as a professional. Abbey apologized and explained that it was not her intention to offend me but that she was often frustrated with her student teaching placement situation and felt unheard by school administrators and university faculty. Since then, Abbey seemed to open up to me, although most often, only to share her frustrations with her internship experience. Often as Marx (2004) states in regards to the importance of trust when having conversations with study participants about race, racism and Whiteness, “Entwined with trust [is] kindness, encouragement, and patience”(p. 34). I believe that my kindness, encouragement and patience with my participants when they were my students engendered the kind of trust that facilitated our work together during the study. 51 pupr> whose candid oppor. Ameri. Africa? relatit -. USCG“. ofthe ~ comer: course Candie,t lePOT’tc. Pellple. abgm Il’ Comma CIICUm" in m}? e. mill-Ca . belie. l I also established rapport while I was the participants’ course instructor by purposefully presenting myself as an African American “native informant” (hooks, 1989) whose community of origin is in many ways similar to that in which the teacher candidates were interning. During one of our first class sessions I gave students the opportunity to ask me questions to help give them more perspective on African Americans. I was careful not to present myself as the ultimate source on all things African American; however, I felt it was important for the teacher candidates to have a relatively safe space to ask about things they might not have otherwise known or was not necessarily originally a part of the course plan, things that would lead to understandings of the students that might impact their teaching of these students. For example, in an extracurricular informational session intended to help contextualize and familiarize the teacher candidates with teaching in Chicago, another course instructor and I led the teacher candidates in discussions about race. The teacher candidates were asked to share stereotypes of low-income and African American students and families. I was not surprised by some of the negative assumptions teacher candidates reported without much (or any) experience with low-income and/or African American people. During the discussion of the stereotypes presented, I told the teacher candidates about my own experiences growing up in a single parent home in a working class community similar to many metropolitan inner cities and how these conditions and circumstances did not hinder my academic success. My mother was very much involved in my education, in and outside of school. Although my experience was, in some ways atypical (e.g. I attended a private elementary school and a Catholic high school), I do believe I challenged what many of the teacher candidates assumed was true about urban 52 OPPOI teache succes wtudd compo nuden parocq dynam ll iIll m exchan fencer may no African American students and parents, minimally making it difficult for teacher candidates to negatively generalize about these populations. During the semester in which I was their instructor, I thought providing opportunities like those mentioned above positioned me as an ally and/or assistant in the teacher candidates’ development of the ways of thinking they would need to be successful urban educators. During the study, I believed our established relationships would give me a more comprehensive view of the teacher candidates and thus help me to compose more plausible stories about their teaching. Similarly, when we were no longer students and teacher education instructor and then became teacher candidate/study participant and teacher educator/researcher, an important shift in our relationships’ power dynamics occurred, strengthening the established rapport. I believe this shift in power, with more power being accessible to the teacher candidates, enhanced the narrative exchange process, providing teacher candidates with the space to openly and honestly reflect upon their learning-to-teach experiences in ways that more traditional course work may not have allowed. Other participants. In order to solicit 3rd person identifying stories, I attempted to interview teacher candidates’ mentor teachers and field instructors. As institutional representatives of teacher education particular to each teacher candidates’ specific professional context, these individuals are also important “authors” of the teacher candidates’ actual identities and leaming-to-teach experience. Each study participant consented to my soliciting these stories. While I was able to solicit information from the teacher candidates’ field instructors, I was only able to interview two of the cooperating teachers. 53 cn}'a comn andti Daua' suny‘ ofwri their It suhnnt innrde [83‘7th Spelll aj reacher 0km. If i. , . uow {ht Additionally, to help contextualize the research sites with respect to the rest of the city and school district, I interviewed and solicited historical information from community members including two local university professors, both natives of Chicago, and two long term residents of the neighborhood of the school sites. Data Collection This project entailed a series of audio-taped interviews, classroom observations, story writing and story exchanging sessions. Primary data sources of this study consisted of written and oral narratives in which teacher candidates and I retold observations of their teaching. Additionally, this project included audio-taped and electronically submitted interviews with teacher candidates’ cooperating teachers and university field instructors. The initial interview with each participant ranged between 30-90 minutes. Here, I gathered background demographic information in addition to teacher candidates’ hopes and expectations for their teaching experiences. To introduce participants to the key role of storytelling and identity construction within the study, I asked the teacher candidates to tell me stories about events in their lives that they felt significantly impacted who they envisioned themselves to be currently. I observed the four teacher candidates three times each as they participated in lead teaching between February - April, 2009. Following our “Observation Day,” in which I spent at least half a school day (at least once in the morning and once in the afternoon per teacher candidate), I asked teacher candidates to spend no more than 60 minutes, on their own, revisiting an occurrence that day by re-creating it as a story in which they analyze how they interacted with their students using the following general prompts: 54 I‘ J 3i lnthe into tl ll sunet Inedt. depict lkdgni. 3dtert I ”Kenn l'lTOIe :1 HOUCEC Candid“ (lithe i Hanscr; 1) Describe a significant success and/or challenge you faced today in the classroom. (i.e. helping a struggling student succeed, a lesson gone awry, etc...) 2) What particular aspect(s) of your identity do you think played a role in how the events of the success or challenge took place? 3) How does who you were in the classroom today, help you to think about who you will need to be as a future urban educator? In the last story, participants were asked to revise the final observation day as a projection into their futures as urban teachers. This story included the following prompt: 1) If you faced this success or challenge in the future, what would you do differently? Why? Using these same prompts, I composed a 2"d person identifying story re-telling the same Observation Day. The first two stories I wrote were purposefully descriptive. I tried to focus on “reporting,” or presenting the teacher candidates with an accurate depiction of their interactions and dialogue with their students with as little apparent judgment and/or evaluation as possible. I tried to minimize the use of adjectives and adverbs that would convey my interpretation and/or analysis of the motives and/or intentions of the actions I saw. In the third story, I also projected into the teaching futures of the participants. I wrote the third story as a recreation of the final Observation Day based upon trends I noticed in our conversations about the first two stories regarding concerns the teacher candidates expressed about their learning-to teach-experiences thus far. For example, all of the lessons and most of the dialogue that appear in the third stories I wrote were transcribed from my field notes taken on the final Observation Day. 55 ennui Days their t innial educa intere the lit norub and Hi i Educa Rahtn‘ excha: candid lOIttL identii; (fiber; gEHEra_ meter and CC,- A day or two after the teacher candidates and I wrote our respective stories and emailed them to each other, I met with each them to compare and discuss the Observation Day stories. During these story exchanges, I asked teacher candidates to further explain their choice of story focus, in addition to any intentions that were unclear to me upon an initial reading of the story. It was also an opportunity for me as a teacher educator/researcher to discuss with participants my observations of their practice. In the interest of time and availability, the exit interview was conducted immediately following the final story exchange. Here, we discussed how or if the process of writing and sharing stories had or hadn’t helped them to process their student teaching internship experience and/or develop an urban teaching identity they thought could benefit them as future urban educators. Rationale for Data Collection One could argue that narrative identity construction via storytelling and story exchange does not produce “accurate” or “valid” urban teaching identities. The teacher candidates’ desires and/or attempts to present themselves in what they considered to be (or what they assumed I considered to be) an idealized version of an urban teacher identity would compromise the study’s ability to truthfully speak about the experiences of other urban teacher candidates. As Connelly and Clandinin (1990) assert, “like other qualitative methods, narrative relies on criteria other than validity, reliability, and generalizability” (p. 7). Further agreeing that, “it is important not to squeeze the language of narrative criteria into the language created for other forms of research” (p. 7), I believe the conceptualization of narrative defined identity construction I use uniquely addresses and complicates the issues of performance raised by critics of narrative inquiry. 56 hou'I gene: depei educa Funk. perfor (prim tothc has b; obscr. SiOl’lc .. noncx an)'sn expert the an L‘ “Wilt “inch SEVeraI meg”: Cmen' a Unlike the dominant models of identity within education, I am not concerned with how my analysis and presentation of the stories of the four teacher candidates can be generalized for all urban teacher candidates. As culturally situated, context specific, and dependent upon the dialogue of many narrators (e. g. teacher candidate, teacher educator/researcher), an urban teaching identity cannot be generalized or essentialized. Furthermore, like Gee (2001), I contend that an urban teaching identity is precisely a performance during which teacher candidates should attempt to construct themselves (primarily in action and subsequently in the storied re-telling of those actions) according to the idealized, or designated identity of an effective urban educator because this identity has been documented as the most beneficial for urban students. Additionally, my observation of teacher candidates’ practice combined with my 2nd person identifying stories served to further reify, endorse and attest to the significance of the lSt person stories told by teacher candidates. In other words, teacher candidates couldn’t just tell any story they wanted me to hear. The stories they told were based upon events they experienced and I witnessed. The congruence (or not) of our stories provided grounds for the analysis of the stories as established, actual and designated identities and/or indicators of urban teaching identity construction. While the narrative inquiry research community was developing criteria with which to guide the conduct of the discipline, Connelly and Clandinin (1990) posited several usefiil criteria from which narrative inquirers were pushed to “search for, defend, the criteria that best apply to his or her work” (p. 7). For this project, I choose the criteria of “plausibility” to describe the ways in which a narrative conceptualization of identity construction can reveal and engender the characteristics of effective urban 57 edua onen inqu1 candi Iheon theori; teache define inquiri “npui and 1c: plausi; Hanan. hadlan- ‘1‘]: 3le- educators. “A plausible account is one that tends to ring true. It is an account of which 9” one might say, ‘I can see that happening. (p. 8). With respect to the narrative of this inquiry, it is my goal to present a plausible account of what it meant for four teacher candidates to make sense of their leaming—to-teach experiences in urban schools. Like Peshkin (1985, as quoted in Connelly and Clandinin, 1990), it is my intention that When I disclose what I have seen, my results invite other researchers to look where I did and see what I saw. My ideas are candidates for others to entertain, not necessarily as truth, let alone Truth, but as positions about the nature and meaning of a phenomenon that may fit their sensibility and shape their thinking about their own inquiries (p. 280). This plausibility simultaneously encouraged and “checked” me as a narrator. On the one hand my interpretation of the data was freed from the constraints of grand theorizing. My narrative of the teacher candidates’ stories is then free to inspire other teacher candidates and teacher educator/researchers to think about the ways narrative defined identity construction might give them insight into their own experiences and inquiries respectively. On the other hand, presenting a plausible account rooted in empirical data discouraged me (and the teacher candidates) from fictionalizing the stories and identities constructed. By fictionalizing, I mean to narrate an account which is not plausible or readily believable based upon past or current events. For example, if I narrated a teacher candidate’s designated identity to include condescending behavior toward students, yet during the study the participant never displayed such behavior and had lamented other teachers’ treatment of students in this way. This would be considered “fictional” because I had not observed the teacher candidate behave in this manner in 58 addh: hkek- [kna X subsn “the? asacr consn nanat docur idenn paSI, F A 5- >4 [he Sic: addition to the teacher candidate making it clear that was not a behavior in which she was likely to engage. Data Analysis Narrative writing and exchange of narratives are both the primary methods and substance of this study. They function as both (and simultaneously) the windows through which the construction of an urban teaching identity was viewed and investigated as well as actual spaces, defined as discursively analytic moments, in which the identity construction was proposed to take place. Combining a case study approach with this narrative methodology allowed for the construction of urban teaching identities to be documented and interpreted in a way that captured the complexity of the process of identity construction while foregrounding the diversity of experiences of the participants. Defining “stories " and “narratives. ” In this study, the construction of an urban teaching identity is considered to be visible within writing and exchanging of narratives about observed teaching. In other words, the writing, sharing and discussion of narratives is conceived as a space that allows both teacher candidates and the teacher educator/researcher to step away from and gain perspective on something that is in constant flux and action: identities. The story makes the moving target of an identity readable as it re-presents actions and practices that occurred in the classroom. For the purposes of this study, a “story” is defined as discursively analytic moments consisting of oral and written utterances re-presenting and/or re-constructing a past, present or future action performed, an event experienced, or an action imagined by the storyteller or narrator. A “narrative” then refers to a collection of stories with an identifiable narrative theme (Clandinin et. al, 1993). Labov (1972) defined narrative as 59 “one [118 5'. with defin: the r.. any I. qual: aetio: must to 0b. Slater and(\ “one way of recapitulating past experience by matching a verbal sequence of clauses to the sequence of events which (it is inferred) actually occurred” (p. 360). While, I agree with Labov’s centering of experience as the key component of defining narrative, my definition of stories and narratives strategically loosens linguistic restrictions concerning the necessity of ordering certain types of connections between narrative clauses. I allow any talk or writing about an event based experience with a reasonably inferable setting to qualify as a story. Here, setting must include readily identifiable characters, times, and actions. Explicitly mentioning places was an optional criterion, but these places, again, must have been reasonably inferred. This was done in order to widen the lens with which to observe the types of identifying that were observed during narrative exchanges. Statements of and about beliefs, though at times may have been connected to events, in and of themselves were not counted as stories or narratives. For example, if a teacher candidate wrote, “Today, I read a book about famous African Americans to my students,” this would be counted as a story because the statement included characters (teacher and students), time (today), and actions (reading of the book). The “place” can be reasonably assumed to be the classroom. However, if a teacher candidate said, “I believe all urban children deserve good literacy instruction,” this would not have been counted as a story. Although it expressed what the teacher candidate believes, a statement of belief does not recall a past or present event, nor does it foretell a future occurrence. The distinction between stories and statements of belief was made to further focus on the ways in which teacher were making sense of their leaming- to-teach experiences in urban settings. 60 NO T1 Ultiuf prim. HINT. expet Ifilfl d Coding. Both inductive and deductive methods were used to document and interpret the construction of teacher candidates’ established, actual, and designated identities. Specifically, teacher candidates’ 1St person identifying stories within written narratives (and their functional equivalent in lines of transcribed oral narratives) were analyzed to discern plots and temporal plane. Stories with similar plots, or main ideas, were grouped together as a narrative theme. “Complete” narrative themes were those plots that appeared at least once in each of the three Observation Day narratives and appeared across at least two temporal planes (past, present or future). This three story, two temporal plane minimum was conceptualized as evidence of the reification, endorsement and significance of the established, actual and designated identities participants narrated (Sfard & Prusak, 2005). It was also intended to allow themes to emerge fi'om the stories teacher candidates and I exchanged. Additionally, many of the key dispositions, skills and knowledge identified by prior research of effective urban educators were used as codes to categorize written and oral storied identities. These codes were determined by comparing the characteristics of dreamkeepers and star teachers. They included positive views of cultural diversity, high expectations for student success, cultural awareness, and knowledge and use of culturally relevant teaching. (See Appendix D for a complete list of codes). I also looked within narratives for evidence illustrating teacher candidates’ interpretation of their participation in the study. This was done to help gauge the utility and potential of the narrative writing and exchange process in assisting teacher candidates in developing the characteristics of effective urban educators. 61 A case study approach was combined with the aforementioned narrative analyses to present the individualized ways in which the teacher candidates constructed urban teaching identities. Case studies were chosen because “the ways people represent and interact about experiences. . .depend on more than a shared repertoire for meaning making. They also depend on the contexts — the frameworks for interpretation — that people bring to those experiences” (Dyson & Genishi, 2005, p. 5). A case study approach is complimentary with the assertion of this dissertation that constructing an urban teaching identity is not to be generalized, but is to be considered a plausible account of a teacher candidate’s and a teacher educator/researcher’s account of observed experience. Analyzing My Stories. Although the main goal of this dissertation was to explore teacher candidates’ construction of urban teaching identities, I found myself narrating my own established, actual and designated identities as an emerging teacher educator/researcher while I collected, analyzed and wrote up data collected for this project. As such, first person identifying stories collected from my life and professional experiences, my research journal and from story exchanges with teacher candidates appear throughout the dissertation, beginning with my established identities noted in the first section of this chapter. The narration of my actual identities during the study is presented as one of the narrators in the following chapter that contextualizes the study’s geographic and socio-political settings. Finally, my designated identities are presented at the conclusion of Chapter 10, where I narrate my hoped-for state of being as an urban teacher educator/researcher. 62 CHAPTER FOUR NARRATING THE STUDY’S CONTEXT As narrative identity construction is both the phenomenon of study and method of inquiry in this dissertation, the purpose of the following chapter is to narrate the study’s various settings. Through multiple narrators (indicated by changes in font), relationships between established and actual identities of the mid-South Side of Chicago, Illinois are explored as a way to explicate the study’s geographic and socio-political contexts. The following stories describe the city, neighborhoods, schools and educational policy climates in which study participants completed their student teaching internships. Here, though, I take the mid-South Side of Chicago as an actor in itself rather than looking at the identity construction of the study participants. A snapshot of a “city” In terms of geographic and demographic size, economic development, political activity and influence, and especially because of contentious race relations, Chicago, Illinois provides key functional and ideological definitions of what makes a location “urban.” As such, Chicago has served as a significant “urban” case study and test site for modern (and postmodern) social scientists, social and civil engineers, entrepreneurs and citizens since a Haitian named Jean Baptist Point DuSable was the first non-Native American to build a settlement there in 1779. Now, with nearly 2.9 million residents organized into 50 wards, with several Fortune 500 companies housing their international headquarters there, and with arguably the most powerful media mogul on the 63 face of the planet calling the city her entrepreneurial home, Chicago’s emergence as a model of an urban center with global significance is difficult to question. A ResearelJer’s Initial T/youglsts After passing t/Jroug/o tlse depressing rig/its of deindustrialized Gag, Indiana, tlJe modern buildings of the famous C/Jieago séyline in llJ€ distanee greet me as I exit the big/ma} onto Stan} Island Avenue, about five miles south of downtown. The studio apartment I bare rented for the wee/é is located in the 5 7 00 blooé of Story Island wln'e/J runs along Lake Alien/gait, son/eu/lsat parallel to Lake Shore Drive liut inland as the two streets sandwich jaréson Park. The Al useurn of S eienee and I ndustg' is aeross the street and the beadquarters of t/Jefirst Afiiean Are/mean green letter sorority is balf a block non‘lJ. As an outsider, I ’ue heard about tlse infamous “Sow/9 .S‘ide ” of C lu'eago wit/J its lug/J pot-erg! and lug/J crime and tln's isn ’t it even though the map I bare tells rue that ’s where I am saying. 771(- 7bHIIIIIIUI'ti'”b'}xr1./t:s... “Well the whole thing, remember, Chicago's provincial. Like provincial in terms of the neighborhoods. So neighborhrxxls are designated in many ways by physical boundaries but also how people understand the neighlmrhmxl. So some people might refer to Kenwoorl/Oakland as Hyde Park or some folks might put some parts of Woodlawn as Hyde Park, but the physical boundaries according to ('hicago neighborhood map, some guidelines folks use for Hyde park, so for some people Woodlawn starts at the B‘Iidway. For some folks, Woodlawn starts at 61"t street, so that is a different piece and they both have kind of a gmgraphie thing that stretches from the lake to about Cottage Grove, W oodlawn extending a little bit further west. ...80 the politics of place are critical in understanding neighborhoods in Chicago.” -(bmmrmitr Informant #1 Contested Spaces: Chicago’s Mid-South Side No matter who you are and/or how long you have lived there or nearby, it is undeniable that the mid-South Side area is one of Chicago’s most contested 54 spaces. Whether it’s a clash between the interests of a powerful university presence and the interests of the surrounding community’s non-university affiliated neighbors or it’s a fight over the methods, means and implications of being one of the nation’s first sites for federally funded “urban renewal” projects of the mid 1950s, the mid-South Side is marked by the struggle to address the question of “who” has the right to live, work and learn in the city. Incorporated in the early 18605 and annexed to the City of Chicago in the late 1880s, the Hyde Park neighborhood, arguably the center of the mid-South Side, has primarily been occupied by the University of Chicago, founded there in 1890. At the time, the area also held an “unusually high percentage of professional and business people” (HPKCCC, 2009). The Woodlawn neighborhood, separated from Hyde Park by the Midway, a mile long park first used in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The neighborhood was also originally a township that was annexed into the city during the same year as Hyde Park and also became a haven for university faculty and staff. Hay-truths. .. I ’m learning not to totally trust maps. T/Jg’y tend to tell nay-mm, zft/mt. But people tell lJalf- trut/Js as well. We be told the interns l/Jal we}! are working in we neighbor/900d of H )rde Par/e, home of the Unz'uersigr ofC/n'eago, u'lJen real/I onb' one elementagr “/2001 a tee/Jnieall' in that neighbor/100d According to native C bieagoans and the 77 comm/(nib! areas designated by The Universip' of C/Jieago, the other two elementagr se/Jools are in the Woodlawn neighbor/100d It would take me a little while to figure out Ill/lat llJat means but I would learn that it eertainbr means somet/nng. Racial Shifts, Racial Tensions... 65 L/_'* WEI preq wlié Cou Pror that mac 3766 inlet subs Supn by lli SUCCt lees COVG' Oomt Like many northern cities during The Great Migration of the 1940s, Chicago’s population exploded when thousands of poor Blacks left the South and other rural areas seeking better opportunities for work and social mobility. However, from the time following the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition until well into the 19503, Hyde Park and Woodlawn remained fairly stable predominantly White middle class neighborhoods. This was due to the widespread use of restrictive covenants beginning in 1928, despite the Supreme Court declaring residential segregation ordinances to be unconstitutional in 1921. Promoting the practice as the most tenable solution to the kind of racial tension that lead to the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, White homeowners and city planners made contractual agreements with one another not to sell property in certain areas to African Americans. Despite efforts to keep them out, some middle class Blacks were able to integrate restricted neighborhoods. For example, in 1938, Carl Hansberry, father of playwright Lorraine Hansberry, purchased a home in Woodlawn but was subsequently sued by a White participant of the area’s covenant. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled in favor of the covenant, but this decision was overturned by the US Supreme Court who ruled in favor of Mr. Hansberry in 1940. With successful challenges like the Hansberry case, and the US. Supreme Court decision rendering such covenants unenforceable in a separate case, restrictive covenants were officially lifted in Chicago in 1948. African Americans continued to the city following World War II. This combined with successful legal challenges to restrictive covenants and the 66 violation of residential zoning laws led to dramatic changes in the mid-South Side area. Discrepancies in resources, political power, influence and organization led to very different results for the Hyde Park and Woodlawn communities. Many landlords responded to the population increase by illegally turning large single family homes and apartments into smaller units and neglecting the maintenance on the “new,” more crowded buildings for which they charged high amounts of rent. As Blacks moved into mid—South Side communities from the north and west sides of the city, large numbers of White residents moved out of neighborhoods like Woodlawn to the suburbs causing median incomes and the percentage of owner occupied housing to drop significantly. During the 19503, Woodlawn went from being 60% White to 95% Black. “White flight” was also said to be facilitated by The Chicago Transit Authority cutting services to increasingly lower income neighborhoods like Woodlawn in favor of more services to ensure that professionals were able to conveniently travel into the downtown areas from the suburbs. Gentrification. . . I can clearly see tbe difference between Woodlawn and Hyde Park I wonder if tbe interns notice botv tbefurtber soutbjou go tbrougb Hyde Park and into Woodlawn, tbe more Black people and fewer otbers tbere seems to be. And tbe Midwegyust makes tbat division even starker. A! 0st of tbe interns are b'zing in an apartment building tbat is My about a block soul/J of tbe Alidu'cy but even tbis area is spotted will] vacant lots non-existent in dee Park, albeit most of tbe lots bave signs posted signaling tbe coming o/nezv developments. I imagine tbese netvb' renovated brownstones are being marketed to folks like me (and tbe interns) zvbo want to move to tbe “Big Cigr ” of Cbicago but are looking for tbat “neigbborbood ”feel. I ~ fleel 67 _ '_‘-‘-i‘_‘1 _._. .. __ fl _ . somew/sat cotylt'cted because I would love to move into tbis nengbor/Jood but consider botv I would be contributing to tbe gentrification communig' folks flgbIfiI/b/ struggle against. Community Responses to Neighborhood Decline During the 1960s, massive losses in capital and tax revenue caused businesses to fail. Crime in the area increased. The Blackstone Rangers, named after a street in Woodlawn, emerged as one of Chicago’s most famous African American street gangs. The Rangers proclaimed to be a political organization inspired by the Black Panther Party and at one point applied for and procured federal funds to run job training programs for youth. However, affiliation with drug trafficking and violence in the 19705 called their status as merely a political organization into question. In response to the “panic peddling” of homes and other real estate based upon the fears of racial integration, non-University of Chicago affiliated residents of Hyde Park and Kenwood (the neighborhood area north of Hyde Park) formed the Hyde Park Kenwood Community Conference (HPKCC) in 1949. Believing that “Black and whites are able to live together,” and with the goal “to build and maintain a stable interracial community of high standards,” (HPKCC, 2009), the HPKCC consisted of local religious leaders, academics, bankers and real estate leaders. In the year following their formation, the HKPCC organized 20 block clubs to help old and new residents get to know one another and to identify community needs, goals, and objectives. In response to the decline in student enrollment allegedly linked to fears for student safety and the 1952 attempted kidnapping and rape of a University of Chicago faculty member’s wife, the South 68 East Chicago Commission (SECC) was organized to represent the major interests of the university. Initially this organization focused on legal action against landlords violating single family zoning laws. Although their loyalties to and representations of their primary constituents often resulted in clashes, the HPKCC and SECC came together when striving to prevent Hyde Park from the deterioration of the neighborhoods surrounding them. In 1953 the HPKCC and the SECC campaigned together and got the city to clear 47 acres of what they considered to be the “core of blight in the community” and build in its place a shopping center, high rise apartments and townhomes (HPKCC, 2009). In 1956, Hyde Park was officially named a “Conservation Area” and was thus eligible for over $25 million in federal funds for Urban Renewal Projects under the 1954 Housing Act. During two years of planning, over 300 block organization meetings took place as residents discussed and tried to negotiate a plan they felt overwhelmingly favored university interests. Residents were concerned about the proposed demolition of perfectly good buildings and the absence of provisions for public and middle income housing. The final plan, addressing these concerns, was approved by the City Council in November of 1958 and was given federal approval for implementation in January of 1959. A Unique Position “I’ve been in a unique position in Chicago to be a Black guy that has grown up and has had White neighbors, like literally having white people living next door to me which is not that crazy but for a. city as segregated as ('hicago, it is... So I grew up on 60th and Woodlawn and there was a time when that was considered to be kind of the borders of Hyde Park. And while that’s still 69 —-—-—-:-.'_---——=— ttx'hnically true, now you’ll see that. border pushed past 63“ street. It's interesting because I remember being in college and being in sociology classes and having the prof essors literally talk about my block as being the dividing block between like Hyde ’ark and you know Woodlawn which is a fairly decent community now but had its issues years ago.” -(‘ommunity Informant #2 Subtle Dtflerences Tbe ideological and plgisical maps are becoming clearer tbrougb tbe subtle diflerences I see. I notice tbe police presence witbin Hyde Park borders consist of university and do! police patrolling tbe streets during tbe day. Bgyond tbe 6 7” tbrougb 63’“ street border, I rareb' see any police otber tban cig' police. From my apartment in Hyde Park, I can walk to a gourmet grocegi store. A little furtber array, but still wit/sin walking distance I bave found a neigbborbood store tbat sells organic produce, a big cbain bookstore, a well known coffee cbain in addition to many cbarming restaurants and retail sbops. I know I baven ’t traveled over eveo' square incb of Woodlawn, but I don ’t see any real commercial {paces in tbe middle of tbe community. I remember tbe banks and stores being on Story! Island Avenue, wbicb runs along tbe eastern edge of tbe communigt, but tbcy were not wit/tin walking distance of most of tbe bousing. If I lived bere, I wouldn ’t bave to leave Hyde Park for aryrtbing, but If I lived in Woodlawn, I’d definitely bane to leave my neigbborbood to get tbe tbings I needed Urban Renewal The Hyde Park-Kenwood Urban Renewal Project was an attempt to avoid the struggles neighborhoods like Woodlawn faced during the 19505. With its success, the University of Chicago made public its plans to expand the program. Although, Woodlawn was declared a conservation area by the Chicago Plan Commission in 1946, and then eligible for urban renewal federal funds, no official plan to address the neighborhood’s physical and economic decline appeared 70 until the University of Chicago publicized an initiative to move south beyond its Hyde Park boundaries in 1960. The year before, a group of local ministers from Catholic and Protestant churches convened to discuss the conditions in Woodlawn. Community leaders were concerned about the neighborhood’s physical, economic, and social decline. They also feared what they believed to be the fate of too many poor Blacks and small business that were displaced in the Hyde Park Urban Renewal Project. According to Bishop Arthur Brazier, of Apostolic Church of God, who co- founded The Woodlawn Organization (TWO), a grassroots community organization, Woodlawn residents’ apprehension of the University’s plan was largely the result of resentments that were old and ran deep: The residents of Woodlawn, however, had no reason to love the university. Prior to the middle sixties the university had projects of research and development in such far-off places as Pakistan, yet it spent nothing to relieve poverty in Woodlawn. Typical of so many large universities, it simply ignored the poor in its own backyard. It went further; it even built a barbed-wire barrier against the Woodlawn residents along part of the south side of its campus. Little wonder citizens of the Black community grow cynical about America’s self-righteous criticism of such affronts to freedom as the Berlin Wall, when they see walls erected everywhere against them by the white Establishment. The university was the ever present, glaring example to Woodlawn residents. (Brazier,1969, p. 52). 71 Enlisting the help of the Saul Alinsky and Industrial Areas Foundation, a group that helped communities organize themselves, TWO organized against the University’s efforts. Allegedly due to a refusal of the University-led South East Chicago Commission to meet with the grassroots organization, TWO brought the proposed project to an impasse as federal urban renewal funds could not be obtained without community approval of the plan. TWO demanded the project not be allowed to begin until the City Council surveyed the entire community to assess its needs. The City agreed and administered the survey, however, to the dismay of TWO. The council suggested community input be sought after a plan was completed. It took the mayor’s intervention for both sides to finally agree to a mayor-appointed citizens committee to deal with Woodlawn’s urban renewal project with a majority of members coming from TWO and a TWO approved project administrator. They also agreed to the conversion of certain deteriorated commercial space into low-cost, low-rise housing. Despite Woodlawn’s insistence on a self-determined approach to urban renewal, the neighborhood continued to experience economic and physical deterioration. Riots on the west side of town after the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and over 300 arson fires of abandoned buildings between 1968 and 1971 gave White business owners more motivation to leave Woodlawn. Residents who could afford to leave decreased Woodlawn’s population from 81, 279 in 1960 to 27,086 in 2000. Despite the decline, activists still made efforts to revitalize the community. Pat Wilcoxen, the wife of a University of Chicago Divinity School faculty member had been involved in social 72 justice work in the area since moving to Hyde Park in 1955. She worked to create within Woodlawn, a community replicating “the supportive, diverse and intergenerational human network” she witnessed growing up in Southern California (Schuler, 2000). Purchasing an abandoned building from slumlords, Wilcoxen and other members of University Church in Hyde Park opened the Covenantal Community in 1979 which still continues to offer affordable housing to intergenerational, multiracial residents across income levels (Schuler, 2000). Wilcoxen successfully participated in the creation of more spaces like the Covenantal Community, and eventually joined forces with Bishop Brazier of TWO to co-found the Woodlawn Development Association (WDA) in the 1990s. Since its inception as a non-profit neighborhood housing group, WDA has consistently worked to fight recent gentrification of the area through several mixed income housing initiatives (Knight, 2000). Mixed Income Housing “On a lot of those properties are, they're building what they’re calling mixed income housing. Now the mixed income housing has a particular set of requirements right? So you have a third of the housing’s supposed to be what they call affordable, another third are supposed to be moderate and then the another third supposed to be what they call market rate. Now what we see happening is, many of the families don’t qualify for the quote unquote affordable because they don't have, there's these three particular requirements that come in. One, no one in your household can have a felony. Two, you gotta work 30 hours a week. Then three, no one can have a. history of drug abuse. So, you think about that and then something that’s even more sinister, 40% of public housing residents are senior citizens who live on fixed income. And if we know about Black and 73 Latino farrrilies, rrruch of the child rearing is now going to grandparents. So if think about those requirements, senior citizens are already out the gate. 80 this whole notion around, this is greatly a case for disparate impact...f ol ks won't clean this up because it is making the city look more attractive.” (’orrrmunity Informant #1 School Site #1: Forest Green Elementary School (All names are pseudonyms and will be used throughout.) Forest Green Elementary School first opened in 1996. As a part of a wider, national Small Schools Coalition movement, Forest Green Elementary School’s African-centered curriculum and pedagogical foci are inspired by the Nguzo Saba (the seven principles of Kwanzaa) and the seven principles of Ma’at of ancient Kemet. The school’s rationale for utilizing Ma’at principles is based upon the following belief: Ma’at was the perfect order, toward which man should strive. It was, therefore, considered essential to live according to the principles of Ma’at so as not to disturb the very fabric of creation. Since the ancient Kemetic society believed that the universe was an ordered and rational place, Ma’at became the embodiment of the seven principles: Truth, Justice, Righteousness, Order, Balance, Harmony and Reciprocity. The whole of the Kemetic society hinged on the furtherance of these principles. At Forest Green Elementary School, we believe that these principles are essential to the development of the whole child. It is for this reason, 74 that we remind ourselves of these virtues at our daily morning rituals. (Forest Green Elementary School, 2009). Forest Green students begin each day with a Family Assembly where the entire student body and faculty sing both the Star Spangled Banner and the Negro National Anthem. The sharing of announcements is followed by collective recitations of affirmations intended to encourage students before classes begin. According to the chair of the community organization that organized the school’s founding, the African-centered curriculum was chosen because residents felt, “Our children needed to know more about not just their history, but a stronger sense of self” (Keheller, 2006). April and Abbey were placed at Forest Green Elementary School. During the study, Forest Green served approximately 200 children in Grades PreK-6. Students meeting or exceeding state standards for academic progress was 83%, with 82% in reading, 82% in math, 96% in science. At Forest Green, 14% of students exceeded state standards as compared to the 13% district average. In 2008, Forest Green was 99.6% African American and 0.4% White. As a high poverty school, 82.1% of students were considered low income, as determined by those eligible for free and reduced lunch. 7.7% of students were identified as Special Education students with disabilities and there was one English Language Learner attending the school that year (Chicago Public Schools, 2009). Principal 827/ Wben I asked April III/Mt sbe tbottgbt was tbe greatest strengtb of urban scbools, sbe said, “I be scbool I’m at does a reall , great job of baving a good communigi in eacb classroom and wit/r tbe scbool as a 75 wbole. ” I agreed wbolebeartedly. I would even sny tbe scbool functions more like a close-knitjamib'. Evegtone on tbe stafl seems to be on board wben it comes to participating in tbatproze'erbial cbildrearing village. In tbe ballwnys, Bill, tbe principal, speaks to eacb cbild witb an almost tangible combination of dignig', respect, care, concern and expectation for excellence, academicalb' and sociall '. However, wbile tbe stafl‘seems united in tbeir mission to serve and steer tbeir cbt'ldren toward tbe brigbtest possible future, I do still wonder about tbeir relations/tip witb Bill. I tbougbt back to wben we zvisited during tbe end oftbe precious scbool year as a part of tbe teacber candidates’ orientation to Cbicago and tbeir respeclizv'e scbool sites. Teacber candidates bad been assigned to scbools, but not necessarib! paired witb specific teacbers. Apparentl , Bill bad waited until tbe zl'eg' morning of our visit to inform specific teacbers tbat tbey would be mentoring our interns. IVeed/ess to sny, some oftbem were not vegr bappy about tbe seemingly bapbagard way Bill assigned student teacbers. Otbers were elated. I remember one tentative cooperating teacber tel/ting me sbe was excited to bave an extra pair of bands as sbe would be fintsbing up graduate studies tbe following fall. W/ben tbe teacber candidates arrived tbat fall, two of my Ill/{l} participants experienced opposite ends of tbe spectrum in terms oftbe consequences of Bill ’s last minute assignments. Fortunateb! (for ber), April was paired witb a Allicbrgan State alum wbo was eager to mentor an emerging urban educator and wbo was well aware of tbe program ’s eapectations for botb teacber candidates and cooperating teacbers. On tbe otber band, Abbey was paired witb a veteran teacber, but due to personal reasons, was unable to continue in ber role as a cooperating teacber: Bill told me be made evegy attempt to find Abbey a new CT at Forest Green but was unable to accommodate ber grade level preferences. 5 be was reassigned to Wilson Elementagy .S‘cbool wbere sbe was paired witb a IVa/ional Board Certified Teacber‘. School Site #2: Wilson Elementary School 76 Well into the school year, Abbey joined Kim at Wilson Elementary School, a neighborhood school that served about 400 PreK-8 students during the school year in which the study took place. In 2008, while approximately half of the students met or exceeded state standards for academic progress, only 3% exceeded those standards. In the specific content areas of reading, math and science, students who met or exceeded state standards were 51%, 52%, & 36% respectively (Chicago Public Schools, 2009). During the study, Wilson was approximately 98% African American and 1.5% Hispanic and 0.5% White. As a high poverty school, 96% of students qualified for free and reduced lunch. There were two English Language Learners at the school and the 12% of students who received Special Education services were disabled (Chicago Public Schools, 2009). Located in the Woodlawn neighborhood directly south of the Midway, the small elementary school has been sharing its building with a charter school sponsored by a local university. During initial planning stages, the university faced pressure from the community about where to locate the school as it was awarded one of the district’s 1O attendance boundaries. Without this attendance policy, the charter school would have been open to admit students from across the city, resulting in Woodlawn students being essentially pushed out. This new school option was exciting to Woodlawn parents, who had lamented the fact that there had only been one other neighborhood high school option for their children prior to the university’s charter (Kelleher, 2006). 77 There were no major objections to the idea of a partnership between Wilson and the university’s charter school, but there was some difficulty negotiating the specifics of space sharing. For example, while both schools were in agreement about the desire and need of the district to renovate the building’s outdated science labs, it took many hours of negotiations led by the area’s alderwoman to find a middle ground both schools could work with (Kelleher, 2006). Ultimately, Mrs. K, the principal of Wilson, agreed to let the university utilize most of the space of the building originally erected in 1926 to hold over 2,000 students. .M rs. K Mrs. K is pbysically small, but you can tell sbe is a reg powerful and passionate woman. .S‘be mores witb purpose and precision, as if none ofber footsteps were ever wasted. During our orientation visit at tbe end of tbe precious scboolyear, sbe seamlessbr bandledgiring us a tour of tbe scbool and performing ber dg to dcgl, (actuall r minute to minute) duties as principal. As we marcbed down ballwcgrs, one minute sbe was pointing to and explaining cbildren ’s ‘14 + ”work posted on bulletin boards. Tbe next minute, sbe poked ber bead into a classroom to relay a message to a teacber. And tbe reg next minute after tbat, sbe was stopping a wandering student inquiring about bis ngbful wbereabouts before returning ber attention to us. Late tbat summer, I bad to make an emergency trip to Cbicago in order to obtain written permission from scbool principals in order to conduct 770’ study. I didn ’t tbink calling tbe numbers on tbe business cards I bad collected from principals during orientation would amount to mucb, but I boped someone migbt be in tbe building making final preparations for tbe new scboolyear. It turns out tbe pbone number on A4 rs. K 3' business card is ber cell pbone. I was amazed tbat sbe gave people tbat mucb access to ber but it 78 made sense because sbe initialbr struck me as an extrerrieb' dedicated indiiidual. I was elated wben sbe said sbe 'd meet me at tbe scbool building tbe next degr. W’ben I arrived at tbe scbool, Mrs. K was tbere, again moving in tbat precise and purposeful way. As sbe printed rig! pie-drafted letter on scbool letterbead, sbe was also cleaning a supply closet, reorganizing ber oflice and sorting several baskets of mail, wbicb I ended up finislring. It was tbe least I could do since sbe bad taken time out ofber seeming/y never ending to—do list in order to belt) me. Tbese images I barre collected ofM rs. K are complicated b} tbe stories I get from A 12129! about seemirgl}! bapbazard administrative decisions. I am cordused lp' tbe arbitrariness of suspending a cbild for figbting in tbe science lab, but not suspending tbe same cbild for jig/rting in tbe luncb line. And wbile I understand tbe logic of not sugtnnding cbildren during tbe state standardized testing week, I ’m perplexed tbat sucb a seemingly cfi'namic leader badn ’t tbougbt ofa better contingeng! plan tban tbat. And as a former prescboo/ teacber, I ’m a little put of b} Kim ’s assessment of 1M rs. K ’s stance on plea! for Kindergarteriers. Kim said tbat ber CT bas bad to advertise [ID/cl} time as “Discoi-epi Time” in order to appease Mrs. K’s sense of productiiigr. School Site # 3: Hyde Park Elementary School Becca was placed at Hyde Park Elementary School, the only school in the study located in Hyde Park proper. It is a neighborhood school that served approximately 350 K-6 students during the 2008-2009 academic school year(Chicago Public Schools, 2009). That year, 73% of students met or exceeded state standards for academic progress, with 13% exceeding state standards. While 73 % met or exceeded reading standards, 77 % met or exceeded math standards and 60% met or exceeded science standards. In 2008, Hyde Park Elementary was 97.7% African American and 2.1% Hispanic. 79 85.3% of the children were considered low-income, with 11.1% receiving Special Education services and two children demarcated as English Language Learners (Chicago Public Schools, 2009). Hyde Park Elementary is a math and science magnet school, where well renowned curricula (e.g. Everyday Math Program, FOSS and Windows on Science and Museum Partners) are used to promote academic success in addition to attracting neighborhood students (and parents). Despite these efforts, nearly a third of elementary school students in the neighborhood were enrolled in private schools in 2000 with the remaining students making all efforts to secure seats at the area’s top two elementary schools (Duffrin, 2003). Hyde Park Elementary was not one of those schools. That same year, community activists in Hyde Park, one of the city’s most integrated neighborhoods, decided to pursue efforts to bolster their schools’ ability to attract more neighborhood students. Their plan included turning K—8 schools into K-6 schools in order to filter 7th and 8th grade students to the neighborhood middle school, which like many Hyde Park public schools, was forced to recruit outside of the neighborhood, primarily from the poorer, predominantly African American neighborhoods on the South Side of the city. Over the next three years, the Hyde Park middle school went through a tumultuous restructuring journey that illuminated and fueled the neighborhood’s well known class-based tensions. A more affluent community contingency was supported by the University of Chicago in their efforts to refocus the curriculum and overhaul the faculty. This offended and alienated many veteran teachers and administrators who were forced to reapply for their jobs 80 during the restructuring’s initial phases, many of whom did not. The strife damaged the school’s reputation, and the new, relatively inexperienced faculty struggled to deal with the differences in children’s academic preparation from feeder schools. For example, students from Hyde Park Elementary School often had very little foreign language preparation. Parents formerly from the top two public elementary schools in the neighborhood complained that their children were being held back because of their underprepared classmates. Subsequently, many parents to threatened to pull their students out of a plan they initially supported. However, by the spring of 2003, teachers reported the middle school plan was starting to see positive gains (Duffrin, 2003). Airs. S. I cbatted witb Mrs. S for a long time on tbat morning I caugbt up witb ber to get permission for my study. In addition to ber position as principal, sbe was finisbing a dissertation of ber own and understood tbe urgengr of my situation. Tbis visit was very different from our orientation visit. I feel like 1M rs. 5 opened up to me in a way tbat was bidden during tbe Sbow and Tell performance we got tbeprei-ious spring. Mrs. S. explained to me tbat most of ber kids do not come from tbe neigbborbood in wbicb tbe scbool is located. I bad wondered bow a brgb povergi scbool could be in tbe center of a neigbborbood so close to tbe University and witbin steps from mansions and well maintained twofamib'flats. Sbe explained tbat most of tbe parents in tbe area were mucb more aware of tbe politics of scbools. Since many of tbem could ajfird to send tbeir cbildren elsewbere, tbcgr did, forcing scbools like Hyde Park to recruit from outside of tbe neigbborbood in order to keep enrollment numbers up. Subsequentl I, serving a large bigb poverg' clientele presented ii/I rs. S witb some unique c/rallenges. For example, maryi of ber parents were young and not as savigr as upper income parents about tbe norms and expectations of public scbools, so 81 sbe spent a lot of time mentoring tbem on bow to best to support tbeir cbildren ’s academic development. Tbis didn ’t seem to be a problem for Airs. 5 as an administrator. Her love and concern for cbildren took precedence over an I qualms sbe bad witb tbe system ’s tendengr to sbrflle kids around like pawns in an ideological cbess game. Airs. 5 was veg proud ofber scbool and proud of tbe cbildren under ber care. Witb sucb a great passion for ber students’ well being, I was completebr taken aback wben I witnessed tbe most irrelevant and contrived Black H istogy Ai ontb assembly being tbrown togetber in Airs. S ’s building. Becca ’s cooperating teacber and one otber teacber were in cbarge of tbe assembb' tbat year. Eacb cbild was assigned to memorize tbe name and one sentence biograpbical speecb commemoratirg a famous African American. I remember doing a similar program witb my prescboolers several years ago. However; unlike my students, tbe students in Becca ’s class bad no idea wbo tbey were talking about or wby it was even important for tbem to be participating in tbe assembbr. In scbool wbere 98% of tbe cbildren were African American, tbis was quite disturbing. Educational Policy Climates: Mayoral Control, LSCs & Renaissance 2010 The fights over physical spaces in Chicago neighborhoods are as equally contentious as the debate over public school policy and control. Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third largest school district in the United States, operates under a business model with the system leader appointed by the mayor. CPS is managed by a chief executive officer, a chief operating officer, a chief financial officer, a chief education officer and a chief purchasing officer. Interestingly, none of these positions require a background in education as a qualification for employment. “The Chicago experiment” was initiated in 1995, when business leaders and state legislators united to repeal a 1988 law that decentralized the school system (Shipps, 2003). A residual effect of the then recently deceased 82 Mayor Harold Washington’s legacy of community control, the 1988 law empowered parent led groups called Local School Councils (LSCs) with unparalleled hiring and budgetary authority over individuals schools. Displeased with the financial insolvency of the decentralized system, and resentful of having to compete with parents and community activists for influence over the city’s 600+ schools, Chicago’s business elite composed the 1995 law to return authority over the schools to the mayor. Under the new law, LSCs remained but with much less power. They now had to report to the mayor-appointed CEO. Mayoral control over the city’s schools was touted as a way to save money and to improve accountability for school improvement and/or failure. As the model for No Child Left Behind, CPS began to use high stakes standardized tests to measure school achievement and/or to sanction schools not meeting district standards for academic achievement. Unfortunately, the controversial policy also fueled tensions between business and political leaders on one side and parents and educators on the other who felt the district’s new policy dramatically reduced the professionalism of teaching with its incidental push for teachers to “teach to the test.” Renaissance 2010, the school district’s controversial educational policy is Chicago Public Schools” most recently contested space. In 2004, Mayor Richard M. Daley announced that 100 new schools would be created to help turn around the many public schools that were failing its students. According to Mayor Daley, 83 The fundamental goal of Renaissance 2010 is to turn around Chicago’s most troubled elementary and high school by creating 100 new schools in neighborhoods across the city over the next six years, providing new educational options to underserved communities and relieving school overcrowding in communities experiencing rapid growth (Ayers & Klonsky, 2006, p. 453). Supporters of the initiative, including Arne Duncan, then CEO of CPS and current US. Secretary of Education (who has no formal training in education) touted it as an innovative approach, blending the ideals of the small schools movement with accountability and standards rhetoric established during the mayoral takeover of CPS in 1995. Under Renaissance 2010, CPS widened the pool of candidates allowed to run public schools, claiming a market-like competition effect would promote innovative school reform. No matter who ran a school, no matter the format (charter, contract, traditional), all would be held accountable or closed (Duncan, 2006). Critics of the initiative cite its business- like model as the source of the policy’s corruption and inevitable failure to correct the troubles it claimed to be trying to resolve (Ayers & Klonsky, 2006). Opponents also decry the restructuring and other accountability measures often perceived as punishment schools face when their students” standardized test scores do not meet “Annual Yearly Progress.” Ivy League Careerists “\Vell the thing is beemise folks are so inept at central of f ice and its either one of two things, they’re either inept or they are these kind of ivy league emeerists who are looking 84 for the next best thing, so anything that’s talking improvement, they're willing to give it a. shot but really aren’t paying attention to what's happening. So a. better school is one thing, but a deeper question is a. better school for who?” (‘ommunity Informant #2 Concluding tboug/rts. .. Alt/rougb none of my study participants worked at “Ken 70” scbools, I get tbe impression tbat tbe pressure to perform is fill by all C bicago Public .S‘cbools. I remember tbe stop! Abbe ! told about Airs. K refusing to suspend kids wben tbe scbool was administering tbe state standardized tests. I tbink tbis is wbat Martin H aberman calls ‘feeding tbe bureaucragy. ” Now, I ’m not sure wbere tbe “. . .wbile protecting tbe cbildren ” part plays in tbat scenario, but I ’m sure Airs. K _ figured sbe was doing wbat sbe/elt was necessary to ensure ber scbool avoided test related sanctions. Politicians and special interest business groups make grandiose and so-called efiia'eng' plans, but tbey aren 't tbe ones on tbe ground, on tbe battlefield bringing tbeir demands for “accountabilig' ” and “standards ” to fruition. 8S CHAPTER FIVE APRIL The following four chapters document how each teacher candidates in this study narrated their established, actual and designated identities as they learned to teach in predominantly Afi’ican American, high poverty urban elementary schools. These chapters document the highly individualized nature of participants’ leaming-to-teach experiences in urban schools while illuminating the dynamic, socially situated construction of the teacher candidates’ emergent teacher identities. The chapters also explore the potential and limitations of the narrative exchange process to reveal insights into this identity construction. This chapter focuses on April. Like many preservice and novice teachers, April was concerned with issues of classroom management. The narratives she wrote and told about her leaming-to-teach experiences centered on her struggles to maintain students’ academic engagement and to deal effectively with the disruptive student behavior that threatened it. This struggle was also connected to April’s attempts to balance her need to maintain control in her classroom and sharing responsibility with her students for developing a positive classroom community. As April and I engaged in the narrative exchange process, the importance of institutional narratives as mediators (for both April and myself as a teacher educator/researcher) of April’s experience was revealed. Here, an institutional narrative is defined as an identifying story or set of stories that describe and essentially prescribes ways of being, thinking and speaking that are specific to the duties of a particular position. This notion of institutional narratives draws heavily upon the identity work of 86 James Gee who describes Institutional identities as “positions” one is given and/or accepts within a particular sphere of activity or institutional setting. These identities function through the process of authorization in which “laws, rules, traditions, or principles of various sorts allow the authorities to ‘author” the position. . .and to ‘author’ its occupant in terms of holding the rights and responsibilities that go with that position” (Gee, 2001, p.102). Institutional identities can be considered “callings” or “impositions” depending on how the identified individual perceives the traits, roles and duties associated with the position. “Callings” are characteristics positively accepted and enacted by the individual, while “impositions” are characteristics an individual judges negatively and is more apt to challenge even as they enact them. In this chapter, the institutional narratives I considered to be pertinent to April’s and my written and oral narration of her urban teaching identity are those that describe how “star teachers” and “dreamkeepers” think about themselves and their students and what they do as effective urban educators. These narratives include, but are not limited to having high expectations for student success, engaging in culturally relevant teaching, being culturally self aware, and being knowledgeable about students’ socio-economic and linguistic backgrounds. While the aforementioned urban teacher education institutional narratives influenced my analysis of April’s experiences, other institutional narratives common to all teaching contexts also seemed to play a significant role in mediating April’s and my interpretation of her leaming-to-teach and leaming-to-manage a high poverty Afiican American second grade classroom. As the narrative exchange process illuminated how April took up and challenged institutional narratives, it also facilitated April’s consideration of how issues 87 of race and, in particular, her own racial identity and her students’ mattered. With understandings gleaned through this narrative exchange process, April’s case can (and should be) considered in many ways a counter-narrative to the typical analysis of urban teacher candidates despite April sharing many significant characteristics of the majority of her colleagues. April ’s Established Identities Established or “past” identities are stories about a person’s former states of being or current states of being resulting from past experiences. Like the majority of urban teacher candidates, April self identified as being “White” and coming from a middle class background. April’s family went from being middle class to upper middle class with every move they made following her father’s promotions. When I asked her to “describe” herself, April said she was caring, loyal, hardworking, passionate and open- minded. Throughout the study, April’s narratives emphasized these qualities. In particular, she told stories about several experiences she had interacting with people culturally and linguistically different from her. April attributed her open-mindedness to these experiences. April wrote and talked about moving around a lot when she was a child. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, April has lived in Texas, California, Washington and Michigan. As a result, she learned “that there isn’t just one type of person or one type of way to live or one type of anything but that our country is really diverse.” Similarly, April went on a mission trip to Mexico the summer after she graduated from high school. As the only individual in the group who could speak Spanish, April felt she was able to connect more deeply with the people she met and the orphans she volunteered to assist because she was not hindered by a language barrier. Even though she was able to 88 communicate more effectively than those who required a translator, she still felt that “interacting with people who spoke a different language and who had a different culture, that really had a big impact on me.” This accepting disposition toward and experience with diversity set April apart from most of her urban teacher candidate colleagues who have little exposure to people unlike themselves culturally prior to entering teacher preparation programs and urban school contexts (Hollins & Guzman, 2005).April said the exposure to people (and places) different from her own established cultural identities played an important role in her desire to teach outside of her “comfort zone.” Why Teach (in Urban Schools)? Believing that “through education you can empower children to change their own lives, change the lives of others around them,” April said she had always been drawn to teaching. Reifying, endorsing and making this belief significant (Sfard & Prusak, 2005), April narrated herself as a teacher candidate interested in urban education based upon her experiences teaching in a summer fellowship in Detroit Public Schools. Unlike many urban teacher candidates, April specifically sought out these experiences to better prepare her to teach culturally, socioeconomically and linguistically diverse students. For example, during two “awesome” summers, April worked in predominantly African American elementary schools where she said she was able to confront her concerns about being able to relate (or not) to students who were racially, culturally and linguistically different from her. April said her successfiil work in Detroit helped her to decide to complete her student teaching internship in Chicago. Enjoying working outside of her “comfort zone,” she was sure she would be able to grow tremendously as an urban educator from teaching in a setting similar to the one she encountered in Detroit. 89 April’s interest in urban education was also influenced by her Christian faith. Drawing from the Bible, April believes in helping others, especially the poor. In her initial interview she stated, “. . .it’s really important for somebody like me who has, because I feel like I’ve been privileged, to share something of myself with people who might not have what I have. And that’s kind of driven by what I believe.” The relationship between April’s faith and her desire to teach was further supported by April’s mother. April’s mother, a special education teacher until April was born, was involved with their church’s children’s ministry and demonstrated a love for children that April attributed to her own choice to do volunteer work with children and youth when she was growing up. In addition to teaching, April also demonstrated her faith in her involvement as a student leader in a Christian group during college. Actual & Designated Identities: Classroom Management & Responsibility for Learning Community as Narrative Themes Throughout the study, April narrated an actual identity as a teacher candidate whose biggest source of teaching anxiety was classroom management. When starting the lead teaching portion of her internship, she felt comfortable in her ability to plan and conduct lessons in all subject areas. Like most teacher candidates, she was less sure about her ability to manage behavior, discipline and order in her classroom. In her stories, April’s anxiety about classroom management revolved around two central tensions: the relationship between managing student behavior and engaging students in learning activities and the ethical balance between the teacher’s and the students’ responsibilities for the classroom community. Star teachers (Haberman, 1995) and dreamkeepers (Ladson-Billings, 2009) effectively manage classrooms by building and 90 maintaining strong trusting relationships with students while engaging them in developmentally appropriate and yet challenging culturally relevant learning. As she narrated her actual and designated selves, April’s narratives reveal the challenges that preservice and novice teachers face as they attempt to enact such practices. Unlike Haberman’s “quitters” and “leavers”, and Ladson-Billings’ “assimilationists,” April did not view her students from a deficit perspective. She did not blame them for their behaviors. Instead she blamed herself when they weren’t paying attention, not working well together and/or were disrupting her lesson by distracting one other. Even when she felt she made adequate progress teaching the content of a lesson, she still remained skeptical of her overall effectiveness because of her perceived inability to manage her students’ behavior. April’s narratives thus raise essential questions about the ways in which urban teacher candidates take up institutional narratives about effective urban teaching. For April, a significant struggle to discern an ethical distribution of responsibility for student engagement and behavior both fueled and at times hindered her ability to engage in what she (and urban teacher educators) would consider effective urban teaching. In many ways, April’s struggles are typical and unremarkable as many teacher candidates in rural and suburban settings struggle with classroom management. However, the narrative exchange process reveals the nuances of April’s learning-to-teach in a high poverty urban African American classroom as she negotiated the relationships, connections and implications of her established (past, cultural and personal) identities with her actual (present, institutional) and designated (future, institutional) identities. For example, April’s case reveals how race can operate in and through the struggles related to classroom management in much more subtle ways than often depicted 91 in research. Because of the Afro-centric approach of the school she worked in and the pedagogical approach of her mentor teacher, April enacted both management strategies and curriculum that could be viewed as culturally relevant. She, like her mentor, drew on Kiswahili words and kinestethic movements to get students’ behaviors back on track. Further, she explicitly engaged students in learning about African American history in observance of Black History Month. At the same time, April never discussed or made these connections between her and her students’ participation in the aforementioned racialized experiences in her narratives. She did not talk about race until I raised the topic during story exchanges. Thus, April’s case reveals how the narrative exchange process can both reinforce and disrupt the silence around race that I found among all the teacher candidates. Observation, Stories, & Story Exchange 1: Day Dreaming In my first observation of April’s lead teaching of a second grade classroom, she taught a social studies lesson as a part of a unit she and her mentor teacher were covering in observance of Black History Month. April began the lesson with a brief discussion to remind the children about the inequalities and injustices experienced by African Americans as a result of pre—Civil Rights Movement segregation. April then inquired about students’ familiarity with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, telling them they would be listening to the speech and trying to figure out what his dream entailed. April gave each student a piece of paper, instructing them to write down things they did not understand and things that piqued their interest as they listened to Dr. King speak. Afterwards, they were going to have a discussion to collectively discern Dr. King’s dream based upon his speech. 92 As the students listened to the speech, April moved around the classroom, reminding students to write down what was interesting and/or confusing to them. During the follow up discussion, April and the students made a list of questions and connections they made during the speech. One particularly astute connection came from a student who observed that much like during the Civil Rights Movement, “people are still prejudice out here.” This student also later commented that Dr. King wanted people to be judged by the content of their character, explaining that this included “how you act, your personality.” April concluded the lesson by asking students to write down one thing they learned from the speech in their notebooks. As per the story writing prompts which asked participants to re-tell a significant occurrence during my observation of their teaching, the first person identifying story April wrote about the social studies lesson surfaced a significant tension within April’s narration of herself as a teacher candidate mindful of the connections between classroom management and instruction. As demonstrated below, April wonders if her choice of text will help or hinder her ability to maintain control of behavior in her classroom. For my Social Studies lesson, I had students listen to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and process what they had heard to figure out what Dr. King’s dream was. I was concerned before I started the lesson that listening to the speech might be very difficult for some students to understand and as a result disruptive behavior would occur. Two weeks later, during the story exchange about this lesson, April fithher explained her instructional and management concerns. ML: You wrote about, you thought listening to the speeches would be difficult for the kids and I was just wondering what kinds of difficulties did you think they would have? AC: They have trouble sitting and listening to me no matter what, so I just thought like even, I talk to them with visuals, I’ll have a book and it’s still 93 hard for them to pay attention so I thought if they’re just sitting and listening that’s gonna be really hard. So that’s what I was anticipating, was that they wouldn’t be able to sit there and listen which is why I had them writing stuff down just so they’d be doing something and not just sitting and listening. ML: Ok. So it wasn’t like you were thinking they would have issues with the content, it was more just physical? AC: I kinda felt like the content might be difficult also but it wasn’t like I necessarily wanted them to understand everything, I just wanted them to hear an authentic speech. So, I kinda thought the content would be difficult also but I was more worried it would hard for them to sit and listen especially since some of the words are hard, stuff like that. In the excerpts above, April privileged her concerns for managing student behavior during the speech while she connected this concern with her instructional choices (i.e. the difficulty of the speech). In both her written narrative and the story exchange of that story, she narrated a consideration of teaching and classroom management as two separate activities, where teaching was engagement with content and classroom management was concerned with controlling behavior. Haberman (1995) confmns that most teachers think of teaching and discipline separately, however, this thinking is in contrast to star teachers who “use the learning activities themselves as the basis of self-control” (p. 6). Discipline and management are not priorities for star teachers or dreamkeepers as they invest more time and energy into developing lessons and learning activities that will engage students. From a star teacher’s and dreamkeeper’s perspective, an engaged classroom is usually a disciplined classroom. Thus, this separation of content and management becomes particularly important in April’s leaming-to-teach and leaming-to-manage in an urban context as her need to control her 94 students may be rooted in her culturally and socio-economically influenced expectations for student behavior. On the other hand, April’s concern about the connections between management and instruction is not particular to urban teaching environments and so her seemingly myopic focus on classroom management becomes understandable at this stage in her development as a teacher. Thus her “urban” teaching identity at this time is limited and/or bounded by what she considers to be important to her analysis of her learning-to- teach experiences. These limited perspectives then make the narrative exchange process’ ability to provide space for other important considerations (e. g., discussion about race, class, gender, and other seminal urban education topics) especially poignant. Although April tended to consider management and instruction separately, she also told stories where teaching and classroom management seemed to be considered one and the same. During this particular social studies lesson, it seemed to me that April was using the activities of the lesson to manage student behavior and to facilitate active listening/learning. For example, in her written narrative about this lesson, April confirmed my thoughts when discussing a note taking strategy she implemented although she privileged the behavior management aspect the strategy, primarily labeling it as a preemptive move to help avoid disruptive behavior during the listening portion of the lesson. She wrote, To mitigate this [her concern about the speech’s difficulty] , I gave students a piece of paper and had them write down unfamiliar words, draw a picture of what they were imagining in their heads, connections they made—really anything that would give them a way to process the information they were hearing so they were not just sitting and listening, possibly resulting in boredom and then misbehavior or inattention. 95 And yet within the same story, a few sentences later, April narrated herself during the note taking with respect to her thinking of teaching and classroom management as separate activities. She wrote: I was pleased when I circulated the room during the speech to see students focused on what they were doing, and it was easy for me to redirect behavior because that was my main focus—I didn’t have to worry about actually teaching or saying anything. Here, April narrated her actual identity as a teacher candidate moving between two distinctive roles. As she switched back and forth in her consideration of the connection and/or separation of teaching and classroom management, April simultaneously took up and challenged a common teacher narrative that separates teaching and discipline where a disciplined, well managed classroom provides an orderly space in which instruction can then occur uninterrupted. While she contended that most of the students were behaving appropriately because they were “focused” and engaged in the learning activity, April considered her actions in the excerpt above to be classroom management, not teaching. As Haberman asserts, a teacher’s view of teaching and management as separate activities tends to facilitate a “failure” or “quitters” tendency to blame students for not learning as opposed to questioning how their teaching contributes to, or is responsible for lack of engagement and/or behavioral problems. This is particularly important in an urban context where a teacher’s culturally influenced expectations for behavior might persuade them to view their culturally different students’ behavior from a deficit perspective, exacerbating the tendency to blame students (as opposed to themselves) for a lack of academic engagement. By attending closely to April’s narration over her teaching 96 identities, however, over time, I found that April did not move towards this kind of blaming. April’s construction of herself as a teacher candidate contemplating the connections between behavior and engagement of students, and her own teaching and classroom management skills continued to be reflected in her narration of this lesson. Although she was satisfied with the note taking strategy’s effectiveness during the speech, she was then bothered by her failure to anticipate the possibility of students losing focus during the discussion portion of the lesson. She wrote: After the speech when we started our discussion of what his dream meant is when I noticed some inattention. By inattention, I don’t mean students who were clearly disruptive—there were a few instances when this happened, and I was able to address the behavior immediately. The inattention that I noticed was a problem was when students were clearly not listening and engaged but keeping to themselves and not disrupting the other students, and in turn, not disrupting me. This includes students looking elsewhere besides me and even students with their heads on their desks. Because this type of inattention was not easily noticed or distracting to other students, I did not do anything about it. In this story, April augmented her definition of problematic behavior to include inattention that wasn’t overtly disruptive. Here, April engages an institutional narrative about sanctioned forms of behaving that allowed her to interpret one act (e. g. being quiet) as something entirely different when interpreted in terms of sanctioned form of participating in learning. As such, April was disappointed in the failure of the discussion to keep all students engaged (i.e. quiet).‘ And although she found the resulting inattention problematic, she was not sure what to do about it since it did not interrupt the overall flow of the lesson. 97 I found it particularly interesting what did and did not count as distraction and/or inattention in April’s classroom as the way in which April and her mentor seemed to take up a particular institutional narrative about behavior and engagement conflicted with an urban teacher education institutional narrative I utilized to analyze the same situation. In the second person identifying story I wrote (below) about the social studies lesson, I noted a debate students were having about a substitute teacher visiting the Washington Mall. On an extra-large Post-It note, Ms. C writes, “What was Martin Luther King ’s Dream? ”She shows the children a picture of the crowed Washington Mall where Dr. King gave the famous speech in 1963. An argument ensues as the children heatedly debate whether the substitute teacher from last week said she had been to the Washington Mall in I 963 or in 2009 for the presidential inauguration. Ms. Craik presses play on the CD play but the argument continues. The mentor teacher steps in with a call and response. “Ago! ” calls the mentor, which means, “Are you listening? ” in the T wi language of West Africa. “Ame! call many students, meaning, “We are listening! " Both April and her cooperating teacher (CT) considered this discussion off topic. Because the debate hindered April’s ability to proceed with the lesson as planned, she pressed on by starting the recording. Her CT supported her attempt to move on by ending the debate with the call and response. On the surface, the students’ argument was about the timing of the substitute’s visit, however, I saw the students also making a connection between two particularly important occurrences in Black History that took place at the Washington Mall, Dr. King’s speech and the inauguration of President Barak Obama, the first African American president in US history. If April (or her CT) would have interpreted the students’ banter as their demonstration of deep engagement with the 98 content of a culturally relevant lesson that “help[ed] students make connections between their community, national and global identities (Ladon-Billing, 2009, p. 52), this would have been an appropriate and particularly effective way to highlight the meaning of one of the most famous lines of Dr. King’s speech in relation to a current event in which the children were obviously extremely interested. Argued as one of the most powerful manifestations of being judged by the content of one’s character as opposed to their race, the election of Barack Obama as the first Afiican American president of the United States is Dr. King’s dream come to fruition. Additionally, the discussion about Barack Obama would have had particular significance to these students as he was at one point a Chicago resident living in the neighboring mid-South Side community in which the children lived and learned. During the story exchange about this lesson, April and I did not discuss how I considered the Washington Mall debate to be a missed opportunity to engage in culturally relevant teaching at a deeper level. Here is an example of an instance where the story exchange process could have provided both teacher candidate and teacher educator with an occasion and space to engage in a discussion about the importance of culturally relevant teaching in an urban setting. I could have (and should have) pushed April to consider the implications of her position as a White teacher teaching African American children about their cultural heritage. The definition of distraction and/or inattention narrated by April relied upon institutional narratives about sanctioned forms of engagement. Particularly, April seemed to have taken up notions about the sole legitimacy of teacher sponsored discussions. In contrast to student-centered and student-led discussions that are purported to facilitate the 99 critical thinking skills advocated for by multicultural and urban teacher educators, April and her CT privileged April’s authority to direct and control the classroom conversation by shutting down the students’ Washington Mall debate. As such, acceptance of these narratives about the teacher’s power prevented April (and her CT) from seizing an opportunity to accomplish one of her curricular goals (i.e. helping students make sense of the speech). Her desire to maintain order and control appeared to be at odds and in fact hindered her ability to see the connections her students were making with the content. When analyzing why she thought this type of behavior was so challenging for her, April wrote: One important thing I need to do is recognize that while inattention is less obvious than misbehavior, it is still a problem because students are not learning the content that they need to learn. Based upon her actual identity as a teacher candidate making sense of her students’ behavior in response to her teaching, in the excerpt above, April narrated an implied designated identity where her management and instructional skills will be intertwined and dependent upon one another. Within April’s actual identity, students’ lack of attentiveness was both an academic and a management issue. She was just as concerned that the distracted students were missing out on an important lesson as she was that students weren’t following her directions to pay attention and participate in the discussion. Because she saw herself as ultimately responsible for the creation and maintenance of an environment conducive to learning, April’s ponderings about why she found the inattention so challenging were mostly directed inward. In response to the story writing prompt that asked participants to connect aspects of their identity to how they perceived and interpreted their interactions with their students, she wrote, 100 As I was thinking about it, I wondered if a part of my identity that played a role in this challenge is the fact that I am non-confrontational. . .Another part of my identity that may have played a role in this challenge is the fact that I want things to go as smoothly as possible—I like control and I like things to be as close to perfect as they can. Also, 1 might need to consider more if what I’m asking students to do is developmentally appropriate. In these reified storied statements about her established identity as having a conciliatory nature and as having a desire for control and order, April accepted responsibility for her students’ inattention. Much like star teachers who look to their own teaching as a significant contributor to discipline issues, April also considered the possibility that the content might not have been suitable for her students. At the same time, April’s case reveals the challenges entailed in enacting this balance between management and engagement. As the quote above suggests, April’s consideration of issues of control are paradoxical. She desires “control” and “likes things to be as close to perfect as they can” Which compels her to hold herself responsible for controlling her students behavior and yet she wants students to be actively engaged in their own learning. As she narrates the lesson then, April constructs her established identity as simultaneously “non- confrontational” and “control(ling)” in ways that explain her privileging of management OVer instruction. At the same time, she acknowledges that there might be more to the S ituation than management alone, that she might be asking students to do something not appropriate for their age. Though we did not discuss the motivations for April’s control issues, perhaps her control paradox stemmed from her participation in a faith in which a hallmark of the r eligion is the individual’s struggle with free will given to them by an omnipotent deity. SO, April might have struggled with how to be like Christ, who is presumed to be in 101 control of all things, but still allows people to actively engage in their own lives. She is unsure how to balance her desire and need for control and her ability to foster the kind of classroom she envisions, which includes students taking their fair share of the responsibility for their own behavior. As I noted above, in her writing and as demonstrated in the story exchange excerpt below, April consistently refrained from blaming the students (and/or any other factors) for their lack of engagement, firmly placing this responsibility upon her own shoulders. To get a better sense of her sense of responsibility, I asked her what she thought of teachers who think it’s a child’s duty to pay attention in class. ML: You mention, oh, about distractions and how you were feeling about handling them but you also talk about like when kids aren’t paying attention, like you feel a sense of responsibility for that and I just thought that was interesting because most teachers would sort of say, well that’s a student’s choice not to pay attention but you seem to view that a little differently. I was wondering if you could tell me more about that. AC: Well I feel that your lessons should be engaging for all students and that all students should have the opportunity to learn from what you’re teaching them. So if they’re like sleeping or obviously not interested in what you’re teaching, well that’s something I put on myself. I mean my lessons, okay sometimes kids come in and they haven’t had breakfast and they’re tired or whatever but I still feel like it’s my responsibility to make sure that all children learn. So, if they’re sleep, not paying attention then that’s on me kind of. Even though she narrated an actual identity where she did not address the distracted Stleents during the discussion, April narrated herself differently in the future with respect to this issue. As expected, these solutions were focused on things April could do to InSpire students to remain engaged and well behaved at all times. 102 In the future, I need to make sure that when I see inattention I do something about it. This might be with proximity to the student, calling their name to get their attention, or even stopping the whole lesson to have the class stand up and stretch or do something kinesthetic to help them refocus. . .Whether it be something like inattention or something even more serious, like something emotional going on with the student, I need to be willing to stop what I’m doing no matter how much it doesn’t follow my plans and interrupts the flow of the lesson in order to make sure my students can learn to their fullest potential. In this narration of her designated identity of her future self as an urban teacher, April seemed to find a balance between her ability to facilitate students’ academic well-being and her own need for total control and/or for things to go smoothly. As such, her designated identity is in some ways aligned and in some ways in opposition to the thinking and behaviors of stars and dreamkeepers. The balance April narrated does not include a deficit perspective that blames students for disciplinary issues as she accepted responsibility for keeping students engaged. She does this balancing, however, by reinforcing her belief in the separation of teaching and classroom management. In the future, she would presumably stop teaching to manage student distraction and/or inattention which may or may not be interrupting the lesson but still hindering students’ learning. Coloring Stories: How the Narrative Exchange Illuminated Race From the perspective of the literature on urban teacher education, a major complication of April’s consideration of being responsible for fostering a learning environment that was managed with engaging curriculum and instruction was the lack of consideration of the ways in which sociocultural factors impacted her ability to accomplish these pedagogical goals. In other words, while April narrated feeling reSponsible for creating and implementing interesting lesson plans within written 103 narratives and reified these stories during the story exchange, this sense of responsibility did not seem to include a consideration for the ways in which something as significant as race (her own and/or her students’) played into the teaching of a lesson on racial segregation. Specifically, even though she was the only participant to teach an explicitly culturally relevant lesson where cultural referents were utilized to impart content knowledge (Ladson—Billings 1994), April’s written narratives did not include any reflection upon the cultural relevance and/or race related aspects of the content of a lesson that clearly contained both. The narrative exchange process revealed that April’s omission, though significant, was not necessarily the result the resistance, avoidance, colorblindness or unwillingness to discuss race that is predicted for most urban teacher candidates with her socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. I omitted race from the first two second person identifying stories I wrote for study participants. I purposefully refrained from including race in the second person identifying story I wrote about April’s social studies lesson since we exchanged written stories via email prior to our verbal conversations about those stories. I wanted to capture April’s thoughts about her teaching, and my re-presentation of that teaching, with as little judgment as possible about what she should or should not being doing as an emerging urban educator. Even though research would predict she would not likely bring up race in our discussion on her own, I was especially curious about her thinking about this particular lesson since she was the only participant to implement an explicitly culturally relevant lesson. Additionally, my omission of race talk in my written narrative was an effort to gauge April’s thinking about the racial dynamics within her class in light of her initial interview statements about the effects of race on teaching and learning. 104 ML: What effect do you think race has on teaching and learning? AC: Well as far as like learning, I don’t think somebody’s race effects how they learn as differently than somebody else’s race. Do you mean like if the teacher is a different race as the students? ML: Or even if the teacher is the same race, do you think it has something to do with how you teach or how the students interact with the teacher? AC: I think it’s a little more cultural than anything else. I don’t really see race as having an effect. Like I know my students, in their culture, they’re very, the really rhythm and music and things like that and so that affects how they learn. They learn better when there’s some sort of rhythm or something integrated into the lesson or they get more excited about it. I did not read April’s view on race, teaching and learning as resistant, avoidant or colorblind, at least not in the way most urban teacher educators would read her statements above. As discussed further in the cross-case analysis, April demonstrates what I am calling a “promising but problematic” approach to race here. While she acknowledged cultural differences (e. g. the rhythm/movement connection), she does not see how race could operate in teaching and learning situations. So, while April is aware of cultural differences and was open and willing to discuss race when asked, she did so in ways that could very well hinder her ability to see a fuller spectrum of factors that could impact how she would be able to relate (or not) to her students. Specifically, noting the absence of a discussion of race and the cultural relevancy of the lesson within her written narrative, during the story exchange about this lesson, I asked April about the level of comfort she had discussing segregation with her African American second graders. ML: But I did want to ask you, sort of in that vein, how comfortable you were having that conversation about segregation with your kids. AC: My CT has already started talking to them about segregation. She had started the week before, so I kind of saw that it was okay. And they 105 responded okay to it and I really thought it was a really, really cool opportunity because my students don’t really talk about my race or their race but since I started teaching this unit, it’s come up a lot more. And so, I’ve been asked like questions about, I mean even the fact that they acknowledge the fact that I’m white, like I didn’t even know what their perception of me was before. I’ve been asked like, the other day I was asked, “If it were still segregation would you be allowed to be our teacher?” And I said, “No I wouldn’t be allowed to be your teacher because that was against the law.” And they said, “Why because you don’t like us?” And so it just kind of got into an interesting discussion about like, “No it’s not that I don’t like you, this was the law” and we, so then we got into like talking about the content of your character versus the color of your skin, like a really deep conversation to have with a second grader about race. And it was just really interesting, that they’re able to like relate what I’m teaching them to like the situation we’re in now. Oh like, “Ms. C” wouldn’t be able to be our teacher if there were still segregation,” and things like that. So it’s been like a little bit scary because I , it brings up questions that I’m not always prepared for but it’s been really cool because its addressed the issue that yes, I’m a White teacher and all these students are Afiican American and like, I don’t know, just bring up interesting questions. I don’t know, it’s been cool. It is reasonable to assess April’s treatment of and/or approach to race within her classroom as the typical resistance to acknowledging diversity and the tenets of multicultural education that many White teachers and teacher candidates have been repeatedly reported to display. However, as the story exchange excerpt above demonstrates, April is more open to discussing race with her students and with me as a researcher/teacher educator than would be predicted by urban teacher education and/or White teacher literature. She considered her conversation with her students to be “interesting” and “really deep” primarily because she hadn’t anticipated their questions. From her initial interview responses about race not having an effect on teaching, April wouldn’t expect these questions. Additionally, she apparently analyzed her students’ 106 lack of explicit acknowledgement of her race prior to this unit as the students’ indifference toward her and their own racial identities. Her openness to discussing race is then demonstrated in her answering students’ questions from her personal perspective (e. g., “No, it’s not that I don’t like you”) and not shutting down the students’ inquiry as she did in the Washington Mall debate. April’s experience with and subsequent approach to her students’ questions about her Whiteness and her stance on segregation was one in which she not only acknowledged race but embraced the inherent difficulty, pain and discomfort these kinds of discussions include. Thus, her openness is also revealed in her realization that these conversations were manageable (e.g., “it’s been cool”). In another example, as April began to discuss in the story exchange excerpt above, she confronted her fear of being associated with the “bad” White people within her lesson and history. ML: You know that’s some pretty powerful stuff to talk about and you know, I guess my question was, were you, you said it was a little bit scary, so I’m wondering if you were worried at all that your kids would identify you with like the bad white people in history or that kind of thing. AC: I was, I kinda, yeah that was one of my main concerns, was that I’m saying, “White people did this, White people did that.” And I’m White. But even one of my students also said, “Ms. C, I don’t get it because white people are mean to black people but you’re white and you’re nice.” And so it was interesting. April’s response to this was to be open with her students about the problematic ways in which many Whites during the Civil Rights Movement did not agree with segregation but they did nothing to confront it. AC: My response was, “Well, during segregation, not all white people were prejudiced against black people.” But I kinda also brought up the idea so that if you think something’s wrong and you don’t do anything about it then that’s not okay either. So, I just said there were a lot of white 107 people who didn’t agree with segregation but they didn’t do anything about it and do you think that’s right? And so we kind of talked about that. ML: Very interesting. Like outside of this, do you or your teacher, your CT talk to the kids about you two being white and them being African American come up or because I even noticed that it was February, well I guess I should ask you if you were doing that speech because it was black history month. AC: Yes, that’s why I was doing that. Unfortunately, my mid-question shift, ended our discussion of race in the social studies lesson. We then went on to discuss the second person identifying story I wrote and only in terms of the format. ML: Do you have any questions for me about anything that I wrote or anything that you wrote? AC: I just have a question, did I write mine the way you expected me to write it or did you want it to be more of a story like yours, because I felt like it was a paper and yours was more of a, yeah mine wasn’t very much of a story. As the excerpts above demonstrate, April’s and my treatment of race within our narratives and story exchange simultaneously typify and challenge many narratives regarding race relations in the United States particularly those narratives that govern the ways race talk is silenced even as we engage in highly racialized experiences. With respect to urban teacher education, race is a significant topic, and so it is highly problematic that neither April, nor 1, as an Afiican American teacher educator, mentioned race in our written narratives although our discussion during the story exchange clearly indicates we were both aware of the significance of race to the content of the lesson. As stated earlier, some may read this omission of race within April’s written narrative as the well documented resistance of White teachers and teacher candidates to acknowledging 108 the endemic nature of racism, which many argue leads to the perpetuation of the racial oppression of non-Whites. And if a major purpose of the second person identifying stories I wrote was to be a space to re-present an alternative point of analysis for teacher candidates, (as I contend that it is), then I clearly missed an important opportunity to initiate a discussion I knew April, as a white Middle class teacher candidate was predicted to avoid. Here, we could have talked about our omission and begun to deconstruct our motivations for doing so. I could have shared my intention to capture her thoughts about race without my influence. And perhaps I could have inspired April to think about the implications of her seemingly colorblind analysis of a clearly race related social studies lesson. On the other hand, both April and I were Open, willing and able to discuss the race related aspects of the lesson during the story exchange conversations. This openness is what I contend makes April a different kind of urban teacher candidate from those described in the literature as resistant and avoidant. As the lesson was the impetus for the racialized discussion in her classroom, the story exchange was the impetus for the racialized discussion of her lesson. Her willingness to engage in both conversations is what I found promising about April’s approach to race. Not only was she open to discussing race with me, but she was also willing and was able to do so with her students. Similarly, the facilitation of the discussion is what makes the story exchange an important analytic and pedagogical tool because it presented an opportunity to engage in a necessary discussion that our written narration alone neglected. The story exchange, the dialogue about what was missing in the written texts facilitated a more complicated and 109 robust way of analyzing both the observed practice and the initial analysis of that observation via the written first and second person identifying stories. While in the instance above, the story exchange functioned as a conduit for deeper analysis of a significant gap in the written narrative, it was not always as helpful in facilitating the kinds of explications that occurred within discussion of race and segregation. I often missed important opportunities to probe for the kinds of insights into April’s thinking about her identities and her teaching that were revealed in the discussion about the social studies lesson’s cultural relevancy. In the story exchange excerpt below, I asked April about her reasons for centering the social studies lesson on Dr. King’s speech. ML: Why did you pick that particular speech? AC: The students have, know about that speech and they know the quote where is like the little black children, little white girls and little white boys will get along with little black boys or little black girls, I’m totally butchering it but and I felt like they really needed to hear the speech in its entirety and actually hear what it was because they know about it but they had never actually heard it and they didn’t even necessarily know what it was about so I thought it was important for them to hear it and talk about what it really meant. ML: You mention, oh, about distractions and how you were feeling about handling them but you also talk about like when kids aren’t paying attention, like you feel a sense of responsibility for that and I just thought that was interesting because most teachers would sort of say, well that’s a student’s choice not to pay attention but you seem to view that a little differently. I was wondering if you could tell me more about that. Instead of probing more into what she meant about the students’ understanding of the Speech, I moved back to a discussion about distractions and how responsible April felt for addressing students who weren’t paying attention. And while, at this time, I may attempt 110 to excuse the missed opportunity by narrating my then actual identity as a novice researcher/teacher educator, the segregation discussion occurred later within the exchange, indicating that April might have been open to having the discussion earlier if I would have seized the moment and steered our dialogue in that direction. Perhaps like April, I too was concerned about positioning myself and her in ways that challenged our sense of ourselves as culturally aware, competent and sensitive individuals. Summary & Conclusion The most salient narrative theme (and only theme to meet the two temporal plane, three story minimum criteria) within April’s written and oral narration of her established, actual and designated identities was one in which she highlighted her angst about classroom management. Here, she connected her instructional choices with her ability and responsibility to create and maintain a classroom environment conducive to learning. This theme was marked by April’s assessment of her attempts to keep students engaged (and subsequently well—behaved) as less than satisfactory. This narrative theme was so prevalent in April’s stories that it seemed to prevent her from analyzing her learning-to-teach in a predominantly African American, high poverty elementary school in ways urban teacher educators would advocate as particularly important for this particular teaching and learning context. For example, April’s written narration of a social studies lesson in which she discussed pre and post Civil Rights racial segregation lacked any explicit consideration of the ways in which race might have been (and was) an important factor in the way she taught the lesson and how students engaged with the content. While this discussion was missing from the written narrative, the lesson’s story exchange elicited oral narratives about April’s 111 instructional choices and the racialized discussions sparked by the lesson’s content that challenge an interpretation of the co-construction of her urban teaching identity as a typically resistant culturally insular White middle class female urban teacher candidate. As the story exchange served to provide a level of analysis into April’s experience that merely relying on the written narrative would not have produced (and did not produce), it ultimately revealed April’s willingness and ability to think and talk about the impact and ramifications of her position as a White teacher of African American students. Interestingly, neither of the written and/or oral narrative recapitulating the subsequent science and literacy lessons included urban education hot topic issues (e. g. race, class, gender, ability, etc.) Was this because April (and I) were oblivious to the impact of these phenomena on teaching and learning? Were we avoiding the potentially volatile subjects to evade the discomfort of discussing these difficult topics, especially if that meant pointing out beliefs, attitudes and practices that could be interpreted as those most often problematized and lamented by urban and multicultural teacher educators? Or could classroom management be legitimately prioritized as the most pressing concern for a teacher candidate who has minimal experience as the teacher of record? While acknowledging the importance of the aforementioned questions as appropriate ways to interrogate April’s construction of an urban teaching identity, I am contending that the narrative writing and exchange’s processes inability to resolve of them fiilly does not diminish the value and capability of the process to reveal equally important insights into April’s thinking about and enactment of an urban teaching identity via her narration of her established, actual and designated identities. In other words, while the narrative writing and exchange process within this study may not meet all of 112 the pedagogical goals and concerns of urban teacher educators (e. g. engendering cultural competence and/or culturally relevant teaching), it does meet the goals articulated in the methodological considerations of this particular project which was to investigate how (or if) a narrative-based definition of identity construction provides a window into the ways urban teacher candidates process and integrate their leaming-to-teach experiences within their visions of themselves as urban educators. Additionally, as seen in this chapter, the narrative writing and exchange process, particularly the story exchanges, provided April (and the other study participants as will be seen in the following chapters) with the space to further explain and negotiate the ways in which her established identities were reified, endorsed, made significant and/or challenged by her narration of her actual and designated identities. 113 CHAPTER SIX BECCA Becca ’3 Established Identities Becca self—identified as being White and upper middle class, originally from a suburb of Syracuse, New York. Taking note of the places she lived, she “never really felt any financial like needs or stresses. I always knew that my parents could back me up financially.” Becca said her pre-college exposure to and interactions with people socioeconomically and/or ethnically different from her were limited to a job she had at a daycare in Syracuse. This was the first time she had interacted with children with “a lack of [financial] resources.” During college Becca completed a teacher education course with a field component in a high minority, high poverty school. As such, Becca was similar to the majority of urban teacher candidates whom are largely unfamiliar with many of the contextual factors of her internship placement. Becca’s established identities included a familiarity with teaching, as she is a second generation educator. Her father, formerly a school psychologist, is now a principal. Her mother, a special education teacher at one point in her career, currently teaches first grade. From her parents, Becca gleaned that a “good” teacher was one with a strong sense of dedication and concern for families. For example, Becca recalled a story of her father, who during his tenure as a school psychologist, spent many hours going “above and beyond” with a family whose child set fire to the family’s home and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Becca said seeing the care and concern her father showed for his students helped her to see the importance of building and maintaining relationships in the field she was entering. 114 Actual and Designated Identities Even with strong teaching influences on her life, Becca was still contemplating her choice of teaching as a profession. When I asked her to explain why she wanted to be a teacher, she stated, I don’t know. I feel like I need to formulate an answer to that question before I start doing it. I mean I really like kids, that was always a big part of it. I think it’s a good way to connect with children, help children, help them be successful and I just think it’s an important job. This answer reveals significant aspects of Becca’s interpretation of her experience that also characterize the storied identities she constructed throughout the study. It became fairly clear, fairly soon that her construction of her actual and designated identities would be mediated by a “student teaching” lens. For Becca, (and for most teacher candidates) this internship experience was compartmentalized as a time for learning-to-teach as opposed to “real” teaching. As such, a major narrative theme of Becca’s stories included never feeling she had full (or any) control over curricular choices. She often expressed feeling restricted in her options for instructional and behavior management decisions. However, she didn’t see these restrictions as obstacles to her learning-to-teach in urban schools. Interestingly, a key tension within Becca’s narration of her actual identity was between what she thought was required of her as a student teacher and what she knew about “good” urban teaching. This led her to narrate designated identities where she engaged in the kinds of teaching that were thwarted by the classroom and school environments to which she was assigned, including and most notably by her perception of her status as a student teacher. Observation and Story I. Wilma Unlimited: A (Limited) Social Studies Lesson 115 Prior to preparing for this lesson, I hadn’t heard of Wilma Rudolph and I found her story very interesting and inspirational and I think my kids felt the same way. In the first person story above, Becca recalled her initial reaction to the protagonist of the 3rd grade social studies lesson she taught and reflected upon the connection she thought her Afiican American students made with the story’s heroine, a famous African American athlete who struggled with a disability at an early age. Becca’s story also recalled that she usually had “behavior issues” when reading to her students but this time was different. In our story exchange session, she explained that her students were often noisy and unruly when she read to them on the carpet. However, during this particular social studies lesson, they were extremely attentive and most of the students seemed eager to participate, answering the questions Becca posed intermittently as she read the non-fiction text. Initially, I wondered if Becca considered the children’s compliance to be the result of using a culturally relevant text. Curious as to whether Becca thought this was an example of “a pedagogy that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills and attitudes,” (Ladson-Billings, 2009, p.20 ) I asked her why she chose that particular text. M: So, you read to them Wilma Unlimited. Why’d you pick that book? B: I actually didn’t pick it. M: Oh, you didn’t pick it? B: My CT picked it. So, yeah, we, she reads it every year. We have a series of, basically, for all social studies, for Black History Month, we just read different, about a different person. 116 Here, Becca initiated the construction of her actual identity as a limited teacher candidate. Though her cooperating teacher selected the text, Becca said she planned the activities to supplement the read-aloud on her own. These activities included discussions during and after reading the text. In what I thought was another attempt to engage in culturally relevant teaching, Becca probed students’ understanding of the story as she read. “What does it mean that doctors were a luxury? ” Becca asks after reading a page about the scarcity of doctors who would treat African Americans when Wilma Rudolph was young. “When it said that she was crippled, it means she couldn ’t move her leg at all, ” Becca explains as she continues to read the story. “Why did she have to go so far away?” Becca is met with silence, but continues, “I should see more hands because I just read it. E? ” E. replies, “To see the doctor that treated Black people. ” Becca repeats his answer, “To see the doctor that treated Black people. ” “So, why do you think she couldn ’t go to school? ” Becca asks the class. “D?...Right, because of her leg. What do you think she ’s gonna do G? Try to walk with her other leg? Good leg? ” In the excerpt above, taken from the second person identifying story I wrote after observing the social studies lesson, Becca superficially engaged the children in discussing how race played a factor in Wilma Rudolph’s medical treatment. First, it is unclear if Becca truly intended to inquire about the role of race and racism in Wilma’s obstacles. After asking about the luxury of doctors for African Americans, she did not wait for answer. She immediately proceeded to clarify the term “crippled” before she rephrased her question about the scarcity of doctors for Black patients. To help students answer the question, Becca added a hint before calling on a student she later admitted she selected because she was sure he would be able to provide the answer as he usually did in similar situations. When the student was able to answer her question correctly, Becca moved on 117 with the lesson. However, it was not clear if the student understood the meaning of the question or his answer beyond being able to remember the sequence of events of the story he’d just heard. Similarly, Becca’s intentions regarding the kinds of connections between Wilma’s race and the development of her disability she made (and wanted her students to make), were not clear. Later in the written story, Becca narrated her actual identity recognizing this lack of clarity to be problematic. Although I was pleased with the lesson, looking back on it now I see that the students were very focused on Wilma’s disability and ignored the factor that her race played in her life. This is understandable because the story was more focused on her disability as well. However I feel I should have highlighted the factor her race played in her life. For example, the story spoke about her having to travel far away to go to a hospital which took African American patients and how rare and difficult it was for her family to see a doctor. I should have had a discussion about this with the students so they really understood that she received inferior medical care because she was Black. Because of the lack of medical care available, her sickness was worse and left her with a crippled leg. Also, she didn’t receive the proper care of therapy needed to help her once she was disabled and therefore, she had to work to overcome her disability all on her own. Although Becca initially contended that the text’s focus on Wilma Rudolph’s disability was the reason for the students ignoring race, she later accepted responsibility for not making race a more salient topic of discussion. The awareness that her approach was more superficial than it should have been indicated that she had some knowledge of (and/or access to) culturally relevant pedagogy; however it does not explain why she did not take the opportunity to discuss race in this lesson. In response to the story prompt which asked participants to connect an aspect of their identity with the practice or interaction with students that they retold, Becca wrote, 118 “I do think that my own identity is a factor in my willingness to engage my students in a conversation such as this about race.” During our story exchange, I asked Becca what specific aspect of her identity she was referring to that facilitated her willingness to have these kinds of discussions with her student. She replied, B: Well the fact that I’m white, middle class, basically the aspect of my identity that affects that, urn, being a student teacher affects that as opposed to being the actual classroom teacher.” While she began with her established racial and cultural identities as explanations for her willingness to discuss race, mid sentence, she shifted to utilizing her actual identity as a student teacher as the impetus for her willingness. This engagement of the actual identity of student teacher in opposition to the narration of a designated identity of the kind of teacher she envisions herself to be when she will have a classroom of her own is something Becca did often. One explanation for the correction could be that Becca was implicitly comparing herself to her cooperating teacher who she perceived as being unwilling to engage students in discussions about race. As her CT was also White and middle class, Becca realized that, on the basis of those established identities alone, she couldn’t reasonably explain why she would have these conversations and her CT would not. Perhaps unable to fully reconcile and/or articulate her reasons for wanting to have discussions about race with her students and choosing not to, Becca shifted the direction of the conversation away from explaining her own willingness, to focus on why she thought her CT was not willing. B: I think my CT has a certain way that she likes to interact with the kids talk with the kids. M: What do you mean, like a certain way? 119 B: A certain, not necessarily a certain way, kinda of like a certain boundary. Like, she doesn’t like to talk about race with the kids. And she really likes to, I don’t know... M: Have you guys talked about that, like she said she doesn’t or you just kind of get the impression that she doesn’t? B: Well I get the impression that she doesn’t like to emphasize the fact that in history how poorly White people treated Black people because she feels like the kids will like, you know, think of that and bring it back on her because she’s White and she doesn’t want to completely emphasize that all the time. M: But do you agree with that or do you think that would happen if you have these conversations with your kids? B: I think, I feel like they need a lot more background because they think that like, Dr. King fi'eed the slaves. Like, they have no concept of like history and how its progressed. So, I think if you give them more background and spend more time discussing it with them, they would get it. And so then you could include all aspects of, you know, what has happened throughout history. M: Right. Because you could also include the many true stories about White allies that helped throughout the Civil Rights struggle so you can combat the thing where your teacher is talking about she feels like B: But you still have to include the other stuff too. M: Right, right. B: Including both. While she tried to understand what she read as her CT’s reluctance to have discussions about race, Becca did have some ideas about why and how to have discussions with young children, particularly young African American children, about race. However, she believed her actual identity as a student teacher didn’t allow her to operate outside of the explicit and implicit parameters set for her by her CT. For example, Becca got the impression that her CT didn’t like to talk about race from how she handled other social studies lessons during Black History month. The lessons 120 highlighted famous African Americans, yet according to Becca, they never eXplicitly talked about the people being African American or what that might mean for the children to study these people. Becca’s perception of her CT’s approach to issues of race was substantiated by other missed opportunities for culturally relevant pedagogy she witnessed. For example, Becca’s CT and another teacher were in charge of the school’s Black History Month Assembly. During a rehearsal I observed, the children were lined up on a stage holding pictures of famous African Americans and instructed to recite the quotes about the people they had been assigned. After they recited their quote, they turned the picture to the audience and recited the person’s name. Becca reported that there were no other instructions given to the children other than to memorize their quotes and show their pictures. In fact, one of the quotes was directly from the “Wilma Unlimited” story read earlier that day. When the child reading the quote had trouble remembering who her quote was about, Becca’s CT reminded the student that Wilma’s picture was on the wall in the classroom. There was no reference to the social studies lesson at all. This sort of decontextualized (at best) type of cultural reference is the kind of superficial treatment of cultural diversity that multicultural education scholars have consistently railed against (Banks, 2003; Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 2009; Paley, 1979). However, as Becca’s classroom anecdotally demonstrates, it is all too common in today’s elementary schools. While research has shown the harmfiil effects this multicultural mis- education has on schoolchildren (Banks, 2003), we also see how this impacted Becca’s narration of her actual and designated identities. Interestingly, Becca’s narration of her actual identity as an intern actually seemed to protect her from accepting superficially 121 culturally relevant teaching practices as a part of her designated identity even though a strong institutional representative (her CT) endorsed them. However, while she used her status as a less powerful intern to explain why she didn’t and couldn’t fully engage in culturally relevant teaching, this use does not explain why Becca wanted to engage in culturally relevant teaching or thought it was something beneficial for her students. Observation and Story 11. Unsolicited Aide: A Language Arts Lesson I taught literacy block today which consisted of a read aloud and then reading workshop. The read aloud was picked by my CT and I had read it over the night before. When I first read the story, I thought it was very odd and somewhat difficult to understand. The sentences were phrased in unusual ways and the plot of the story was quite strange. Becca began her written retelling of our second observation day with an emphasis on her cooperating teacher’s choice of a text Becca was initially worried would lead to the behavior issues she usually encountered when students were not engaged. In this story, she continued to narrate her actual identity as an intern and as a teacher interested in utilizing culturally relevant texts. Since she mentioned her CT at the onset of this story, offering her actual identity as an intern again a narrative theme, I asked Becca about the nature of her relationship with her cooperating teacher. While all participants discussed the pressures of feeling as if they were not the “real” teacher, no one expressed it as much as Becca and/or within a way in which the internship experience within the classroom was so seemingly disconnected from its intended (and advertised) purposes to “provide preservice teachers with the practical reality of the demands of teaching, and enable them to practice their craft under the guidance of veteran and master teachers”(McKinney, et al., 2008, p. 72). However, one could argue that Becca was 122 provided with the practical reality of urban teaching where scripted curricula are mandated by districts concerned with raising standardized test scores. Becca’s complicity with these restricted student teacher and urban teacher narratives was evident in her description of her relationship with her CT. B: So basically I do write some different things in my lesson plans for Michigan State classes and then basically I teach what the content that she had basically and then her same format. So... M: So what do you think of that? How does that work with quote unquote lead teaching if... B: Yeah, I know. Well, I guess what I’ve seen this year is basically she follows the curriculum completely and so there’s really no place for her to choose books or me to choose books, it’s, we use the readings that are given to us and I don’t know what our program is called now but we do, it’s like all non-fiction based and it’s these cards that are on random things like parade floats and different sculptures and things like that. And so we just use that as our, to do a mini lesson on teaching or whatever reading skill we’re teaching for that week. And then we do the Text Talk program which is prescribed books again. In our second story exchange, Becca reported that her CT chose all the texts she used during her lead teaching. However, Becca did not interpret this as an imposition or as her CT being controlling, even though she said her CT was “pretty intimidating.” Becca understood that her CT was the kind of teacher that functioned “by the book.” She did not stray from the district guidelines and programs that were given to her. She took a “tough love” approach in the classroom, using a lot of directives when speaking to students (and Becca). Subsequently, Becca intended to do exactly what her CT planned for her to do, even during her “lead teaching” of all subjects, when Becca was supposed to have taken over this aspect of teaching. 123 Becca’s approach to the curriculum she was given may have provided her practical experience in an urban elementary classroom; however, it is contrary to how “culturally relevant teachers think deeply about what they teach and ask themselves why students should learn particular aspects of the curriculum”(Ladson-Billings, 2006, p.34). Culturally relevant teachers are able to take mandated curricula and find ways to relate it to the lives of their students. For example, Ladson-Billings (2006) recalls a secondary English teacher who uses Romeo and Juliet to discuss issues of dating with her students. Becca’s acceptance and imitation of her cooperating teacher’s approaches to curriculum and instruction, without question and/or explicit judgment, did not prevent her from narrating her designated identity in opposition to the kind of teacher she narrated her present self to be and interpreted her cooperating teacher to be. Although the students seemed to enjoy it, I think in the future I would like to choose read alouds which are more relevant to the students’ lives. This read aloud was on the older side and didn’t have much content with which they could relate. I will definitely like to continue this in my own classroom next year, no matter what grade I teach. Not only are students learning reading skills, but also they’re learning content knowledge. The designated identity that Becca narrated above is one that purposefully seeks to use culturally relevant texts. In earlier discussions and written stories, Becca seemed to connect cultural relevancy with student engagement and behavior. For example, in the first story she wrote, she noted a positive difference in students’ behavior when she read a text about a famous African American. Even though engagement wasn’t an issue with this particular lesson, it was still clear that Becca valued the use of relevant texts and hoped to use them in her future teaching. 124 However, Becca still seemed to be missing the understanding of culturally relevant teaching “as less a thing and more an ethical position they [teachers] need to take in order to ensure that students are getting the education to which they are entitled” (Ladson-Billings, 2006, p. 40). In fact, she didn’t seem to consider the lack of cultural relevancy as much of an issue in this lesson because as a language arts lesson, according to the literacy program she was using, “it’s really about comprehension of the story and not really anything more than that.” What was more of an issue of concern for Becca was an interaction with the classroom aide. I was very pleased with how the students behaved during reading workshop. I was surprised when the teacher assistant called me over and told me she was going to “ream them out” as soon as our visitors left. When I commented on how good they were, she told me it was only because she was giving them mean looks and threatening them the whole time. This was frustrating to me for a couple of reasons. First, I was very pleased with how they were behaving and I think they should be given credit for working hard and staying on task. Second, I feel like she is always trying to undermine my authority disciplining students at inappropriate times. . .Whenever my teacher is out of the room, the aide always feels the need to yell at the students, or tell them to listen to me, when I am perfectly capable of controlling the class on my own. When someone else tells them to listen to me, it’s really doesn’t help. Becca said she had spoken with the aid “a few times” about undermining her authority but because she didn’t “want to be real confrontational about it,” she found herself repeatedly explaining her reasoning for the behavior management techniques she employed. Becca tried to understand the position of the aide, whose job as a behavior specialist was to work with specific students, in and outside of the classroom. However, as noted below, in the second person story I wrote, the aide often utilized a whole class approach to discipline which, according to Becca, seemed to coincide with whenever Becca took over the primary teaching responsibilities in the mentor teacher’s absence. 125 Looking up to scan the room, Ms. M makes an announcement. “People who are reading independently, you can do readers’ notebooks. Now that ISA T is over, we’re going to do those again. ” A late student has made many attempts to get things out of her back pack and few attempts to reading independently. A classroom aide foils her latest attempt and the attempts of several students that appear to be ofl- task. “You don ’t look like you 're doing the lesson. Go back to your seats, ” the aide announces. Ms. M responds as well, “Fluency people, put it away and do your readers ’ notebooks. ” In her analysis of the aide’s tendency to interfere with her classroom management strategies, Becca believed her actual identity as intern, in addition to her established cultural identities influenced the situation. I feel my identity as a young, white, female student teacher definitely plays a role in how I am treated by the rest of the staff. Especially the teacher aides seem to think I am unable to control the class, without even giving me a chance to do it on my own. It always seems that they think I’m being either too easy on the students, or coming down too hard on the students. This is one of the many reasons I’m looking forward to having my own classroom, so at least I’ll be seen as a teacher, rather than a student. The aide, a middle aged African American woman, had worked with some of the students in Becca’s classroom for a number of years. She was also a local resident and knew many of the families of the children in the class and the school. As a behavior specialist, the aide spent significant amounts of time with assigned (and unassigned) children, before, during and after school. Becca seemed to imply that her style of behavior management was misjudged by the African American classroom aide as the naivete’ and inexperience of the young White student teacher who couldn’t possibly know what she was doing with this classroom full of inner-city African American children. So, What Becca considered to be pedagogical choices with implications for behavior were 126 interpreted as ineffective classroom management. For example, in the story exchange after this observation, she stated, B: I feel like she doesn’t understand like my idea of discipline and behavior management is more focused toward making sure the kids are receiving the content and like that’s the driving force behind what I’m thinking and like I’m disciplining this, I’m ignoring that behavior. . .I just feel like she has a different mentality about it. Additionally, the paraprofessional and administrative staff at Becca’s school was predominantly Afiican American. Becca told a story about having been denied paper and other supplies she was sent to the office to retrieve by her cooperating teacher, who would later have to get the materials herself. With these experiences and this awareness of differences, Becca’s stories about how she was treated by the aide and school staff revealed her interpretation of these situations as both cultural and professional difference, locating her as an outsider in ways that frustrated her. However, it is important to note the strength of Becca’s consideration of her actual identity as an intern as she concluded the story using it as the primary reason for interruption by the classroom aide. This is one of the many reasons I’m looking forward to having my own classroom, so at least I’ll be seen as a teacher, rather than a student. Observation and Story 111. Social Science Review In the third story Becca wrote, she continued to construct her actual identity as a teacher who connected the cultural relevancy of curricular materials with student engagement and participation even as she was unable to fully engage in the kind of culturally relevant teaching she thought would be beneficial to her students. I then began the social science review session. Half of the review was on our unit about Black history and the other half was on our Chicago unit. We read a series of children’s literature books about famous African 127 Americans and then two books about the experiences of African Americans at certain times in the past. . .I read the question or clue about the person or experience to the students and they quickly raised their hands and responded to my question. There was great participation during this time and the students were excited to give their responses. I think they really enjoy and remember this unit because of the use of children’s literature. I could tell even if they didn’t necessarily remember the name, they remembered the story. . .There was also great participation during the Chicago portion of the unit. However, I think they responded to these units better because they are the only ones that aren’t taught by reading straight from the text book. In this story and during our story exchange, Becca gave other compelling reasons for the students’ excitement and high level of participation. For example, the review was in the form of a game they usually played with math flashcards. The class was split in halves that competed against one another, earning points for correct answers. Becca said they rarely played this game because the students often had trouble containing their enthusiasm. In addition to being excited to play, before the game, Becca reminded the students that they were taking a test on the review material the next day. Despite these other potential and probable catalysts for the students’ engagement during the review, Becca privileged the use of culturally relevant children’s literature, as opposed to the textbook usually used for social science lessons, as the motivator of her students’ success during the review session. This assessment is confirmed by the students" ability to recollect parts of the story in absence of detailed information. Even though Becca thought the use of culturally relevant texts helped the students to answer the review questions correctly, much like in the “Wilma Unlimited” social studies lesson, Becca found the level of superficial learning to be troubling. Bz. .. I felt like they really didn’t have the connection that they could have. Like you could have made it a little more obvious to them, like how these 128 people actually have affected their lives. I feel like that’s kind of disconnected in their minds. Building upon her construction of her actual identity as an intern teaching for her CT, Becca indicated that her mentor’s model of underutilizing culturally relevant texts was why she did not do more than what she thought her CT would do in the same situation. During this lesson and others like it, in which Becca found herself teaching in ways that didn’t necessarily reflect the kind of teacher she envisioned as her designated identity, Becca said she kept mental notes of what she would have liked to have done differently. In addition to narrating her actual and designated identities as a teacher interested in engaging in meaningful culturally relevant teaching, Becca also continued to narrate herself as a teacher who made decisions about discipline and classroom management with respect to her pedagogical objectives. After the review test review game, the class transitioned into Reading Workshop. The students moved quickly and quietly to their respective tasks that were posted on a large message board. Becca took a small group of students with her to the back of the room for a Guided Reading lesson. I only had 4 kids but M and S were not paying attention, calling out, reading different sections. At certain points I was very close to sending both of them back to their seats. Although I was angry at some times, I was also amused. I think I should have been firmer in setting expectations for them and then followed through and sent them back to their seats if they weren’t following directions. But I didn’t want them to miss the guided reading lesson either. Not wanting the students to miss out on the lesson, Becca allowed the students to behave in a way that caused her to question her behavior management decision, or lack thereof. Here, Becca’s narration of her actual identity held competing narrative themes in 129 terms of her consideration of classroom management. On the one hand, Becca justified her leniency during the Guided Reading lesson, stating that she wanted to make sure the students had access to the content she needed to cover. This thinking is in alignment with dreamkeepers “who focus on academic achievement (i.e., student learning) [and] understand that this is their primary function” (Ladson—Billings, 2006, p. 34). At the same time, Becca lamented her management decision, thinking she should done more to correct student’s problematic behavior to ensure she was sending consistent messages about her expectations. Summary Becca’s construction of an urban teaching identity during this study was mediated by her perceptions of herself as a student teaching intern. Being placed with a mentor she found intimidating, in a classroom with an aide who she found to undermine her authority, Becca missed out on what she (and I) recognized as opportunities for her to engage in the type of urban teaching that research indicates is best for urban students. Subsequently, Becca’s case of urban teaching identity construction brings up questions in regards to what individuals do with training and/or knowledge they don’t have the opportunity to use in meaningful ways. For example, in the initial interview, Becca indicated that she felt somewhat prepared for urban teaching by her undergraduate program. She had taken an honors sociology course about race and ethnicity that introduced her to “new” and “interesting” things she had not considered before, things that helped her to gain perspective on people who were ethnically and culturally different from her. Before her internship, she had field placements in urban settings she felt helped her to better understand how teachers can deal with fewer resources than she was 130 accustomed to, growing up and being schooled in the suburbs. However, when Becca encountered a mentor teacher who did not deviate at all from the district curriculum, and who Becca somehow perceived as having an avoidant approach to issues of diversity, Becca chose to table her performance of the kinds of teaching she desired to enact. As such, she narrated designated identities as an urban teacher with the freedom of her own classroom to enact the culturally relevant teaching she was unable to engage when student teaching. 131 CHAPTER SEVEN KIM Kim ’5 Established Identities In her narration of her established identities, Kim shared that swimming was a large part of who she considered herself to be. In the seventh grade, she was diagnosed with scoliosis, a medical condition in which the spine is curved. To straighten her spine, she had to wear a plastic body caste 24 hours a day for two years and sleep in it for an additional year. She was only allowed out of the brace when she was in the water, so Kim swam at least three hours a day throughout middle school and high school and continued to swim in college. Kim is originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, an urban center on the west side of the state. Self-identified as “pretty white,” Kim’s family is from Poland on her mother’s side and Wales and Australia on her father’s. Describing her family’s socioeconomic status as middle class, Kim grew up in the city until her family moved fifteen miles north to the suburbs when she was in middle school. While she shares her cultural identity with the majority of urban teacher candidates, Kim’s urban community of origin differentiates her from her colleagues (in general and in this study) in terms of exposure to culturally diverse people. Kim’s has other established identities that made her a unique urban teacher candidate especially with regard to her disposition toward diversity. Both of Kim’s parents are special education teachers. Their first teaching jobs were at a school she attended in which half of the students were children with special needs and the other half were enrolled in environmental science themed general education classes. The school 132 was also culturally and ethnically diverse. Kim recalled her third grade class being an even mixture of Caucasian, African American, Asian and Latino students. Once a month, the school organized a “big integration” of the special needs and general education students. Students would be paired and spend the entire day with their “pal.” From the exposure to diversity of cultures and varying abilities at her school, Kim gained “a lot of really good, like experience and like outlook on, you know, just on people who are not like me.” Why Teach (in Urban Schools)? Kim’s interest in teaching began very early in her life. When she was in Kindergarten, Kim told her mother that she wanted to be Kindergarten teacher. When she was in the third grade, she would come home from school and assist her brother with his homework. When she was in the fourth grade, she insisted her parents buy her teacher a particular workbook because she wanted to do the assignments as homework. Ultimately, Kim pursued a career in teaching because, like dreamkeepers, she is passionate about knowledge. She said she likes the feeling of helping people better understand the world around them. She also credited her tenure as a lifeguard for six years, her schooling experiences with special needs children, and her parents’ occupations as special education teachers as being influential in her decision to teach. Kim is also committed to urban teaching. Having attended suburban schooling in middle and high school, Kim said she was interested in broadening her horizons. K: And I just feel like, urban education, there are so many people in public education, in big cities and nobody wants to be here. Like, nobody wants to go there and why is that? You know what I mean? I really wanted to experience this to see why urban education would be different and what it 133 is about it that’s different and what I’m finding is that it’s different in a good way. Having grown up in Grand Rapids, Kim felt she had some insight on urban educational issues, but she understood that all cities are not the same and was looking for a different perspective on urban teaching. She thought Chicago would be a good opportunity to learn something new. Actual and Designated Identities: Flexibility and Preparation as Salient Themes Throughout the study, Kim narrated her actual identity as a teacher whose meticulous preparation allowed her to be flexible and positively responsive to sudden changes. Often, Kim would find herself having to switch gears in the middle of a lesson or quickly altering her lesson plans because her cooperating teacher forgot what they had agreed upon earlier. Subsequently, Kim’s written and oral narratives reflected the deep thoughtfulness to which she approached her teaching, resulting in an ability to learn from any situation she encountered, especially the unexpected. Even when lessons appeared to have gone smoothly, Kim expressed a desire to improve her practice and often narrated these improvements in her designated identities. Observation and Story 1: Taking T urns Lead Teaching When the study began, Kim hadn’t started lead teaching in her classroom but since we had scheduled our observations based upon when we thought all of the interns would be lead-teaching, she made arrangements to teach on the day we originally scheduled. In her story about my first observation of her teaching, Kim wrote about her cooperating teacher assuming the role of lead teacher unannounced. After 15 minutes or so of (as usual) talking to each student individually and reminding students to please wait their turn to speak with me instead 134 of interrupting another student, Mrs. M. walked in and turned the lights off to indicate it was time for the students to stop and listen for directions. She reminded them what it is like to read at a library and that they should be practicing this skill for the next few minutes. I felt badly for them because I had not instructed them with these directions in the beginning of class so they probably did not realize this was what they were expected to be doing. I continued to float around the room, sitting with students as they sounded out words and read simple texts until Mrs. M. asked the students to walk to the carpet because we had a student that wanted to read to us. This is not the way I would have liked the lesson to play out but I decided it could still flow in a way the students could understand if I explained the purpose correctly from the beginning. Kim hypothesized that her CT probably forgot Kim was going to lead that morning and when she saw that I was in the room, quickly took over because she felt pressured to perform. That day, and in subsequent observations, I got the impression that Kim’s CT thought I was there to monitor her mentoring. Oftentimes, I had to find ways to position myself so that I could watch Kim while listening to the CT talk to me about the children, her own teaching experiences and how well she thought Kim was doing. Kim adjusted to the change in plan so quickly and smoothly that it wasn’t until our first story exchange, did I realize that Kim and her CT had not initially planned on team teaching that day. She later explained her assessment of the situation and reaction to the improvisation of the lesson plan. K: Yeah, I know, I think I’ve just gotten used to it, and I’m pretty good at thinking on my feet anyways, but this year 1 really feel like, when we have 10 minutes here, 15 minutes here and you just have to grab something and go with it, you know. . .. And then it was kinda weird because we had talked about it and exactly what I was gonna do and then she came in and it was like that all went out the window and I was like “Wait a minute, I gotta take control of this,” because you know this is what we had planned already. So, I mean it wasn’t exactly what I wanted but nothing ever is, you know. And they really did get it, which is all that matters. 13S Here, Kim narrated an actual identity in which she conceptualized teaching in discrete chunks of time, showing she had the mental and physical agility and stamina Haberman (1995) found to be a function of star teachers who understand that “life in the classroom does not occur in weeks, days or even hours. . .It consists of intense periods of a few minutes, or even a few seconds of endless interactions” (p. 71). In approaching teaching this way, Kim also showed she understood the need to be mindfully present when teaching, especially in her particular situation as a student teacher with a sometimes unpredictable cooperating teacher. Where most interns would be inclined to see the mentor’s forgetfirlness as opportunity to lament about the lack of power inherent to the position of student teacher, Kim saw this as an opportunity to refine her skills as a flexible instructor. Keeping her students’ learning as her primary focus, Kim was able to reassert herself as the lead teacher and move on with her lesson on turn taking, using her mentor’s transition into storytime as an introduction. Before A. started reading to us I briefly asked the students if they liked hearing their peers read stories. They said they did and indicated that many of them would like a turn to read their own stories. “Perfect!” is the thought that went through my mind, as I move on to make my next point. “Well, in order to let everyone have a turn to read a story, we have to be able to take turns and listen to each other.” I went on to explain that if we could practice taking turns, then more people would be able to have a turn to read a story in the morning. I said we could have one student read a story and think about what it might look like and sound like when we are taking turns and then we will record our thoughts on the board. As the student read her story, many of the children interrupted the reader with questions and comments about the story and protests about the reader not showing the pictures. The second student chosen to read shared a book that had three smaller stories within it. Kim used the breaks between stories to discuss the idea of turn taking, 136 recording the different ways students could indicate they wanted a turn to read or say something during a story on a T-chart. After she explained what a T-chart was, on one side she wrote what the students’ said taking turns looked like in words (e.g. “Raise your hand”), and on the other side, she drew corresponding pictures (e. g. a picture of a hand). When the chart was full, Kim told the students that there were other ways for them take turns and/or communicate without using words. She then brought out a T-chart she had made earlier with pictures of herself using sign language to communicate turn taking 99 ‘6 words she selected. Kim and the students practiced the signs for “yes, no,” and how to ask to use the restroom. Although she hadn’t planned on teaching them any more signs that day, the students’ enthusiasm encouraged her to teach them a few more before they adjourned for a collective bathroom break. When reflecting upon the lesson, Kim gave several reasons for its success. When I got home and began to think about using the signs in the classroom, I think part of the success of the lesson does come from how I have interacted with the students prior to explicitly teaching them hand gestures. Also important, as evident from today, is to be flexible and think on my feet. I am the type of person who has to plan out everything ahead of time in order to feel fiilly prepared so when something has to be changed; luckily I am not scrambling around unprepared or gathering materials, but rather just shifting information around in my head. Kim’s ability to see her teaching in multiple ways reveals a significant indicator that she was moving toward thinking like a star teacher of children in poverty. According to Haberman(1995), “Some teachers are able to act; they can conceive of numerous specific things to do. They can keep children active and busy. Others are able to conceptualize and verbalize about teaching; they can see purposes and 137 implications, but not necessarily ways to involve children. Stars can do both” (p. 41). Kim was able to do both. She was very animated in the classroom. For every direction she gave verbally, she demonstrated it with her body as well. For example, when she wanted students to quiet down, she would put two fingers in the air to signify that students should use their “six inch voices.” Her lessons involved several activities, many of them hands-on and most of them with discemibly combined academic and social skills objectives. However, in addition to her pre-conceived lesson plans, Kim demonstrated an ability to be flexible in the moment. Kim’s regular experience with sudden changes due to her CT’s deviation from her original plans also required her to have multiple options for meeting her teaching objectives. Demonstrating this complex level of thinking and acting during the sign language lesson, Kim simultaneously built upon her prior interactions with her students while integrating her prior experiences with her cooperating teacher literally without flinching. Similarly, Kim was also able to verbalize her thinking about her practice. In the story above, she narrated her actual identity as having conducted a successful lesson. She validated this assessment by reflecting upon the things she did before and during the lesson and by commenting on her general approach to planning. Additionally, during the story exchange, she articulated what she considered to be the most significant implication of functioning the way she was able to in the classroom saying, “And they really did get it, which is all that matters.” Kim’s success in this lesson can also be attributed to her strong sense of herself as a teacher which can be seen in her narration of her actual identity below. 138 In the classroom today and every day, I always see myself as a teacher, not an assistant or a second teacher, but as a teacher. Loughran (2006) discusses the importance of a student teacher’s self image in their ability to gain insight from their learning-to-teach experiences. He [Bullough, 1991] noted how those who had a strong image of themselves as teachers were able to grow and develop and thus learn from observing the teachers around them in ways that were not likely in those who had no clear self-image. Thus, the nature of self-image and issues of identity formation matter if learning about teaching is to “take hold” rather than being seen as superficial contact with a set of pre-organized tasks and procedures...(p. 110). Kim was definitely taking hold of her role as a teacher. She did not narrate herself as a student teacher disempowered by her mentor teacher’s actions. She did not even interpret her mentor’s actions negatively. She tried to empathize with her mentor, hypothesizing about how difficult it must be to have taught all day, every day for 28 years and then be asked to step aside and let someone else take over. With this in mind, Kim still narrated her actual identity as a co-teacher and was subsequently able to respectfully re-assert herself and seize an opportunity to grow as a teacher. Observation and Story 11. Community Helpers In her second story, Kim continued to articulate the reasoning behind her pedagogical decisions. Since I have been lead-teaching, we have been working on a social studies or science lesson, then having play/center time, and a math lesson before dismissal for the day. I feel that the students are still adjusting to 139 having a lesson right after rest time because Mrs. M prefers to move right into play time when she teaches, on the other hand, I like to have a lesson before play time because it can motivate the students a little more to pay attention and do their work with play time as an award at the end. Kim went on to write that she thought the scheduling change was successful because it allowed her to accommodate her students’ different working paces. As her and her CT’s lessons usually ended with some sort of writing activity, the children who finished their work quickly became bored and sometimes disruptive when they had to wait for their peers to finish in order for the class to move on to the next activity. However, Kim thought the students were still getting used to the change and struggled with not having play time when they usually expected it. On this particular day, Kim had trouble getting her Kindergarteners to settle down during her social studies lesson on community. This lesson was a continuance of the previous day’s lesson when the students learned about the members of their neighborhood community from stories Kim read and by making hats that represented different jobs of community helpers (e. g. firefighters, police officers, etc.). Kim had gathered the students on the carpet where she intended to read them a story about more community helpers. Before she read the story, she told the students she remembered she promised to let them wear their community helpers hats. After they got their hats, they were to go to an adjacent table to get their “talking sticks” so they could practice taking tums while she read the story. As the second person identifying story I wrote below shows, Kim students were having trouble remembering all of her directions. Row by row, Ms. Kim calls students to the board to get their talking stick, after which they are to go the adjacent circle table where their community hats are waiting. A few students have only gotten their talking sticks and 140 Ms. Kim takes the opportunity to remind the students about following directions. “ What was the rest of my directions? ” Ms. Kim asks a student who has only gotten their talking stick. The children ’s chatter increases and to calm them down, Ms. Kim initiates a quick round of “If you can hear my voice... ” “If you can hear my voice, touch your head... touch your shoulder... touch your elbow, knee, tummy, nose... ” Some of the children settle down. Some do not. “Excuse me A, sit back on the carpet please. C, can you say what you 're supposed to do if you have your hat? " A student protests that the talking sticks were once popsicle sticks. “These have never been popsicles, “.Ms Kim reassures the protestor. “Everyone should have a hat and a talking stick. I love how A and M are reaay to listen. Put your thumbs up if you have your hat. ” Several tiny thumbs shoot up in the air. “Put your thumbs down if you don’t have your hat. ” Fewer thumbs go up. “See?! We ’re practicing listening. " Ms. Kim reminds a few students that she is waiting for them to settle down and sit quietly before she continues with the lesson. One student is told that he will have to go back to his seat if he cannot follow the directions for listening. Ms. Kim continues by reminding the children what “good” listening looks like which includes "raising your hand, sitting with quiet feet... because I want everyone to have a turn. ” A student protests that Ms. Kim ’s talking stick is “better than " hers. Quickly, Ms. Kim replies, “No Way! ” Aloud, she recalls a conversation she ’d had with her mentor teacher about flowers. Explaining that while the bouquet of flowers was beautiful, each flower in and of itself was unique and beautiful on its own, just like the unique talking sticks the class had made. The student still insisted Ms. Kim 's and the mentor teacher '3 sticks were prettier, so Ms. Kim graciously accepted the compliment with a simple, “thank you. ” When reflecting on the lesson, Kim expressed her disappointment with her reaction to the children’s distracted behavior. I did become frustrated during the lesson because I spent just as much time scolding and guiding children to follow classroom rules as I did teaching the lesson on community helpers. This is not the type of teacher I like to be. I do not enjoy spending time scolding students or pointing out their behaviors in front of the whole class because this can make students feel mad, uncomfortable, and unmotivated to participate. After this 141 lesson, I do know that I want to work on being able to talk to students with issues that must be addressed in private and in a way so student do not feel threatened. Haberman (1995) differentiates star teachers from other teachers by the way they think and approach discipline. Most teachers think of discipline and teaching separately and they “believe that few of their problems with discipline emanate from the way they teach” (p. 5). Most teachers blame the students and/or their parents for behavior problems they face in their classrooms. Because they don’t establish in-depth caring relationships with their students, many teachers aren’t able to avoid and deflect discipline issues the way that stars can and do. Kim’s narration of her actual identity above locates her on the star side of the continuum of teachers. Although, like most teachers, it does appear that she considered teaching and discipline to be separate, her frustration with the lesson is not rooted in a deficit perspective of her students. She located the issue within herself and her practice. She narrated a conflict between her actual identity and “the type of teacher I [emphasis added] like to be” while she was reprimanding students for their behavior. Not only was her concern about wasting time on discipline, she was especially worried about potentially humiliating a child and encouraging their disengagement from learning. So, like star teachers, Kim’s focus was on the implications of her actions for students’ academic and emotional well being. Observation and Story 111. A Sticky Situation The prompt for study participant’s third story asked them to think about how they would teach the lesson of our third observation in the future. Kim began narration of her 142 designated identity by discussing what she considered to be a difference between how she and her CT viewed and labeled play within the classroom. The afternoon would begin with the students having Center Time, which would be similar to play time but instead of choosing any of their own activities throughout the classroom, the students would still have a choice of an activity, but in a more organized fashion. Instead of having students pick anything in the classroom, I would have a few select choices for them, where all the students would rotate activities after a short period of time so all of the students engage in each of the activities each day we have Center time. This I believe would help solve some of the problems the students in my classroom have with sharing certain items in the classroom. Kim said she got conflicting messages from her cooperating teacher about the use and consideration of play. While they both seemed to value play in terms of its ability to facilitate learning, Kim wasn’t sure about her CT’s reasoning for the different ways she talked about this activity. With the children and with Kim, the CT referred to play as “playtime.” When a visitor or the principal came into the room and the children were playing, the mentor referred to the activity as “self-discovery” and “Center Time.” From her teacher education, Kim learned that learning centers were planned events, highlighting pre-selected activities through which the children rotated. Kim believed this kind of direction would help to eliminate some of the problematic issues she felt were a result of the free for all “playtime” her CT allowed. During the story exchange, I asked Kim about the distinction she made between her use of Center Time in her designated identity and what she was inferring about her CT in the narration of her actual identities. Specifically, I asked if Kim thought her CT misunderstood the way learning centers are currently conceptualized in educational discourse. Kim speculated that her mentor used different terms depending on the 143 situation as a means to justify a pedagogical decision that was not valued by others at the school. K: I think she, ‘cause our classroom has playtime, but the other classroom does not. The other Kindergarten room does not. And I am a firm believer in play. I have a lot of articles about recess and the benefits of recess and all that. I really do feel like they should have that. But it’s just the name that confuses me. When the principal comes in and she calls it Center Time, to me it just feels like she’s playing CYA, like Cover Your Ass, you know because the principal doesn’t agree with play time. You see, but she does and it’s kind of like you have to fight for it or call it something different or set it up. There are two things (at least) about this situation that Kim doesn’t understand. First, Kim’s CT’s approach to play and “Center Time” is in contradiction to what Kim has learned from her teacher education about conceptualizing centers. In other words, Kim felt her mentor was factually inaccurate. For Kim, play time and Center Time were not the same things. Being two different things, they have different goals, objectives and values. Kim validated her own view of Center Time by commenting on how she thought her students would have less problems sharing if their play was more directed in this way. The other aspect of this situation that Kim doesn’t understand is why her CT will not “fight for” what she believes about the value of play. Kim does not recognize her mentor as doing something that star teachers frequently do: effectively deal with administrative bureaucracy. “They [stars] adjust and cope in ways that enable them to succeed because they are aware of the inevitable pressures coming from the bureaucracy. . .With these skills, stars are able to devote almost all their time and energy to their children and teaching. . .In addition to protecting themselves, stars have an even more important stake in the care and 144 feeding of the bureaucracy. They seek to protect their children. They place themselves between their children and the gears of the mindless system” (Haberman, 1995, p. 64-66). Kim’s CT managed to survive for 28 years in a high poverty school. She had one of the largest classrooms, with more materials and a fewer number of students than any other room in the building. She fought for what she felt was most important: her students. Because Kim is reliant upon a contemporary teacher education narrative about the use of learning centers and probably because she has yet to fully experience how to pick (and win) bureaucratic battles, Kim was unable to recognize the political savvy her CT demonstrated. After Kim narrated a designated identity in which she would utilize play differently, her story moved on to how her future class would transition from Center Time into a social studies or math lesson as they did during our third observation. That day, Kim’s class was still working on a social studies unit on communities. As a class, they were making a model city using small boxes they had painted the day before and were putting the finishing touches on their individual buildings and houses. Because she had intended to do this lesson a later date, Kim was not as prepared as she preferred to be. She did not have all of the materials needed to finish the buildings pre-arranged and had to gather and pass out materials as she led the children in a discussion about completing their projects. If I was to teach this lesson in my own classroom, I would already have pictures and samples of some buildings others had made in past years for the students to see as an example. I also would have materials already prepared for the students so the lesson would carry on in a smooth fashion. In the classroom today, I was not prepared to teach this lesson until a 145 future date so the materials were not ready and I was unable to spend as much time as I would have liked talking and working with students because I was concerned about gathering materials and preparing for what we would do next. One students comment; “Ms. Kim, this is a sticky situation!” applied to more than just the glue on his fingers today. While I enjoyed it and laughed, I would normally have a desk or place in the classroom where one student from each of the table groups could retrieve and pass out the needed materials to save time and confusion among the students and myself. Kim’s narration of her actual identity here was focused on how unprepared she was. At four different times in the same paragraph, Kim wrote about not having the materials ready. She didn’t say why she wasn’t prepared other than she hadn’t planned on doing the lesson that day. She also didn’t say why she went on with the lesson when she wasn’t prepared. What is interesting here is that because preparation is so important to her, when she felt unprepared, Kim assessed the lesson as less than satisfactory. Whatever the reason for her lack of preparation, Kim’s flexibility and ability to adjust to unforeseen changes allowed her to appear calm and conduct the lesson as if she had been prepared. Summary Kim’s narration of her actual and designated identities consistently revealed the deep level of thoughtfulness to which she approached her teaching. Her strong belief in being prepared coupled with her ability to be flexible in the face of uncertainty allowed her to function successfully in the classroom even when she didn’t feel she performed as well as she could have or in the manner she preferred. She was assertive but respectful in sharing lead teaching responsibilities with her CT. When the children were more difficult to manage than usual, she thought about the ways in which she could improve her practice instead of blaming the children. Even when she wasn’t adequately prepared 146 physically for a lesson, she was mentally prepared enough to adjust and proceed in a way that resulted in her still meeting her teaching objectives. In these ways Kim demonstrated promise as an emerging urban educator where a key to her firture success will be to maintain an ability to work within the many contextual constraints of teaching in general and urban teaching specifically. 147 CHAPTER EIGHT ABBEY Troubling Old Waters: The Perfect Storm “T he studies of candidates ’ predispositions are generally consistent with national trends, indicating that the majority of teacher candidates are White, female, middle class, from suburban or small towns, and have limited experience with those fi‘om cultures different from their own. Many candidates hold negative attitudes and beliefs about those different fi'om themselves. Although many are willing to teach in urban areas despite a lack of experience and skill, some are unwilling to teach in cities or preferred suburban schools. Many candidates feel inadequately prepared to teach in urban areas "(Hollins & Guzman, 2005, p. 485). In many ways, Abbey’s stories epitomize the aforementioned research findings on the predispositions of urban teacher candidates. Throughout the study, Abbey narrated her actual identity as a teacher with very little power and control over what happened in her classroom despite her best intentions and attempts to plan and execute what she termed “out of the box” lessons. These narratives revealed her resistance to accepting responsibility for when things did not go well in her classroom, most often blaming disruptive students and a lack of parental involvement. As her written and oral narratives exhibit, Abbey’s construction of an urban teaching identity demonstrated her perception that urban teaching was much more difficult than she had anticipated and/or was prepared to deal with. Her interpretations of her interactions with students, parents, her mentor teacher and the school climate often confirmed (for her) many of the negative stereotypic images of and deficit thinking about urban students and schools that urban teacher educators intend urban field experiences to prevent and/or challenge. These interpretations were marked by a persistent comparison of her students’ behaviors and attitudes toward learning to her own experiences as suburban middle class learner. 148 Given her background, Abbey’s specific construction of an urban teaching identity was highly predictable. As such, the goal of this chapter is to move urban teacher education discourse beyond current understandings about predispositions and glean useful understandings for potential changes in the ways teacher educators deal with the most common urban teacher candidate narratives. This chapter will take a closer examination of several mitigating factors involved inAbbey’s student teaching experience that indict the teacher educators that failed to adequately support and challenge her. Thus an analysis of Abbey’s construction of a problematic urban teaching identity is taken up as a call to examine contextual factors as well dispositional ones. Whereas the other participant chapters proceeded chronologically through the data collection process (i.e. Story 1, Story 2, Story 3), this chapter will utilize representative examples of Abbey’s written and oral narration of her actual and designated identities that foreground the teacher education context in this attempt to complicate the discussion of three typical urban teacher narratives: deficit thinking about urban students and parents, low expectations for student success, and lack of preparation and support from teacher education. Established Identities I mean, it’s what you are, but I think that it’s mostly shaped from where you come from. Like I got my identity from my parents and their morals and my family and fiiends that I grew up with, the neighborhood feeling that I had. So it starts from a seed, from where a baby, it’s all the things that are put on to you that you naturally accommodate. Put on. That sounds bad, but I enjoy my identity. . .I don’t think it’s something, you can necessarily always be in charge of... I mean once you get to high school, you can choose to hang out with the popular crowd or like the different cliques or whatever, you can work, in some ways on your fashion, or that sort of thing, but other things are more deeply rooted. 149 Abbey’s definition of identity revealed a strong belief in the power of external forces on an individual’s considerations of “who” one is. The “put on” and subsequently “accommodate(d)” aspects of her established identity that seemed to be most influential come from growing up in a town where a premier public university is located. Abbey, a self-identified White female, is of Ukranian and English decent. Her father’s side of the family came to the United States on the Mayflower. Abbey grew up in an upper middle class home with her family achieving this status over time. When she was a young child, Abbey’s parents struggled to make ends meet. Her mother recycled soda cans in order to buy young Abbey a dress for Easter. Being the only family member that did not participate in sports Abbey, who preferred ballet and other forms of dance, often felt like an outsider at home although she remembered being a part of a “close knit neighborhood” of children around the same age. She maintained several of these close friendships until high school when differences in lifestyle choices (e.g. one close friend began drinking alcohol at age 16) dissolved a few previously close associations. Abbey said she loved growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan because of the opportunities she had, many of which she said she didn’t fully appreciate until she came to East Lansing for college. For example, she noticed that East Lansing was much less culturally diverse than Ann Arbor and credited the diversity of her elementary and high school classmates to the multicultural and/or global faculty of the local university. She also credited her hometown’s “open-minded. . .hippy” approach to education with her success as a student. In high school, she was dually enrolled in two programs because the district encouraged students to tailor their high school curriculum according to their interests and learning goals, allowing students to take classes of interest (e.g. Advanced 150 Placement, performing arts) at the campus that offered those courses. Remarking about the educational support and high expectations for success, Abbey anecdotally reported that nearly 100 percent of her high school classmates went on to some sort of college. Also resulting from being an Ann Arbor native, Abbey considers herself to be politically liberal. As a freshman in college, she said she was shocked that her roommate voted for the Republican candidate in the presidential election. Why Teach (in Urban Schools)? Abbey has always wanted to be a teacher, saying that she has always loved working with children which she has been doing for most of her life. Abbey’s mother operated a day care out of their home so that she could stay home and raise Abbey and her siblings. Even as young as three years old, Abbey remembered enjoying assisting her mother with the daycare children. She also remembered having close relationships with enthusiastic teachers in elementary school that encouraged her passion for reading. Abbey recalled being especially sure of her desire to teach in the fourth grade. She enjoyed a close relationship with her teacher that year and remembered her as being “just very involved” with Abbey and her classmates. Their relationship was so close that Abbey said her former teacher had been waiting for her to student teach so she could be Abbey’s mentor, but decided to retire when Abbey was unable to return to Ann Arbor for her internship. While Abbey was sure she wanted to teach, her commitment to urban teaching was questionable. She said she thought it would be a good idea to do her student teaching in Chicago because with many friends already residing in the area, she wanted to live in the area after she finished student teaching. Although she wanted to teach in 151 Chicago, it wasn’t necessarily the area of Chicago where she was placed to student teach. Like the other teacher candidates, Abbey was placed in a high poverty and predominantly African American elementary school on the south side of Chicago. Several times during the study, Abbey compared her school to the elementary school on the north side of Chicago attended by the affluent children for whom she babysat to supplement her income during her internship. With more abundant resources and parental involvement, this was the kind of urban school Abbey said she intended to seek a full time position upon completion of her internship. Common Urban Teacher Narrative I : Deficit Thinking about Urban Students, Parents and Communities. During my first observation of Abbey’s teaching, she taught a language arts lesson and had a difficult time getting her first and second graders to settle down. She began her written recollection of the observation lamenting some of her students’ behavior. I am frustrated with the lesson that I taught today. It just seems like some of the students in my class are lost causes. I can’t even believe that I put that down in words, but these students refuse to learn, act out in defiance and prevent their other classmates from learning. In my 45 minutes lesson, 15 of it was spent consecutively trying to get the class under control. During our story exchange, I asked Abbey to explain why she thought her students refirsed to learn. A: I think there’s two reasons. I think that part of it is them and that part of it is home. ‘Cause I know I, well I feel I should say, not I know, that a lot of our families in our classroom don’t really value education as much. I don’t know if it’s because the parents themselves did not have a good educational experience and are expecting that of their children or the parents aren’t home. I shouldn’t say not valuing because there are 152 circumstances where parents have to work and things like that. But they’re not being probed at home to be doing their homework. They’re not being, so things that they’re not, they’re receiving that support from home to be like, “You need to be in class,” and “You need to be learning,” because you see that in some of our students that, they’re getting their homework done everyday and they’re, I guess you can just see that they’re coming from different families. Here, Abbey presented what much of urban education and specifically urban teacher preparation research poses as a fundamental problem with far too many teacher candidates (and teachers) of culturally, socioeconomically and linguistically diverse student populations: a deficit perspective (Haberman, 1995; Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 2009; Kunjufu, 2002). In the opening lines of her written story, she labeled non-compliant students as problematic and had given up on them, calling them “lost causes.” Her statement about her assessment of the students’ behaviors and motives sound as if she was ashamed. However, it’s not clear what she was ashamed of. Was she ashamed of saying something politically incorrect (even though she believed it to be true)? Or was she troubled that her students didn’t appear to want to learn at such a young age? Instead of wondering if there was something she could have done to cause or contribute to students’ inappropriate behavior as stars and dreamkeepers do, Abbey focused on them and blamed them for wasting a third of her instructional time. The only other cause Abbey considered for her students’ behavior was equally problematic for urban teaching. Not only did she blame parents, she assumed that her students’ parents didn’t value education because the students didn’t turn in their homework. Here, Abbey relied on her own middle class values and experiences with school to interpret what was going on in her classroom. To Abbey (and many other middle class teachers) there are certain sanctioned forms for parents to participate in 153 schooling to indicate they value education and homework is a particularly important one (Kunjufu, 2002). When a teacher sends homework, it is presumed that parents know and expect their children to bring schoolwork home and should inquire if there is work if the child does not indicate such. Parents are expected to work with their children on that assignment or at least check to make sure it is done and assure that the assignment will be returned to the teacher completed. In this way, parents are thought to reinforce what is learned in school and many teachers view this as important communication between teachers and parents. Abbey believed this because this is what she experienced as a middle class student. Her mother was always at home. Her mother and teacher communicated through her homework. Her mother showed she cared about her education by making sure Abbey did her homework and returned it completed when due. When Abbey’s students didn’t turn in their homework, she automatically assumed that it was because their homes were dysfunctional. The parents didn’t care. They didn’t value education. They transmitted this attitude to the children who then returned to the classroom even more defiant and non-compliant. Abbey’s assumptions are problematic on several levels. Without much previous experience with urban parents, she had little to no basis for what she assumed was or was not happening at home. She relied on the reverse logic of her own experience. However, the experiences she had with urban parents only validated and reinforced her deficit oriented beliefs about her students’ home lives. For example, when I challenged her assumption about parental involvement solely based upon homework response, she replied, 154 A: Parents, whether or not their parents come pick up their report cards or have ever inquired anything about their lives. If we send notes home, if there’s nothing sent back which is partially on the student or if, I had a parent hang up on me twice last week when I tried to call and talk to her about her daughter. Report cards, sending notes home and calling parents are all traditionally school-based forms of communicating with parents. When they don’t “work,” teachers like Abbey are left to assume that parents don’t care or value education, at least not in the way they should. Blaming parents also relieved Abbey from assuming any responsibility for the lack of homework response. She did not consider that the homework she assigned might not have been developmentally or academically appropriate for her students. She did not consider that she was teaching in a school with an extremely high homeless population and so “home” would not look and function the way Abbey’s home did. What is as disturbing as how quickly Abbey resorted to deficit thinking was that there was little to no challenge of these assumptions. My own challenge of her connection between homework and parental involvement during our story exchange ended with the question about whether she was assuming parents didn’t value education because of the homework or because she actually had some experience with parents that would more concretely indicate their stance on education. In her response, she gave a specific example of being hung up on by a parent she tried to contact about a student’s behavior. Our conversation then went on a series of tangents in which Abbey recalled several incidents in her classroom (often in comparison to her own experience as a student) that reinforced her 155 deficit thinking about her non-compliant students. The same few children were “problems” in her room. These children spoke to her and each other disrespectfully. One student was involved in several physical altercations and Abbey didn’t understand the administration’s decisions to suspend him on some occasions and not on others. When I tried to bring the conversation back to her interactions and assumptions about parents, she told me a story about a parent calling a child “dumb” in front of Abbey, her cooperating teacher and the school principal. Abbey did not say how the mentor or principal responded, but it was clear that no one warned Abbey about the dangers of extrapolating from this one incident to make an assumption about urban parents and those particular parents’ children because she continued to negatively judge students and parents based upon homework compliance. Considering my role in this project as both teacher educator and researcher, I also missed important opportunities to help Abbey to develop a more nuanced understanding of her situation. Subsequently, she was not able to consider and entertain alternative ways of accomplishing the learning goals she toward which she was aiming with homework. For example, in a story about a different language arts lesson I observed, Abbey remarked (with approval) how a certain student was able to do well on a spelling test because he had been turning in his homework, when he ordinarily did not. Abbey wrote that she could tell he had been studying his words at home. Noticing a pattern in her connections between homework and parental involvement, I asked her to consider an alternative approach to this situation. 156 M: Oh you were saying that you could tell that he was studying his words at home and so I’ve noticed in some of our conversations, you’ve said before that parental involvement and what goes on at home is important to you. It was important to you as a learner and then as a teacher it’s important. And you’ve mentioned that knowing that some of the kids don’t get that kind of support at home. So I’m wondering, have you thought of ways to make things more school based? Considering that the level of support is not necessarily what you would want it to be for all of your students? A: I mean, I try. I guess I don’t really know how I would incorporate besides going over the words, seeing as how these are spelling words. Does anyone know what they are? Does anyone know what they mean? That sort of thing which I did on Monday and then Tuesday incorporated them into their sentences. I didn’t do anything with them on Wednesday. So I was trying to bring them into work that we were doing. But then again I didn’t want to bore kids, like, These are your spelling words, let’s go over them. ‘Cause usually teachers only do it, or at least I’ve seen it, they do it like the first day of the week they have a pre-test or whatever and Friday, the test. So it’s usually all home-based. So, I guess I don’t know, I never... M: Well, I’m just saying, you know, for you, so that makes it more of a burden on you but maybe less of a frustration at home. I’m not saying that parents don’t need to be going over their spelling words with their kids, that’s not the issue, but to deal with the fact that some of them aren’t, that many of them aren’t, just have you thought about ways to make it more school-based, not... A: NO, I haven’t. I mean all of their homework this week revolved around those words. My suggestion about making spelling more school-based did not challenge the assumption that urban parents don’t value their children’s education. I could have asked Abbey to imagine what a homeless child does when they leave school each day. Or since Abbey seemed to be aware that some of her students’ came from families where parents worked during after school hours, I could have asked her to expand her notion of family and to try to identify at least one adult in each of her students’ lives who could serve as a homework helper. Asking Abbey if 157 she had considered making spelling school-based was a moot point. It was obvious she hadn’t. What wasn’t so obvious was how she could have come up with alternatives. That “how” should have come from her teacher preparation and since I considered myself to be a researcher and teacher educator during this study, it should have come from me as well. As Gloria Ladson-Billings (2006) asserts, Most discussions of what teachers fail to do give teacher education a pass. We presume that teachers are doing something separate and apart fi'om their preparation. However, I argue that teacher preparation plays a large role in maintaining the status quo (p.38). As Abbey recalled her reasons for assuming some urban students and parents didn’t care, I found myself overwhelmed by the number of examples she was able to recount. Then I remembered being in Abbey’s classroom. I remembered noting several particular children with bad attitudes and “smart mouths” and later confirming they were the same few students Abbey reported as problem children in her classroom. I remembered the disrespectful way they talked to each other and to Abbey. I even remembered invoking a participant observer role and giving one of the particularly rambunctious girls a look that I meant to say, “You aren’t crazy enough to speak to me that way!” after I had heard her say something inappropriate to Abbey. (This was the look my mother gave me when l was a child and had temporarily lost my mind and decided to challenge her.) My own experience with Abbey’s “problem” children made it 158 easier for me to understand how Abbey could initially adopt a deficit perspective about her students and their parents. However, as I rested in my role as researcher, the teacher educator who knew the dangers of this perspective, again, I did not do much to help Abbey move away from these assumptions. Common Urban Teacher Narrative 2: Low Expectations for Student Success They seemed to understand the rules with the new materials, and only a few students broke parts of them. (This was encouraging to me, I figured that about 1/3 of the students would.) Although Abbey wrote in the above story that she was encouraged that most of her students used the new materials correctly, her introduction of the language arts lesson about questioning during reading demonstrated her low expectations for her students’ positive behavior. As the second person identifying story I wrote exhibits below, before she handed out Post-It notes for the students to write down their ideas about a story she planned to read, Abbey engaged the children in a conversation about rules for using the small notepads. On the board, she writes the first rule which establishes the purpose of the notes: These aren ’t for your personal notes or unnecessary things. ...Between Rule #2 (Don ’t rip them of if you aren ’t using them), and Rule #3 (Don ’t waste them), Ms. Bostic warns the students that she cannot pass out the pads until everyone is quiet. Although it does not become quiet, she passes out the pads and warns the students that if she sees them breaking the rules, she will take their pads away. All of the rules were stated negatively and assumed students would use the notepads. Abbey also assumed only a few students broke the rules because the rest of them understood her, however, many of them did not use the sticky notes at all because they weren’t paying attention to Abbey or the lesson. And although it wasn’t with regard to the notepads, Abbey’s students behaved the way her actions said she expected. Even 159 though she said she would not continue unless the room was quiet, the room never got quiet but Abbey passed out the materials and proceeded to read the story over the talking students. The noise grew louder and Abbey abruptly stopped reading the story. She told the children they would lose their recess and lunch time if they were not quiet. She wrote the names of six children on the chalkboard to tell her mentor teacher who had left the room at the beginning of the lesson. Abbey tried to continue on with the lesson by asking the children to share what they had written on the notepads. When the off topic talking continued to drown out the discussion she was having with the few students who were paying attention to her, Abbey announced to the class that she was stopping the lesson because the students wouldn’t stop talking. Abbey’s low expectations weren’t solely in regards to student behavior. She also came to expect little of students’ academic capabilities. In our final story exchange, I asked her how her perception of her students had changed over the course of her internship. She replied, A: . .. I think my perception of what students are capable of doing has been so warped now. Now, this is so bad to say, I expect so little of my students because the work that they’ve shown me and the work that they can do is just so below anything. Research has clearly established that “. . .when [teachers] hold low expectations for their students. . .they often have difficulty teaching in ways that are both culturally responsive and academically challenging (Irvine, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 1995b)” (Hollins & Guzman, 2005, p. 482). The teacher expectations/student achievement connection relates what a teacher thinks a student is capable of doing to what and how well the teacher teaches that student. The teacher’s efforts are predicated upon what he 160 or she thinks is possible for the student. When taken at face value, Abbey’s case was no different. When she did not expect her students to behave well, they did not. When she did not expect them to perform well academically, they did not and she used their performance to rationalize her low expectations. Abbey’s low expectations were typical, however it is important to note that she did not begin her internship thinking this way. In our initial interview, I asked her what she thought she brought to the proverbial table that would make her a good urban teacher, and she referred to an interpretation of a school policy used at her initial placement that was based upon a district policy. A: Like I remember them saying, where like you look for one kid to succeed every year or something. Like, do you remember us saying that like the first couple meetings? At Forest Green, we’re looking for 7 children out of every class to succeed because usually CPS is looking for one student to succeed or whatever. And I remember. Like I understand that it would be hard for some children to succeed than others but I come from a background where every child can succeed. So, and I feel as if urban teachers who are working in the system for so long, they just, they just give up on kids because they’re a lost cause anyway. But so, I don’t know, I just think that I expect more from our kids. Abbey’s reliance on her established identities instilled in her a belief that all children can succeed. While her own experience was usually a strong influence on her teaching beliefs and practices, during her internship, she encountered several contextual factors that trumped the power of her predisposition to have high expectations. As she indicated above, one very important influence was the district’s attitude toward student success. When I was their literacy course instructor, I did remember several of the other teacher candidates, including ones that did not participate in the study, mention that they were told things that implied the district was only interested in focusing their efforts and 161 resources on the top performing students. One specific example was a policy in which only “A+” work was allowed to be posted on bulletin boards in hallways. I saw this policy enacted at all three study sites and was actually told about this policy by one of the school principals. Abbey’s statement also referred to veteran urban teachers as having low expectations. While it is not necessarily fair or accurate for Abbey to generalize based on having only met and worked with a handfirl of urban teachers, her experience with a veteran teacher does bring up valid questions in terms of her shift in expectations. Abbey’s second cooperating teacher was National Board Certified, however Abbey was told by this teacher that she didn’t give the children spelling tests because she knew they would fail them. The CT’s thoughts and expectations were not clear from this stance on spelling tests. She could have used other forms of assessment and used other methods within the language arts curriculum, however, Abbey did not indicate that her CT shared alternative ways to expand the children’s vocabulary. It was also very clear that Abbey interpreted this as the CT having low expectations for students’ academic success. If a highly qualified teacher was perceived to have low expectations, it is not farfetched that Abbey learned to have them as well. It is unclear what particular event triggered Abbey’s low expectations for her students’ behavior and academic success, however, encounters with her students seemed to heavily inform her expectations. Abbey was caught in a cycle of low performance and low expectations. While teacher education research identified a causal relationship of low expectations resulting in low student achievement a long time ago (Crano & Mellon, 1978; Smith, 1980), we are less often apt to identify a reverse causal relationship of low 162 student achievement resulting in low expectations. If misinterpreted, the latter relationship can be quite a dangerous one in terms of urban teaching. If one contends that low achievement causes teachers to have low expectations, as Abbey’s case seemed to exhibit, it is not difficult to then slide down the slippery slope of “blaming the victim” for being victimized. Abbey’s case also warns us that the slope is equally slippery when a teacher candidate starts with high expectations and isn’t given alternatives for considering why student achievement is low. One of those possible alternative considerations could have been, and should have been, for Abbey to think about how her own practice influenced both low student achievement and subsequently her lowered expectations for students’ success. If Abbey’s students were constantly failing her assessments, was she asked to evaluate the effectiveness and validity of her assessments? Was she asked to consider whether she taught the content as well as she thought she had? Urban teacher education research routinely predicts that Abbey would not question her own lessons, her own teaching or her rapport (or lack thereof) with her students. However, urban teacher education has had little to say about the teacher educators who have the power and obligation to challenge the thinking behind and consequences of teacher candidates’ low expectations. Clearly Abbey was not sufficiently challenged by her teacher educators. Abbey’s CT approved Abbey’s lesson plans and failed to make the intentions of her own pedagogical decisions very clear. Despite earning a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from a highly ranked teacher preparation institution, Abbey was not taught how to critically reflect upon the effectiveness (or not) of her teaching in a way that would allow her to retain her established identity that included a belief that all children 163 can succeed. Abbey needed guidance on how to expect children to succeed when they currently demonstrate that they are not successful. The answer Abbey surmised from her students’ academic performance and from interpreting her CT’s practices on her own, was to expect less from the students. The most beneficial answer (for both Abbey and her students) was to do more as a teacher and still expect students to do well. Unfortunately for both Abbey and her students, she was not shown how to think this way. Common Urban Teacher Narrative 3: Lack of Preparation & Support from Teacher Education I asked study participants how well they thought their undergraduate education had prepared them to complete their teaching internships in urban schools. Abbey replied, A: Ha! I laugh at that question. . .in no way shape or form. And like even those kids who had their placement in Lansing, I don’t think they would have had any, any clue. When I asked her if she meant the above in terms of curriculum, pedagogy or in terms of the context, she replied that curriculum and pedagogy were not an issue because “everything is taught exactly from the books, to teach to the tests.” However, she felt extremely underprepared for classroom management in an urban classroom. Abbey’s lack of preparation was clearly manifested in her inability to manage her students’ behavior from the very beginning of her lead teaching. To compound the anxiety of being unprepared by her formal teacher education, Abbey felt a lack of support from her cooperating teacher from her first day full day as the teacher of record. During our first story exchange, she shared with me the trouble she had that day. 164 A: I was, I left the room in tears on Tuesday, my first day. Like she was out in the hall doing a bulletin board. She was trying to test the waters to see like when she could be in and out of the room But yeah, Tuesday, I poked my head out the window, out the door and I just said, “Help!” and as I said help, the tears just started flowing and so I ran out while she yelled at them for of course, not respecting me and listening to me. Abbey’s students seemed to act especially unruly when her cooperating teacher was not in the classroom. In her story about a language arts lesson that went awry during her mentor teacher’s absence, Abbey wrote, The lesson went downhill when Miss B left the room. My interactions were rash. I was panicking because you were in the classroom observing and I did not want to look like an incompetent teacher. After a few minutes of feeling like that, I felt defeated. Abbey narration of her actual identity blamed the CT’s absence and my presence in the room for her inability to manage student behavior. As she struggled to maintain control of students’ off topic chatting and inappropriate behavior before her CT left the room, it is reasonable to assume that the mentor leaving would produce additional anxiety for Abbey. And even though I had no official evaluative role for Abbey, my presence as her former instructor and someone who would be commenting on her teaching in some form, added pressure for Abbey to perform well. While it may be unsettling that Abbey held others responsible for her troubles and to explain her actions with the students, her stories presented two missed opportunities to teach her how to teach. First, leaving Abbey alone in the classroom was simply not a good idea. As reported by Abbey on several occasions and as witnessed by myself on at least two occasions, this classroom was difficult for the veteran CT to manage. Even though lead teaching presumes taking full responsibility for classroom instruction, to ask 165 a novice teacher to manage this particular room, without sufficient support, for any amount of time was a lapse in judgment at best and negligence at worst. In her defense, Abbey asked for help on several occasions but her “preparation for working in this emotional cauldron [urban, high-poverty schools] is like preparing to swim the English Channel by doing laps in the university pool” (Haberman, 1995, p. 2). On the first day, when left alone, she stuck her head out of the door to plead for assistance and felt so overwhelmed fled to the bathroom in tears while her CT reprimanded the children. Abbey did not share what conversations she had with her CT about that particular incident in terms of what Abbey could have done differently in the situation, but from Abbey’s reports of other moments of management crisis, the CT maintained a “sink or swim” approach to mentoring Abbey but with fewer rescues. On the three occasions I observed Abbey, her CT did not intervene when Abbey was clearly unable to manage the room. Abbey’s written and oral narration of her actual identities was also a plea for assistance. In almost every story she wrote and every story exchange conversation we had, Abbey painstakingly detailed her trouble managing behavior in her classroom. I tried to ask Abbey questions to get her to think about all of the possible reasons for her inability to manage behavior in her classroom, but I wasn’t there every day. And on the occasions I was there, it was difficult for me not to focus on the sheer volume of disrespectful speech and inappropriate behavior I witnessed in the few hours I was observing Abbey’s classroom. Subsequently in our conversations, I had to struggle not to blame the kids for the chaos in Abbey’s classroom even as I had to be honest and agree that many of her students were rude and out of control. In my role as teacher 166 educator/researcher, I felt obligated to listen and help Abbey figure out what was going on in her classroom, but I could have also shared Abbey’s concerns with her cooperating teacher and her field instructor. This sharing did not have to collude with Abbey’s shirking of responsibility, but it would have been a good opportunity to let her primary teacher educators know that she was looking for assistance and feeling overwhelmed when left alone. While the sink or swim approach seemed to result in Abbey feeling unsupported, she also demonstrated an understanding that her desire for assistance during moments of immediate crisis could also be considered an educative moment. When analyzing her feelings about her cooperating teacher leaving the classroom, she commented, A: In some ways, in some ways, I mean, I like that she allows me to do my own thing with what I want to teach them. Like I’ll run everything by her and she’s like, yeah that’s great. But I wish that she could give me more direction on how to deal with those kids that are just constant problems. And she has, but at the same time, sometimes, like and I know she doesn’t want to interfere but I will like be struggling and I know that she sees that I’m struggling but she just sits there. Abbey appreciated the freedom to modify curriculum and the feedback in terms of lesson planning. However, she also desired more guidance in terms of classroom management as Abbey felt as unsupported when her CT was in the classroom as when she was absent. A: And with my kids in the afternoon, I think in the morning it went fine, but in the afternoon, when I got to math and social studies and science it was just like, absurd. . .it was mainly because of a few students who just didn’t do anything and prevented the entire class from learning and so I tried to incorporate fun things in but in the end, it just wouldn’t work. And I just couldn’t get it work ‘cause I didn’t have any support and I was just standing there screaming at them. 167 Although critiqued for lack of generalizability, research on urban teacher education field experiences indicate that “quality of supervision and school context also appear to be important factors influencing success” (Hollins & Guzman, 2005, p. 499). Specifically, some studies found that “the quality of support and guidance during the field experience also plays an important role” (p. 500). In Abbey’s case, the context and quality of support certainly influenced a lack of success. Abbey was teaching in a first and second grade split classroom with 30 children. The second graders she inherited had a long term substitute teacher for the majority of their first grade year. Many of her students were reading below or significantly below grade level. Abbey told many stories of students knowing about their own and each others’ academic struggles and how she saw this contributing to students’ disrespectful interactions with one another. She also wrote and talked about her CT’s approach to subject like language arts (e.g. not giving spelling tests) which she interpreted as having low expectations for student success. Abbey was routinely left alone in a classroom it was clear she could not manage effectively. When her CT was present, Abbey was allowed to scream at the children when her approved lessons and activities were not engaging the children. From this Abbey concluded that she was doing all she could and knew how to do to manage the room and the problem must have been solely with the students she was forced to work with. Whether or not Abbey was correct in her assumptions is an issue, but is not the only issue of importance here. What also needs to be considered is that she seemed to be making these connections on her own. Allowing a teacher candidate like Abbey to struggle without adequate support is as problematic as her manifestation of the research’s 168 findings about her likelihood of having negative stereotypes about urban teaching reinforced as a result of an urban teaching field experience. Summary Abbey’s stories presented a unique challenge in terms of what could be discerned from her construction of an urban teaching identity. Given her background, urban teacher education research accurately predicted many of the problematic attitudes and teaching behaviors Abbey demonstrated during her teaching internship. As a middle class white female, Abbey was so dependent on her established identities which included images and ideas of teaching, learning and parental involvement that she experienced as a student in suburban schools that she was unable to entertain alternative ways of approaching the students that were different from her idealized type of student. When she wasn’t able to control students with the skills and techniques she preferred, she blamed them for lessons gone awry and disengaged from attempting to try other things that might have gotten different results. However, exploring the contextual factors influencing Abbey’s teaching revealed a force as powerful in determining Abbey’s construction of an urban teaching identity as the dispositional factors she brought to the experience. In analyzing the manifestation of three common urban teacher education narratives in Abbey’s student teaching experience, I found serious flaws in her teacher educator’s approaches to support and guidance during the internship. These flaws seemed especially important for a teacher candidate like Abbey who is at most risk for reinforcing the very negative thoughts and practices urban teacher education claims to challenge. As such, Abbey’s case demonstrates how dispositional factors have been a scapegoat for flawed teacher 169 education, how teacher education continues to give itself a pass (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Much like the teacher candidates who blame their students for their own pedagogical shortcomings, teacher educators do the same thing when we privilege dispositional factors as explanations for teacher candidates’ inability to change their thinking about and practice in urban settings. 170 till CHAPTER NINE CROSS CASE ANALYSES The previous chapters examined the individual experiences of urban teaching narrative identity work that took place during the study. This chapter takes up analyses gleaned from comparing and contrasting the four teacher candidates’ collection of stories. Continuing to highlight salient aspects of the participants’ experiences, this chapter focuses on two themes. The first part of this chapter illustrates the various ways participants narrated themselves as student teachers. In both converging and divergent ways, all of the study participants discussed the significance of learning to teach in someone else’s classroom. While the first part of this chapter explores a theme that was largely participant initiated, the second part of this chapter explores a topic participants did not readily engage until explicitly elicited by me during story exchanges, but one that is a particularly important area of discussion and concern within urban teacher education discourse: the student of color/White teacher demographic imperative. Specifically, the latter section of the chapter looks at the ways in which participants’ experiences with and discussions of race and culturally relevant teaching in predominantly African American, high poverty urban schools can provide insight into a more complicated way for teacher educators (and teacher candidates) to engage in the dialogue about what it means for middle class White females to be (and learn to be) teachers of children who have different racial, ethnic and cultural lives than they do. I .Learning to Teach in Someone Else’s Classroom: Student Teaching as a Narrative Theme 171 “Student teaching is the culminating experience in a teacher education program. For good or ill, this experience has a significant impact on the student teacher who must juggle the responsibilities of teaching (and all that entails) while establishing and developing relationships with one or more cooperating teachers and a university supervisor. Student teachers are surrounded not only by other adults but also with children with whom they share a different sort of power relationship (Hargreaves, 2000). Thus, student teaching is a complicated, emotional and interpersonal experience that is often critically important to the making of a teacher. ’ (Koerner, Rust & Baumgarter, 2002, pp. 35-36) ) As for most beginning teachers, student teaching proved to be a significant contextual factor in study participants’ respective analyses of their emerging sense of themselves as urban teachers. Within the larger identifying narrative of “student teacher” that each participant constructed, three sub-storylines emerged from written and oral narratives. The first type of student teaching sub-stories were concerned with the ways the children responded to the teacher candidates’ switching from the latter’s participant- observer role in the classroom during the first half of their internship to lead teacher role during the second half. This transition often manifested itself in participants narrating stories about struggling to establish and/or earn respect as the “real teacher” versus being a “helper.” For April, Becca and Abbey, role switching seemed to contribute to their struggles with behavior management, at least initially until the children became accustomed to and/or accepted them as the teacher of record. In a second type of student teaching sub-stories, participants narrated their actual identities as “students of teaching” with cooperating teachers offering differing levels of support and guidance. The nature of the relationship between the teacher candidate and cooperating teacher (CT) seemed to have important implications for the teacher candidates’ understanding of what it meant for them to learn-to-teach and for the articulation of their designated identities. Finally, 172 in a third type of student teaching sub-stories participants analyzed their actual identities as a simultaneously protective and restrictive force in terms of helping them to gain practical knowledge about teaching in general and teaching in predominantly Afiican American, high poverty urban schools specifically. Children ’s Response Teacher Candidates’ Changing Role One of the critical moments in student teaching is the moment in which the beginning teacher moves from the position of participant-observer whose authority over and responsibility for students and their learning was minimal to that of the lead teacher who bore largely full responsibility for them. Although study participants started the lead teaching portion of their nine month student teaching internships at different times, data collection occurred as participants were taking over all subjects, all day in their respective classrooms. In transitioning from their participant-observer role and assuming the role of “lead teacher,” study participants narrated a change in both themselves and their students. In particular, they perceived what they considered to be an adverse reaction from their students. For example, when Becca began lead teaching, her students commented on the change in her demeanor. B: And I think the kids, certain kids in particular, have told me, “You’re so mean when you teach. You’re becoming like Mrs. W.” And on the days she’s absent and I’m really trying to keep them in line and they’re like, “You’re so mean now. You’re yelling at us just like Mrs. W.” “I know, sorry. You’re not listening when I don’t yell.” So, but, yeah, I feel like they’re thrown off by that because when I’m not teaching them, I’m obviously much nicer to them and understanding but then when I am teaching, “Go away. Don’t talk to me. I need to get this done.” Both Becca and her students associated a strict authoritarian style of classroom management with Becca’s cooperating teacher. In the story exchange excerpt above, 173 Becca’s students compared her lead teaching style to the cooperating teacher in dismay. Becca’s apology seemed to indicate that she wasn’t necessarily happy about the way she interacted with students as a lead teacher. However, she felt tremendous pressure to mimic her CT whose style was validated by student compliance when Becca enacted. it. Additionally, as indicated in the last line, Becca’s concern for getting things “done” took precedence over her preference to interact with students in a “nicer” and more “understanding” way as she had done when she was a participant-observer. Similarly, April’s students seemed confused by the difference in the way she interacted with them when she was a participant-observer and when she was lead teaching. In the excerpt below, she hypothesized about a connection between the students’ confusion about her role switching and her ability to manage their behavior. A: ...my teacher was gone all last week, and I was in there with a sub and it went pretty well. When they see me as a teacher it goes pretty well, it’s just when my CT’s in there, sometimes they just think that I’m a helper or something and I think that’s why I think I’m having problems with classroom management. And they are used to seeing me work one on one with them like whenever they need something I can come over to them, but whenever I’m lead teaching, I can’t do that and I guess my role switches a little bit maybe, I don’t know. And they just get out of control. April’s students’ reaction showed the significance of the cooperating teacher as a confounding factor in the consideration of authority. The students were used to one person being in charge, so when April was left with a sub, she was able to claim firll and sole authority as the lead teacher. However, when the cooperating teacher was in the room, even when April was leading the lesson, she instantly became a “student” again and no longer warranted the respect she did when she was the only “teacher” in the room. The children demonstrated their understanding of the power differential between “real” 174 teachers and “student” teachers when they acted out when April’s lead teaching forced her to take a whole class approach to instruction. The distinction between “teacher” and “helper” was most explicitly challenged in Abbey’s classroom. She reported that there were students who never misbehaved when the cooperating teacher was leading instruction, but routinely acted out when Abbey led. I asked her if she ever asked the students why they behave differently. She replied, A: Yeah. And they’re like, “Because you’re not our teacher.” And I’m like, “Oh really?” And I’ll open up my grade book and I say, “Because I have all your grades right now. I’m the one who’s grading you. You are getting my grade on your report card. I am your teacher. I’m the one who is in front of class everyday, who is giving you your work to do. How am I not your teacher?” Abbey said her students’ reaction to her retort was momentary silence but continued misbehavior whenever she was lead teaching. Although Abbey attempted to claim her authority as a teacher by asserting her power to determine students’ grades and reminding students of her daily presence in the lead teaching role, because these are presumably things that the cooperating teachers did on a regular basis as well, it appeared the children’s respect (or lack thereof) for authority did not solely depend upon traditionally assumed teacher roles and responsibilities. On the one hand, like Becca’s and April’s students, Abbey’s class could be confused by her change in roles. She was introduced to her class as a “student” teacher and like all interns, began her time in the classroom observing her cooperating teacher and engaging in one-on-one interactions with students. When she took on lead teaching responsibilities, she was no longer able to give students the personal attention to which they had become accustomed. As the student teachers’ narration of their actual identities indicate, the transition from participant-observer to lead 175 teacher was emotionally charged for both the student teachers and their students. The student teachers grappled with the stresses of occupying the position of lead teacher not only in the abstract but also in terms of their specific cooperating teachers. Their students experienced (and reacted to) a loss of emotional support. Relationships with Cooperating Teachers As evident in the student teachers’ sub-story of moving from participant-observer to lead teacher, the student teachers’ relationships to their cooperating teachers (CTs) was also central to their narration of their actual and designated teaching identities. This relationship was the topic of the second sub-story that cut across the student teachers’ narratives. These stories revealed how differing levels of support and guidance from their mentors appeared to impact the educative value of participants’ student teaching internships. While all of the teacher candidates reported having supportive cooperating teachers, there was a range in how this played out. While April and Kim told stories of positive and helpful relationships, Becca and Abbey shared stories about a complex but generally less than desirable relationship with their CTs. April routinely said her relationship with her CT was “good.” In the story exchange excerpted below, April recalled how her CT’s support had improved since her guided lead teaching the previous semester. A: I think it’s going a lot better than, like the first time I taught she did step in a lot and it didn’t give me any, I never knew if I could do it myself kind of. And the kids got the perception of well Ms. H is the real teacher. And she always refers to me and she always says we have two teachers in this classroom... I just think it’s really helpful that she kind of lets me do it. I’m sure if I was like, “Ms. H, help!” She would. She leaves me in there alone and it’s up to me. I have to. And it’s hard for her too. It’s really hard for her because she really likes to control her classroom. So 176 she’s like, “There were a few time where I wanted to step in but I knew you could do it.” So it is really supportive. It’s really supportive. As an alum of her current teacher preparation program, April’s CT was familiar with the expectations of a cooperating teacher. Even though April interpreted her CT’s approach during guided lead teaching as somewhat overbearing, this could also be construed as the CT’s judgment about April’s readiness for the total assumption of teaching responsibility. However, as her CT intervened less often, April came to appreciate being left to struggle with running the class on her own, assured that her CT was there to back her up if needed. April was also appreciative of her CT’s support in the form of consistent reference to April as one of the classroom’s “two teachers.” The CT’s confirmation of April’s status as more than a “helper” bolstered April’s campaign for authority and respect during the transition fiom participant-observer to lead teacher. Like April, Kim reported having a supportive relationship with her cooperating teacher. This relationship was marked, however, by the CT’s openness to learning from her as a student teacher. As Kim commented below, her CT was very receptive to letting Kim implement new ideas in the classroom. K: My teacher is like a 30 year veteran teacher and for me to come into a class and be like, “Hey I learned about this in my class, we should try it.” I didn’t know how that was going to go. Really because some people are very set in their ways and some people are open and I just got very lucky that she is up for new things, very open and willing to try those new things. While Kim commented on her CT’s willingness to let her try new things as a positive support here, she also told stories of her CT’s forgetfulness about lessons they had planned together, leaving Kim to have to change classroom instruction on the spot. As 177 revealed in her individual case chapter, Kim didn’t interpret these sudden changes as major impositions, but as opportunities to exercise her ability to be flexible and think on her feet, two characteristics she felt were important for both her actual and designated identities as an urban teacher. In her written and oral narratives, Kim explained her CT’s amnesia as a function of teaching so long and being accustomed to running the classroom on her own. At the same time, as indicated above, Kim was able to appreciate her CT’s model of being the kind of veteran practitioner who desired to constantly hone her craft via a willingness to learn and try new things initiated by a student teacher. Unlike Kim, Becca was not able to initiate any new ideas in her classroom. Despite the intent for the internship to be a site for the integration of coursework and practical experience, Becca’s cooperating teacher planned everything Becca taught. Becca thus not only faced the tensions of moving between “student” and “teacher” in the school classroom, but also in navigating these roles in the movement from the university and school classroom. Below, Becca explained why she often lived a double life, creating lesson plans to fulfill her concurrent coursework requirements but implementing the lessons created for her by her CT. B: I find my CT pretty intimidating. She’s pretty intimidating. I’m starting my lead teaching in literacy and in all subjects this coming. . .but still I’m always doing what she has planned basically. Much to the chagrin of Becca’s students who lamented when she mimicked her CT’s interactional style, Becca’s CT epitomized “tough love.” She was very strict and demanded (and earned) student respect and compliance. Becca said that her CT was also respected by the predominantly African American school staff (and parents) because of 178 this authoritarian style of discipline and classroom management, hypothesizing that her CT’s style matched their own style of discipline and interaction at home. Becca felt that her CT approached her role as mentor the same way she approached her role as classroom teacher, as one of offering “tough love” and firm boundaries. As a result, Becca did not feel comfortable asserting her own ideas. Interestingly though, Becca did not judge her “double life” or her relationship with her CT negatively. Understanding that her CT was under pressure from the district to use mandated curriculum, Becca also didn’t push for her ideas because she didn’t see room for them to be implemented even if her CT had been amenable to them. Subsequently, Becca resigned herself to keeping track of the things she would have done and wanted to do during her internship for her own classroom in the years to come. For example, although she found mimicking her CT’s interactional and classroom management style “worked” in terms of student compliance, Becca didn’t like yelling at her students. She thought it decreased student motivation. As a result, she narrated her designated identities to include what she learned in her teacher preparation coursework about keeping emotion out of discipline. Just as she constructed a firm boundary between herself as a student teacher in the university and urban school classrooms, Becca drew boundaries between her actual and designated teaching identities. Abbey’s relationship with her cooperating teacher was the most ambivalent. At times, Abbey complained about a lack of support from her CT. At other times, she acknowledged her CT’s helpfulness during specific occasions. For example, in the story exchange excerpted below, Abbey discussed her mixed feelings about her CT intervening when Abbey had trouble managing student behavior. 179 A: I mean, at the same time I don’t want the authority taken away from me. Like if she starts yelling, “You need to respect Ms. B,” then what does that make me? So, but in a way, in the mornings it’s fine, but in the afternoons, I’m just like, “Help!” And there isn’t any. So, and she’s so happy that I’m doing this right now because they just finished up the SES, like the Illinois afterschool tutoring program and she’s the head of it and so she has all this paper work to do and everything else. So she’s been getting her work done and not really. Like yesterday, I was like, “I need you to write comments about my social studies lesson, because we need comments.” But I don’t know. So, I mean, I get a lot of good ideas from her. Although Abbey thought her CT was supportive in terms of allowing her to work toward earning respect as the lead teacher on her own, she also felt she needed and wanted more help, particularly in classroom management. Abbey did acknowledge and was appreciative of her CT offering specific tricks to try when Abbey explicitly asked for help after a particularly harrowing lesson attempt. However, as exemplified in Abbey’s request for comments on her social studies lesson above, Abbey and her CT rarely discussed her lessons. Abbey said she showed them to her CT but was only told they were “great” without any substantive feedback. Maybe that was because the written document was fine. What Abbey wanted and needed was help with the live moments. It was here that she felt she didn’t consistently get the advice or support of her CT that she felt she needed. This often left her feeling exasperated, and as argued in her individual case chapter, reinforced deficit thinking about her urban students. Importantly, while Becca responded to her relationship with her CT by splitting her actual and designated identities, Abbey responded by reinforcing boundaries between her actual identities and her current students. Student Teacher Status.“ Limited Responsibility as Explanation and Escape 180 In a third student teaching sub-story study participants narrated their actual identities as student teachers in ways that rationalized their teaching mistakes and/or shortcomings as a function of the seemingly inherent limitations of the internship year. For example, when discussing her reasons for not highlighting the impact of race in a social studies lesson about a famous African American runner born with a physical disability, Becca said her need to please her cooperating teacher took precedence over her desire to engage in what she thought would be a culturally relevant lesson. In a story written about the aforementioned social studies lesson, Becca wrote, I am really looking forward to having my own classroom so I can freely discuss many things with my students and interact with them in a way that I feel is appropriate and beneficial, instead of always trying to conform to someone else’s ideas of how a classroom environment should look. Similarly, when Kim was unable to keep her class engaged during a lesson, she blamed the influence of her CT’s model of classroom management. On the other hand, I did not have a choice about how to handle the situation with not paying attention on the carpet today, because I have been taking cues and mimicking what my teacher does when necessary. Neither Becca nor Kim acknowledged their power to enact different pedagogies than their cooperating teachers. This move, whether intentional or not, allowed them to avoid the conflict and tension that might have resulted from such a deviation. At the same time, being a student teacher became a way to cope with the interns’ perception of an inability to teach in ways that they clearly preferred, enabling them to maintain the correctness of their intentions and beliefs while engaging in practice they did not agree with. For example, on several occasions, Kim discussed what she read as her cooperating teacher’s need to keep the students in line by commenting on their behavior in front of 181 the whole class. Kim wondered if this approach could potentially humiliate the student and adversely affect their motivation to learn. However, in the excerpt from the story she wrote above, as Kim admitted to engaging in the same practice, she distanced herself from her CT by implying that she didn’t really want to handle the carpet situation that way. Her belief that her student teacher status somehow required her to follow her CT’s model allowed her to critique her CT while rationalizing her engagement in the same practice she considered problematic. Unlike Kim and Becca, Abbey didn’t mind not having all the power of the cooperating teacher because it came with too much responsibility that would preclude her from having the space to digest her learning to teach experiences. A: It’s just sort of experiencing everything without having the entire weight of the teaching on you helps so much because you can take it all in and actually process it rather than me trying to teach and control everything and do everything all at once. Instead of having it all, space it out and analyzing different situations. Although this excerpt is not in reference to a teaching mistake, it does show how Abbey explicitly appreciated the limitations of her student teacher status. Here, Abbey viewed the gradual assumption of responsibility in the way it was intended. It was an opportunity for her to step away from practice and think deeply about how to integrate the theory of her undergraduate teacher preparation with the practical experience she was gaining during the internship. Summary & Discussion Student teaching as a significant contextual factor of study participants’ stories revealed its complexity as an actual identity. When participants struggled with what they weren’t able to do, they told stories that emphasized the limitations that came with 182 being a student teacher. However, they did not always view these limitations as detracting from their learning during the student teaching internship, nor as necessarily detrimental to their progression toward the designated identity of an effective urban educator. As Koemer, O’Connell, & Baumgartner (2002) contend, Student teachers walk a delicate line. One the one hand, they are students learning about a profession, its language, its practice. . .On the other hand, they are novice professionals and are expected to know something of practice, to take initiative, and to demonstrate competence (p.39). The gradual assumption of responsibility is proposed as an exemplary way to help teacher candidates learn to teach in ways that give them both the practical experience they need in addition to the analytical space to better understand theoretical underpinnings of that practice (Darling-Hammond, 2006). However, as the participants of this study attested, the transitions back and forth between firll and partial responsibility also presented challenges to them that shaped their ability to demonstrate the professional competence that was expected of them. Another significant factor in study participants’ construction of themselves as moving toward professional competence was their relationships with their cooperating teachers. At their best, student teachers’ relationships with both cooperating teachers and university supervisors can provide feedback about specific lesson components, suggestions about new ways to think about teaching and learning, and encouragement to reflect on one’s practice. When these conditions exist, the potential of student teaching is realized; student 183 teaching is teacher education. (Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1987 in Borko & Mayfield, 1995, p. 515). According to the standards proposed by F eiman—Nemser & Buchmann (1987), the potential of student teaching was differentially realized in this study. April’s and Kim’s relationships seemed the most beneficial for their construction of themselves as teachers. April enjoyed frequent conversations with her CT about her teaching and her CT demonstrated a clear understanding of her role as a mentor teacher. Kim’s relationship afforded her opportunities to try new ideas and to learn the importance of taking a lifelong learning approach to teaching. In terms of the research on student teachers’ expectations for their relationships with cooperating teachers, Becca and Abbey’s narratives confirm the trends found in extant literature. For most student teacher-cooperating teacher dyads, conversations rarely included in-depth exploration of issues of teaching and learning. . .Further it is our impression that, in many cases, student teachers learned not to expect much out of their relationships with cooperating teachers and university supervisors. They primarily wanted the opportunity to practice and learn by doing. They hoped for suggestions and feedback, but they learned to be satisfied with very little.” (Borko & Mayfield, 1995, p. 515). Although Becca understood the pressures of district mandated curriculum and she experienced the effectiveness of her CT’s interactional and classroom management style, Becca narrated her actual identity as a teacher candidate who learned to theorize about 184 her development of practical knowledge in opposition to the then-current styles she was utilizing in the classroom. Abbey learned to expect little from her relationship with her CT as she received minimal feedback and suggestions for then-current and future practice. Interestingly, all of the study participants said their relationships with their cooperating teachers were “good,” despite the range of mentoring received. This could be interpreted as an indicator of the teacher candidates’ abilities to negotiate how influential their cooperating teachers would be in their development as teachers. Despite variation in the perceived quality of interactions with their cooperating teachers, study participants asserted that they were still able to learn valuable lessons about who they wanted to be as teachers. To a certain extent, the teacher candidates saw student teaching as a proverbial hoop to jump through on their journey to becoming a “real” teacher endowed with all the responsibilities and respect that accompany that title. However, at the same time, participants’ stories also revealed a deeper, more complex consideration of the benefits and obstacles associated with student teaching. II. I Know I’m White, Now What?: Complicating Notions of the White Middle Class Female Teacher in (Urban) Teacher Education The sub-stories that Becca, Kim, April and Allison narrated are stories that are often told by student teachers regardless of their student teaching placements. Yet, the four student teachers in this study were learning to teach in specific locales, specifically urban schools that served majority African American, low-income students. Their placements typified the cultural mismatch that many teacher educators have identified as a central problem in preparing teachers, particularly for urban schools. 185 The student of color/White teacher demographic imperative is one of the most significant topics in education generally, and urban teacher education especially. In response to the mostly White middle class female teaching force, scholarship that centers on this imperative has been dominated by the work of teacher educators who have infirsed multicultural education perspectives into coursework and field experiences for teacher candidates with presumed culturally insular backgrounds. Studies of the efforts to engage White, middle class teacher candidates in dialogue about and experiences with multicultural educational issues (e.g. race, class, and gender) have reported mixed results in terms of engendering the critical self-awareness and cultural competence that research has identified as essential for effective teaching of diverse student populations (Hollins & Guzman, 2005, Case & Hemmings, 2005; King, 1991). While some studies revealed positive short-term gains (e. g. the reduction of prejudice, an increase of cultural awareness), others reported no such change. Many studies have shown that White middle class teacher candidates dismiss and resist the tenets of multicultural education (King, 1991; Swartz, 2003), while other studies have documented that placing White, middle class student teachers in schools that serve mostly students of color and/or low-income students reinforces problematic beliefs of such students. Studies of teacher candidates’ predispositions revealed that national trends of a majority White female middle class teaching force have not changed significantly (Hollins & Guzman, 2005). Most teacher candidates tend to have very little experience with people different from themselves, possibly engendering, but certainly contributing to the negative perceptions they tend to have about culturally different individuals (Irvine, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 1995b). There is a spectrum of willingness and desire to teach in 186 urban schools, with many teacher candidates preferring to teach in schools like the suburban ones in which they were K-12 students (Boyd, Lankford, & Loeb, 2003). Most teacher candidates in these studies report feeling underprepared by their teacher education programs to teach diverse student populations (Barry & Lechner, 1995). In numerous ways, the teacher candidates and stories exchanged in this study confmn the premises and findings of the aforementioned studies. All of the study participants were White women from middle and upper middle class families. Abbey and Becca had very little exposure to people who were culturally, linguistically and socioeconomically different than themselves prior to their student teaching internships and only one had any previous teaching experience in an urban setting. Abbey, Becca and Kim only speak English. And in terms of their formal and/or academic preparation for diversity, study participants had a range of experiences, resulting in differential engagement with and enactment of culturally relevant teaching beliefs and practices. In as many ways as the findings of this study align with current research on white teacher candidates, the stories of three participants revealed that some White middle class female teachers come to (and leave) their preservice teacher preparation with the dispositions and cultural competencies that research posits is necessary for not only their students’ success, but their own survival and retention in urban schools. At the same time, the promising dispositions found among three of the teacher candidates in this study were equally problematic and/or inadequately engaged by their teacher education. For example, study participants did not readily write about issues of diversity in their re- presentations of the lessons I observed them teach. However when these issues were brought to their attention during story exchanges, study participants were more open and 187 willing to having these discussions than research would predict. As such, the remainder of this chapter explores the ways in which study participants and their stories challenge previous notions of the culturally insular, resistant to multicultural education White middle class female teacher candidate. Specifically, this section will illustrate how April, Becca and Kim demonstrated “promising but problematic” engagement with issues of race. Additionally, their stories offer teacher educators insight on how to interrogate and subsequently refine pedagogies and curriculum in the effort to produce culturally competent teachers who are able to work and act for social justice and equity in education generally and urban education specifically. Because the purpose of this section is to challenge the ways in which White middle class teacher candidates are commonly conceptualized and taught within urban teacher education, Abbey’s stories are not included because she demonstrated the typical and/or predicted deficit perspectives, lack of engagement and resistance to multicultural and urban teacher education. And although important lessons about urban teacher education can be gleaned from her case, again, the focus of this section is to move the discourse beyond current understandings. I Know I ’m White, I Took a Class: Formal Preparation for Issues of Race, Diversity & Urban Teaching Michigan State University currently offers teacher candidates the opportunity to participate in an integrated urban teacher preparation program in which diversity related issues are paramount to the design and delivery of coursework and field experiences. Program participants begin their urban teacher preparation in the freshman year before official admission into the teacher preparation program and progress through urban- 188 focused courses. Upon finishing their undergraduate degrees, they are eligible to complete their fifth year student teaching internships in large urban school districts. Although this program did not exist while this study’s participants were completing their undergraduate preparation, the mainstream program had made efforts to offer teacher candidates opportunities to engage in coursework and field experiences that would assist in preparing them to work in urban schools. For example, prospective teacher candidates have (and had) the option to take two required teacher education courses before they are eligible to apply for formal admission into the teacher preparation program. According to the program’s website, the goal of these foundations courses is for future teachers to “begin to consider issues that are foundational to teaching diverse learners, working to understand how concepts such as equity vs. equality, the hidden curriculum, and cultural capital can help them make sense of schools as organizations, teaching and learning patterns, and classroom life.” One of the courses, (proudly and pejoratively) nicknamed, “The Diversity Class,” is often many teacher candidates’ first encounter with an academic treatment of issues of social inequality, including racism, classism and gender bias. Challenging many students to question their taken for granted beliefs and assumptions about the ways society and schools participate in structuring inequality, this course is frequently reported by instructors to be a rude awakening for students, particularly those from culturally insular backgrounds. Interestingly, only one of the three candidates highlighted in this findings section mentioned taking “The Diversity Course.” April said the course gave her “some perspective” on working with students of color, however when asked how well her undergraduate education prepared her for urban teaching she said, “Not very well.” 189 Subsequently, April’s stories revealed that her most impactful teacher preparation for urban and diversity related issues came outside of the mainstream teacher education program. For example, for two summers, April participated in an urban immersion teaching fellowship where she taught in predominantly African American schools. A: I feel like I know a lot of theory, but I don’t always know a lot of practical application. And I, like with the fellowships and things like that, I feel Michigan State does offer opportunities for you to get better experience but you do have to seek them out. It’s not just necessarily a part of your education. April said the summer fellowships were extremely influential in her decision to pursue teaching in a context outside of her comfort zone. They allowed her to face her anxieties about being a White teacher in an African American school. Her experiences were so positive that she chose to apply for a student teaching placement in a demographically similar urban school district. In the excerpt above, April constructed her actual identity using the common teacher candidate narrative theme about the over emphasis of theory in preservice teacher education. The importance of this narrative seemed to be heightened for April as an urban teacher candidate who expressed feeling doubly underprepared because of the few opportunities for experience with and/or exposure to urban contexts. While there is little doubt that the summer fellowship was beneficial for April, her need to seek supplemental urban teacher training meant for her, the one diversity related foundations course was not enough for her to feel prepared to teach in urban schools. So as April’s stories confirm the positive potential of add-on initiatives like the summer teaching fellowships, her experience also attests to the limited scope of a program that does not offer an integrated 190 approach to the academic preparation of teachers for diverse and urban student populations. Like April, Becca discussed an experience outside of the mainstream teacher preparation program as having a significant impact on her preparation to teach in a predominantly African American urban school. In fact, she was the only study participant to tell a story about taking a diversity related course in addition to the required foundations courses. B: One class that had an impact on me, is, I took it my freshman year, it was an honors class and it was a Sociology class in race and ethnicity and it was the hardest class I have ever taken. ...And I remember studying for hours and hours and hours for that class but it was really interesting and thinking he was really interesting and that was what was so great about it. And um, I was a freshman and all the ideas that he talked about in class just were new to me, so things I never thought about before. Although she considered the class rigorous, Becca narrated established identities that were not resistant to the new things she learned like many of the teacher candidates who are unwilling to engage with racialized discourses in coursework (King, 1991; Swartz, 2003). In her established identity as a freshman, the course opened her eyes to ways of thinking about the intersections of society and race. In an inferred, more distant established identity of having a culturally insular background, Becca had never before encountered these kinds of ideas and despite the common White teacher candidate narrative of resistance, she found them to be “really interesting.” On the other hand, while it appeared the sociology course was an important introduction for Becca to race and ethnicity, it was unclear how much of an impact this course had on her considerations of her actual identity as an urban teacher candidate. Other than mentioning that the course was “really interesting,” Becca did not talk or write 191 about the ways in which the course specifically enhanced her ability to engage in discussions about race and ethnicity generally, or in her teaching. She did write a story about an opportunity she missed to engage her students in a conversation about race in a lesson she thought she should have taught in a culturally relevant way but did not. B: Although I was pleased with the lesson, looking back on it now I see that the students were very focused on Wilma’s disability and ignored the factor that her race played in her life. This is understandable because the story was more focused on her disability as well. However I feel I should have highlighted the factor her race played in her life. . .I should have had a discussion about this with the students so they really understood that she received inferior medical care because she was Black. I think, once I have my own classroom I will feel more comfortable talking to my students about culture, class, race or any other issues. Here, Becca narrated her actual identity as a teacher candidate who had an awareness of the importance of race in the text she read to the class during the social studies lesson. At the same time, Becca narrated her actual identity as student teacher to explain why she did not feel comfortable leading her students in a conversation she felt she should have. Becca often told stories about being intimidated by her cooperating teacher who wrote all of the lesson plans Becca taught. As she did in the story excerpted above, in response to the limitations of her actual identity, Becca often narrated her designated identity as a firture urban teacher who would feel “comfortable” discussing race and/or engaging in other culturally relevant pedagogies. Another explanation for Becca’s ability to acknowledge and understand issues of diversity but remain unable to translate them into her actual identity as an urban teacher candidate could be a result of her teacher preparation. When asked how her undergraduate teacher education prepared her for urban teaching she replied, 192 B: I think it prepared me okay. There were always parts of each class I felt that were specifically addressed to urban education. But a lot of, going back to those theories, a lot of the theories that we learned were more geared more toward suburban schools I thought, in general. So and I feel like a lot of the things now that people want us to do here, they don’t really mesh with how the schools are set up here. Although Becca rated her overall preparation to teach in urban schools as “okay,” like April she used the narrative theme of teacher education’s overemphasis of theory to construct her actual identity as an urban teacher candidate being asked to apply suburban educational theory to an urban context. So, not only was Becca’s narration of her actual identity restricted by her status as a student teacher, but her comments above indicate that she considered herself additionally limited by a teacher education that did not adequately prepare her to progress toward an extremely context-specific designated identity. Kim reported a similarly ambiguous return on her teacher education coursework and field experiences. When asked how well she felt her undergraduate teacher education prepared her for urban teaching, Kim told a story about a literacy methods course she took during her junior year. For the field component of the course, Kim was placed in a classroom that was 75% African American and 25% Latino. K: I mean it prepared me for the type of environment, I guess, you would be in and, but it didn’t, I didn’t teach anything, I didn’t learn how to set up behavior management systems or where, who to talk to about getting supplies. . .but it was good to be, it was good to be in a school that doesn’t have everything. Unlike April and Becca, Kim narrated her actual identity as an urban teacher candidate whose mainstream teacher education had prepared her for an urban context. However, Kim echoed April and Becca’s lamentation of their teacher education failing to give them adequate practical knowledge. Despite the exposure to what she considered to be an 193 urban context, Kim still narrated her actual identity as unprepared for non-context specific aspects of teaching based upon an established identity as a teacher candidate who didn’t have an opportunity to integrate context-specific and non—context specific pedagogies. While Kim considered herself to be prepared for an urban context, a different story about the same literacy methods course suggests that her preparation for an urban context was not as adequate as she needed it to be as a future teacher of urban African American children. When discussing an assignment completed for the course, Kim illustrated a missed opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of the ways race can impact teaching and learning. K: ...when I did the child study, I purposefully chose a male, because I wanted to see, I mean, as a female I have my own ways of learning so I can assume that possibly other girls learn in the same manner that I do, but I wanted to see if his thinking was different from mine and from his gender, and also he was African American so I wanted to see, what that had to do, anything like on his reading or his writing. You know, if any of that was different because of the culture. . ..I did that for a purpose, but I didn’t feel like I found, I found anything, you know what I mean? Here, Kim narrated an established identity as a teacher candidate open to exploring the ways in which gender and culture impact learning. When she was not able to see a connection on her own, she left the project thinking neither had an impact on her focal student when there is a plethora of research that specifically addresses the ways in which African American males are differentially educated and miseducated (Madhubuti, 1990; Majors & Billson, 1992; Noguera 2003). The parameters of the assignment (and/or Kim’s interpretation of the assignment) don’t seem to have permitted a structural analysis of Kim’s focal student’s classroom experience. However, the potential for Kim’s 194 experience to result in a deficit perspective about the learning capabilities of children of color contributes to a critique of teacher education’s ability to engage teacher candidates in critical thinking about the teaching of diverse student populations. 1 Know I 'm White, But the Kids Don 't Treat Me Diflerently: Teacher Candidates ’ Interpretations of Racialized Experiences in the Classroom When asked about their beliefs regarding the effects of race on teaching and learning, all study participants said they did not think race had an impact on a child’s ability to learn, but they differed in their views on the effects of race on teaching. Initially expecting African American students to treat them “differently” because they were White, participants were surprised when students did not explicitly acknowledge their Whiteness. For example, in the story excerpted below, April spoke about her anxiety around her participation in the summer teaching fellowship she credited with influencing her decision to teach in urban schools. A: And like the first day that was completely shattered because I think I was afraid of how they would see me. And as soon as I saw that they just reacted to me like any other kid would, I was like, “Oh this is fine.” And I recognize that there are cultural differences and there’s obviously differences in our backgrounds but like no matter where you teach, kids are still kids and just because I might look different from them or I might be fi'om a different place doesn’t mean that I’m not capable of teaching them or relating to them. And so that was a huge breakthrough for me. M: Just so I’m clear, when you say were scared when the kids would see you, you meant in terms of you being White and them being... A: Um, yeah. And not just how I look but we talk differently and it’s just, to me, I guess, it’s clear that there are differences and I felt like they didn’t care about the differences and I thought I didn’t either, but the fact that I was scared kind of shows that I did a little bit. Or at least I was thinking about it and they responded differently than I expected. 195 April later narrated her actual identity as an urban teacher candidate who was markedly less anxious during her student teaching internship based upon her established identity as being apprehensive about the children’s perception of her Whiteness and their other cultural differences. When she experienced a similar non-reaction at the beginning of her student teaching internship at a completely African American school with an Afrocentric curricular focus, again, she interpreted students’ reaction as her race not having significance to them. Similarly, Becca did not think her students perceived her as a racially different because they did not treat her any differently than they treated any of the other adults in the classroom, one of whom is also White (her Cooperating Teacher) and the other who is African American (the classroom aide). B: I haven’t seen [race] have that much effect as far as how the students perceive me, at least my students are in third grade. I feel it has an effect on the way I deal with the students so like the different values that I have about either how you deal with children or how children should act. On more than one occasion, Becca told stories about how she was treated by the African American staff members at her school in relationship to her teaching. She believed that they thought her classroom management style was either too lenient or too strict, even when she tried to mimic her cooperating teacher whose behavior management approach was more stylistically similar to the Black staff 5. She didn’t indicate here whether or not she thought her Whiteness precluded her from successfully managing her classroom. However, her inference to a White identity with certain expectations for children’s behavior and the appropriate adult responses clearly shows that she at least recognized some implications of and/or connections between this established identity and her actual 196 identity as an urban teacher candidate with African American students who she presumed operated from a different set of norms. Kim also expressed surprise that it wasn’t until late in the school year that the children indicated that they were aware of her Whiteness. During our last observation, she was conducting a lesson on taste buds. She explained to students that taste buds change as people age. To check for understanding, Kristen asked the students if they could tell her why her taste buds were different from theirs. An astute Kindergartener shouted, “Because you’re White!” Kim shook her head, “No,” and corrected the student asserting that her taste buds were different because she was an adult. Kim was running out of time and quickly finished up the lesson. During our story exchange about that observation, Kim shared her thinking about the incident. K: And I just had to brush it off and forget about it because it is a really good topic to bring up and to discuss and it isn’t something, its March, no its April now and it isn’t something that they have ever mentioned or like in the beginning, they’ll make a few comments on, like when we tried to make an eye color graph, which my teacher suggested but said it would be hard because mostly African American children in our classroom have brown eyes. And then there’s me and C who are White and so then it was hard to do. But that was the only other time where they’ve been like well, you and C don’t have the brown eyes because you’re white. And it’s just like, yeah, well people are different. We are all different so we might have different color eyes. But that was the only time, and it’s April and you think that that would be, cause there aren’t that many white people working in our school either. Most of the teachers are African American, the principal is African American. So you think it would stand out more to them and it doesn’t. And I don’t know how I take that. It could be a good thing that it’s not something that they look at and view but then you also don’t want to have that, what’s the word for it, I don’t think its colorblindness, is it? Is it that view where you don’t acknowledge it all. You don’t want them to grow up with that at all either because you have to know the ins and outs of racial diversity. 197 Here, Kim constructs an actual identity using the common urban teacher candidate narrative theme of refusing to acknowledge race. However, Kim’s stories above also show that she was negotiating this actual identity with an awareness of the dangers of the very stance she took. On the one hand, she wasn’t quite sure how her students perceived her because they rarely mentioned her Whiteness. Nevertheless, as she explained above, she figured they must have had some sort of awareness because of the anomaly that she was on the staff. And while she thought their lack of explicit acknowledgement of race could be interpreted as racial harmony, she also understood that ignoring the issue as she did was not the ideal way to foster positive learning about racial diversity. Discussion Academic Preparation for Diversity. Again, it is important to note that the integrated urban teacher preparation program at Michigan State University was not available when April, Becca and Kim completed their teacher preparation. However, they all took the required foundations courses and Kim reported having field placements in what she considered to be urban-like environments. As such, they represent individuals “born in or since 1985, many of today’s undergraduate seniors belong to the first cohort of millennials to earn a college degree” (Castro, 2010, p. 199). These include those teacher candidates like April, Becca and Kim whom have potentially benefitted fi'om but not yet maximized the turn in teacher education for diversity that has occurred over the last 30 years. In this way, characterizing April, Becca & Kim’s stories and comments about their preparation for issues of race, diversity and urban teaching as “problematic but promising” aligns well with, while pushing upon the research on preparing teachers for 198 diverse populations. Hollins & Guzman (2005) sub-divided this kind of research into four categories, three of which are useful here in terms of their ability to help analyze the teacher preparation of these teacher candidates. First, in terms of prejudice reduction, teacher education has “reported positive short-term impacts on candidates’ attitudes and beliefs” (p. 489). Although Becca’s impactful diversity related coursework was in sociology, the effect of that class seemed to be a positive awakening to issues research would predict she’d be resist to. Although a causal relationship cannot be sufficiently drawn between this course and her seeking out an urban student teaching placement or her decision not to engage in culturally relevant teaching, her highlighting the course as something significant amongst her otherwise “okay” preparation for urban teaching is important to note. Hollins and Guzman (2005) also identified “equity pedagogy” as a category of research in which the goal of teacher education efforts to prepare teachers for diverse students includes methods and materials that support the academic achievement of students from diverse and minority groups. This includes creating curriculum and instruction based on students’ background, fostering self-determination, and attending to oppressed and underserved groups (p. 490). This line of teacher education and research has consistently reported that students’ rigid and inflexible thinking about poor students of color hinders their ability to enact this kind of pedagogy. In Kim’s case, her thinking barrier was not one of rigidity, but one of misguided inquiry on the part of her literacy methods course. As such, she missed out on an opportunity to engage in the development of this kind of pedagogy. 199 Thirdly, teacher education for diverse and urban populations has relied heavily on the ability of field experiences to help teacher candidates integrate the theories they have learned in course work with the practices they will be expected to have as future teachers. Similar to the results of teacher education focused on prejudice reduction, these field experiences have reported mostly positive but short-term effects. April’s success in pursuing and benefitting from two opportunities outside her regular program lends more credence to the assertion that diversity related learning needs to be infused and integrated throughout a teacher’s preparation in order for them to feel adequately prepared to teach urban and diverse students. Racialized Experiences in the Classroom. The typically documented reaction of White middle class female teacher candidates to urban and/or multicultural teacher education is one of resistance and denial. As Gloria Ladson-Billings (2009) contends, My own experience with white teachers, both preservice and veteran, indicate that many are uncomfortable acknowledging any student differences and particularly racial differences. Thus some teachers make such statements as “I don’t really see color, I just see children” or “I don’t care if they’re red, green, or polka dot, I just treat them all like children.” However these attempts at color-blindness mask a “dysconscious racism” (King, 1991), an “uncritical habit of mind that justifies inequity and exploitation by accepting the existing order of things as given (p. 35). Contrary to the typical treatment of White middle class female teachers, April, Becca and Kim illustrated “promising but problematic” approaches to their interactions with their 200 African American 5 tudents. They initially narrated their established identities as aware of their Whiteness as evidenced by their concern for how they would be perceived by their students. In fact, they anticipated race having a bigger impact than it seemed to have in their classrooms. However, they interpreted their students’ lack of explicit acknowledgement of race as an indicator that race was not an issue of importance. So, instead of saying, “I don’t see color,” these teacher candidates seemed to say, “I see color, but maybe the kids don’t because they haven’t brought it up. And if the kids don’t bring it up, then it must not matter that much to them.” Additionally, the fact that none of them engaged in conversations about race until explicitly brought up by students or during story exchanges complicates the interpretation of their attitudes and beliefs as promising. This assumption of the children’s colorblindness proved to be problematic when race was made salient because it left the teacher candidates feeling inadequately prepared to address the issue in constructive ways. When Kim was confronted with her students’ acknowledgement of her Whiteness, she was so caught off guard that she simply moved on with the lesson even though she was aware of the dangers of ignoring race and taking a colorblind stance. April felt a similar inadequacy but with a different result when her Whiteness became a topic of discussion during a lesson on segregation. A: And they responded okay to it and I really thought it was a really, really cool opportunity because my students don’t really talk about my race or their race but since I started teaching this unit, it’s come up a lot more. . .So it’s been like a little bit scary because I , it brings up questions that I’m not always prepared for but it’s been really cool because its addressed the issue that yes, I’m a White teacher and all these students are African American and like, I don’t know, just bring up interesting questions. I don’t know, it’s been cool. 201 While April realized it was “cool” to have conversations with her students about race, this line of thinking is also problematic in that it places the onus on the non- dominant group to be the initiators and primary caretakers of the racial dialogue. Unintentionally relying on the students to bring up issues of race seemed to absolve the teacher candidates of the responsibility to acknowledge and teach about racial differences. However what is promising is that April confronted her anxieties about having discussions about race with her students. This tension between having some knowledge about issues of racial diversity, having a willingness to acknowledge and discuss these issues with students but not having the tools to do so suggests that teacher educators need to find more ways to make the bridge between the multicultural theory teacher candidates like April, Becca and Kim have been exposed to and the practice they struggle to develop more transparent. Summary & Conclusion In his work preparing White teachers to work effectively with students of color, Gary Howard (2001) notes: As White educators, we often suffer from the “dysconscious racism” that makes it difficult for us to see the full impact of our own social dominance (King, 1991). However, if we take seriously Comel West’s challenge to ‘speak truth to power,’ then we must face our feelings of inadequacy, discomfort and guilt. . .The goal for White educators is not to become ‘politically correct’ in the simplistic and cynical tone that term has come to engender, but rather to become ‘personally conscious’ in our role as concerned White educators committed to social healing and positive change (p. 6). 202 Although their experiences cannot be generalized, April, Becca and Kim’s stories of “promising but problematic” encounters with racial diversity in their classrooms demonstrate that teacher education has made positive strides in the efforts to reduce teacher candidates’ dysconsciously racist approaches to racial difference. However, there is still much to be done in order to foster the kind of personal consciousness advocated by Gary Howard. It is encouraging that there are more White middle class female teacher candidates entering teacher preparation programs with established identities that include the desire to meaningfully engage with these issues, but without deliberate and thoughtful intervention, they are at risk for the perpetuation of racism through a reinscription (and improved) color blindness validated by their experiences in the classroom. Opportunities like the story exchanges that occurred in this study, in which the researcher was able to highlight issues of race that teacher candidates did not readily see or acknowledge in written narratives, are the kinds of tools that could be utiliZed to help White middle class female teacher candidates make the transition from acknowledgement of racial diversity to action for equity in education. For example, in a story I wrote about Kim’s enactment of a designated identity as a veteran teacher, Kim was re-teaching the lesson on taste buds. She did not brush off the student’s acknowledgement of their racial difference. Kim returned the next day to begin a lesson on racial diversity by having the children work on a project in which they collect artifacts about their family histories to share. When asked what, if anything, that story helped her to see Kim replied, K: Well mainly the part where you took my story and you added that to the bottom and it just really shows that, it reminds me that no matter what, with a comment like that, there’s no need to brush it off. There’s no need to look at this issue and say, well that’s something that could be hard to 203 teach, so I’m not gonna do it. Because you don’t have to do it in complicated ways. The alternative view of Kim in the re-telling of the taste buds lesson is in alignment with Gary Howard’s recommendation for Whites interested in participating in the actualization of social justice and especially for White teachers in multiracial schools. He contends, ...Whites need to acknowledge and work through the negative historical implications of “Whiteness” and create for ourselves a transformed identity as White people committed to equity and social change. Our goal is to neither deify nor denigrate Whiteness, but to defuse its destructive power. To teach my White students and my own children that they are “not” White is to do them a disservice. To teach them that there are different ways of being White, and that they have a choice as White people to become champions of justice and social healing, is to provide them a positive direction for growth and to grant them the dignity of their own being (Howard, 2001, p. 112). When given a viable way to discuss race with her students and an opportunity to discuss her own discomfort with the topic, Kim felt more ready to face the situation in the future. Here the narrative constructed of her designated identity functioned to give Kim a different way to see herself as a White teacher. Just as Kim was able to see herself as more capable with assistance, teacher educators need to challenge the ways in which we view and subsequently assist White middle class female teacher candidates on their journeys to becoming effective urban educators. As teacher educators find more ways to help White middle class female teacher candidates narrate themselves as personally 204 conscious individuals working toward social justice in their classrooms, we move closer to providing equitable education for millions of poor students of color in urban schools. 205 CHAPTER TEN SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS “T here are no people that need all the benefits resulting from a well- directed education more than we do. The condition of our people, the wants of our children, and the welfare of our race demand the aid of every helping hand. It is a work of time, a labor of patience, to become an effective school teacher; and it should be a work of love in which they who engage should not abate heart or hope. ” Francis Ellen Watkins Harper Study Purpose Revisited In Chapter One, the goals of this project were established. Research on the lives of poor urban students of color has revealed a powerful connection between the quality of teachers and instruction in urban classrooms and the disparities in life outcomes these students face (Kozol, I991; Ladson-Billings, 2009; Rist, 1970,). Subsequently, the concerted efforts of teacher education programs to prepare a mostly White middle class female, culturally insular teaching pool for urban classrooms has had mixed results (Hollins & Guzman, 2005). In this dissertation, I have argued that dominant notions of identity within teacher education (especially and specifically the deficit perspective conceptualization of White middle class female teacher candidates as resistant to multicultural education and social justice pedagogies), has been a significant factor in its inability to successfully prepare urban teachers. In many ways, teacher educators have said that when urban teachers fail, they do so because they tend to come from culturally insular backgrounds from which they learned to be dysconsciously (King, 1991) and consciously racist and classist. It is then difficult and nearly impossible for teacher educators to change these teachers’ deficit thinking about their culturally, linguistically 206 and socioeconomically different students. By subscribing to notions of deterministic and static notions of identity, teacher education has essentially given itself a pass (Ladson- Billings, 2006) with respect to nurturing the deveIOpment of culturally competent urban teachers. The purpose of this study was to explore how narrative identity work could address and challenge some of the aforementioned dilemmas by serving as an investigative and generative tool within the field of urban teacher education. Specifically, through story writing, storytelling and story exchanging, the construction of urban teaching identities of four preservice teacher candidates was documented and analyzed. This study addressed the following questions: 1) How can preservice teachers and teacher educators collaboratively engage in 2) 3) narrative identity work (via written and oral storytelling) as a means of viewing and understanding how urban teacher candidates make meaning of their leaming- to-teach experiences? If possible, in what ways can the narrative construction of an urban teaching identity be a space in which to cultivate the cultural competencies, pedagogies and practices of effective urban educators? What can these stories and the story telling process reveal about how teacher education programs can assist and/or perhaps hinder preservice teachers’ development of the ways of thinking and pedagogies that can assist them in becoming effective urban educators? In Chapter Two, three bodies of literature were used to frame this study. First, research on effective educators of poor and African American children established a 207 baseline of pedagogies and practices toward which teacher educators have been charged to direct the development of teacher candidates seeking to survive and thrive in challenging yet promising urban schools. Next, the ways in which teacher educators have attempted to take up this charge were presented. A specific strand of urban teacher education (i.e. the treatment of identity) was engaged to highlight a gap between the intentions of urban teacher educators and the mixed results of attempts to engender in teacher candidates the dispositions, skills and knowledge of effective urban educators. Finally, research on narrative inquiry in teacher education was consulted to help bolster the rationale for the narrative aspect of this project that was proposed to address the gap in urban teacher education identity literature. Chapter Three took up the design and methodological considerations of the study in form and function. It started with a personal narrative describing how my experiences as an urban teacher and an emerging teacher educator and educational researcher contributed to the proposal and design of this study. My personal and professional use of narrative in my learning-to-teach experiences coupled with an interest in preparing urban teachers gave birth to the urban teacher narrative identity work encountered in this project. At its core, this project used narrative analyses and a case study approach to document the established (past), actual (present) and designated (future) urban teaching identities of four teacher candidates completing their student teaching internships in high poverty, predominantly African American elementary schools in Chicago, Illinois. Chapter Four then situated the project in terms of the socio-cultural, political and specific school contexts in which the study took place. Like Chapter Three and the study in general, this chapter utilized stories from multiple narrators to construct the established 208 and actual identities of the city of Chicago and the individual schools that served as study sites. As presentations of findings, Chapters Five through Eight were case studies of the four study participants’ narrative constructions of urban teaching identities, with Chapter Nine serving as a cross analysis of the study’s findings. The next section of this chapter will summarize these findings. This chapter will then discuss connections these findings have to extant literature, identify limitations of this work and provide implications for future practice and research within the field of urban teacher education. This chapter concludes with my own narrative identity work in regards to my future pedagogical and research agendas. Summary of Findings Individual cases. The individual case chapters captured the highly contextual and individualized nature of narrative identity construction. Each teacher candidate came to their urban student teaching internship with a unique set of dispositions, goals, tools and skills and subsequently left their internship with an equally different set of dispositions, skills, and knowledge about urban teaching. April. April’s Christian faith and early exposure to diversity facilitated her desire to teach in urban schools. With previous experience teaching in urban settings, April’s main goal during her internship was to hone her classroom management skills. As such, a major theme in the narration of her established, actual and designated identities highlighted her conceptualizations of the connections between teaching and classroom management where she often perceived her inability to manage the class well as taking away from instructional time and energy. Additionally, April struggled, to find a balance 209 between accepting responsibility for creating an engaging and cohesive classroom community and inspiring her students to take responsibility for their own behavior. Although she made attempts to share responsibility for creating an emotionally safe classroom community with students, ultimately April considered this to be her responsibility as a teacher and subsequently held herself accountable when she couldn’t control (and stop) students’ bickering or bullying. April’s narration of her established identities position her to be considered a unique urban teacher candidate as exhibited by the many atypical characteristics of her established identities (e. g. early exposure to culturally different individuals, speaks a language other than English, teaching experience with low-income African American children). Additionally, through the narrative exchange process, I was able to see how even those characteristics that she shares with the majority of urban teacher candidates (e. g. being White, middle class) were negotiated and constructed in complex ways that challenge a simplistic assessment of April as the typical urban teacher candidate. For example, it is tempting to interpret the impact of April’s race, socioeconomic status and Christian faith as resulting in the paternalistic and patronizing “Savior” or “Great White Hope” complex urban teacher educators find highly problematic and fairly common in urban teachers and teacher candidates. Conversely, the co-construction of April’s actual and designated identities throughout the narrative exchange process in the study revealed important ways April challenges the aforementioned characterization of her as an urban teacher candidate with these established identities. Becca. The dominant narrative theme in Becca’s construction of an urban teaching identity was her status as a student teacher. Much of the time, Becca’s position 210 as a student teacher seemed to limit her perception of her ability to teach in ways she preferred and were advocated by urban teacher education. For example, Becca came with an awareness of the importance of culturally relevant teaching but did not feel comfortable taking this approach because she felt intimidated by her cooperating teacher who planned all of Becca’s lessons. Like many other aspects of her teaching, including her classroom management style, Becca appeared to save these and other pedagogical ideas for when she had a classroom of her own in the future. Kim. Kim’s stories revealed the deep thoughtfulness with which she approached her teaching. Her careful planning allowed her to be flexible when circumstances in her classroom required her to adjust lesson plans and activities. For example, when Kim’s cooperating teacher deviated from agreed upon plans, she was able to quickly assess the situation and modify her lesson to reach her intended curricular and instructional goals. Her ability to reflect upon her practice and articulate her thinking illustrated her openness to the possibilities for leaming-to-teach in. every situation she encountered in her classroom. Abbey. In many ways, Abbey’s narrative construction of an urban teaching identity paralleled the trends teacher education research has documented regarding the preparation of teacher candidates for urban and diverse schools. Her strong adherence to her established identity as middle class was the primary lens through which Abbey engaged and judged the behavior and motivations of her poor students of color and their parents. When her students did not pay attention in class and were disruptive, she blamed them instead of considering how her teaching might have contributed to their lack of engagement. When her students did not return homework, she judged them and their 211 parents as not valuing education. While these deficit perspectives have been documented as those that are most detrimental for the academic well being of poor and urban students of color, what is less often documented and discussed is how contextual factors and teacher education contribute to the reinforcement of this perspective in a so-called typical urban teacher candidate like Abbey. As three common urban teacher candidate narratives (i.e. deficit thinking about students and parents, low expectations, and lack of support from teacher education) were examined from a lens focusing on contextual factors, Abbey’s stories revealed an alternative truth about the role and failure of her teacher education in preparing her for urban teaching. Cross Case Analysis. Although narrative identity construction was conceptualized in this study as a highly individual and contextual phenomenon, comparisons between participants’ stories unearthed trends that provide insight on the student teaching experience in general and a salient aspect of urban teacher preparation, namely the ways in which teacher candidates engage (and avoid) issues of race. Student Teaching. Teacher candidates’ school contexts were similar demographically, but their respective classrooms presented distinctive sets of circumstances that impacted the ways participants made sense of their teaching and their leaming-to-teach experiences. Three sub-stories were revealed: Role Switching, Relationships with Cooperating Teachers and Limited Responsibility as Explanation and Escape. Role Switching describes the ways in which the participants shifted back and forth between being a “student teacher” when they were participant observers in their classrooms and being the “real teacher” when lead teaching. Becca and April reported having difficulty managing students’ behavior when lead teaching because students had 212 become accustomed to the individual attention they received from participants when they were participant observers. Abbey’s students consistently challenged her authority as the teacher of record, but especially so when the cooperating teacher was not in the classroom. Within “Relationships with Cooperating Teachers,” all participants rated their relationships with student teaching mentors as “good,” despite a clear range in the supports, conversations about practice and mentoring that occurred. However, these discrepancies did not seem to prevent participants’ from learning valuable lessons about teaching. Whether it was a pedagogical stance they wanted to emulate or one they decided not to incorporate into their designated identities, study participants seemed to appreciate and respect the opportunity to learn to teach in someone else’s classroom. The sub—story of “Limited Responsibility as Explanation and Escape” describes the ways in which participants viewed the inherent and intentional limitations that structure the student teaching experience. While Kim and Becca used the gradual assumption of teaching responsibility as the reason why they were unable to teaching in ways they preferred, Abbey appreciated how not having firll teaching responsibility gave her the space to analyze her learning to teach experiences. White Middle Class Female Teacher Candidates. The main purpose of this section of the cross-case analysis was to highlight how April, Becca and Kim’s cases challenge the characterization of White middle class female teacher candidates as resistant to engaging with issues of diversity. While participants did not readily address issues of race in written narratives, when pointed out in interviews and story exchanges, they engaged in conversations that revealed they were not unconscious and/or as resistant 213 to the ways in which race impacted their teaching as would be predicted by research. When describing their academic preparation for issues of race and diversity, study participants reported engaging in a range of experiences from a sociology course on race and ethnicity (Becca) to summer teaching fellowships in predominantly African American schools (April). While these experiences seemed to have given some participants a new perspective on race they didn’t have prior to their undergraduate preparation, because these experiences were not an integrated part of their teacher education, participants reported being generally underprepared for their urban student teaching internships. This section also took up participant’s analyses of interactions with their African American students. Participants seemed to initially anticipate their race would be a significant factor in the ways their students would perceive and/or respond to them. When students did not explicitly recognize their Whiteness, participants interpreted this as an indicator that their race did not matter to students, nor was it something that they, as teachers, had to discuss. April and Kim were confronted by students’ explicit recognition of their Whiteness. April faced her anxiety and engaged her students in a conversation about race as it related to the lesson on segregation and social justice she was leading. Kim dismissed her student’s comment initially, citing the fact that she was running out of time when the comment was made as the reason she did not address the comment immediately. However, Kim commented later that in addition to being caught off guard, she wasn’t sure how to go about engaging her young students in a discussion about race. Viewing participants’ engagement with issues of race as “promising but problematic” highlighted one way the teacher candidates in this study confirm and 214 simultaneously challenge the way teacher education has characterized White middle class female teacher candidates. In doing so, this section called upon teacher educators to challenge their own deficit perspective of teacher candidates in order better prepare these individuals for their work in urban schools. Discussion & Implications In this section, I will address the ways in which findings of this study speak to the three bodies of literature that framed this study. Based upon these connections with existing literature, I will then discuss what insights the findings of this narrative inquiry project can bring to the study and pedagogy of urban teacher education. Stars and Dreamkeepers. In this study, star teachers (Haberman, 1995) and dreamkeepers (Ladson—Billings, 2009) were presented as the designated identity (Sfard & Prusak, 2005) toward which urban teacher candidates were presumed to progress. As models of effective urban teachers, stars and dreamkeepers are distinguishable by the ways in which they think about themselves, their students and the communities in which they actively and consciously work toward social justice. These individuals are self- aware in terms of their cultural and professional identities. They are knowledgeable about their students’ cultural lives and make concerted efforts to teach in culturally relevant and responsive ways (Gay, 2003; Ladson—Billings, 2009). They consistently maintain high expectations for students’ success (Winfield, 1986). Haberman (1995) and Ladson-Billings (2009) juxtapose stars and dreamkeepers with “quitters/failures” and “assimilationists,” respectively. A common trait amongst these kinds of teachers is their deficit perspective of urban and minority students, families and communities. These teachers blame urban and minority people for the socially unjust 215 conditions with which they live and learn. Haberman (1995) asserts that these teachers operate from the assumption that poor children of color are “abnormal” and are in need of remediation in order to fit into the status quo conception of society they accept as normal. Similarly, Ladson-Billings(2009) presents assimilationist teachers as those who disregard and often denigrate students’ culture and seek to assist students to fit into a society they feel is justifiably stratified. As beginning teachers, the participants in this study did not demonstrate many of the dispositions, skills and knowledge of star teachers and dreamkeepers. However, as designated identities, star teaching and dreamkeeping could not be realistically expected to be perfectly illustrated by those at the very beginning of their teaching careers. On the other hand, participants’ stories did display ways of thinking and behaving that indicate both promise and potential peril for their development as stars and dreamkeepers. April was the teacher candidate with the most identifiable social justice agenda as her Christian faith influenced her decision to work with poor urban children. While Kim and Becca both demonstrated a commitment to urban teaching, they did not make explicit references to doing so as a means of social justice in the way that April did. Abbey’s commitment to social justice and/or urban teaching was not clear. April’s and Kim’s backgrounds included exposure to cultural diversity positioning them most favorably in terms of coming to their urban student teaching internships with the predispositions of openness and willingness to engage with people culturally different from themselves. As such, their stories tended to reveal a tremendous sense of responsibility to find ways they could become better teachers for their students. Both were highly concerned about making their classrooms safe and engaging places for 216 their students to meet the high expectations for success they both had. In fact, April’s sense of responsibility was so great that she often struggled with how to inspire her students to become partners in maintaining a cohesive classroom community. Although Abbey’s and Becca’s backgrounds were similar, they seemed to have different impacts on the ways they approached their work as future urban educators. Abbey’s strong reliance on her middle class schooling values often prevented her from being able to refrain from negatively judging her students and parents. When students did not respond positively to her perception of “out of the box” activities or when students did not return homework, she surmised that they (and their families) did not value education. When students did not perform well on assessments, she lowered her expectations for their academic progress. Conversely, Becca recognized the impact of her middle class values on her schooling beliefs but did not use them to denigrate different ways of schooling. This was especially evident in the way she thought about the appropriate response to student behavior. For example, when she thought her discipline style was called into question by the African American staff at her school, she hypothesized that their differences in opinion about how to handle children was due to cultural differences. She even noted that her African American students were more compliant when she adopted some of these interactional styles and guessed it was because they were accustomed to that style at home. And though she indicated she was still committed to using more middle class less authoritarian interactional and classroom management styles, it is her awareness of these differences without negative judgment that it important to note as cultural awareness about self and others is a hallmark of stars and dreamkeepers. 217 Experiences with culturally relevant teaching. April was the only participant to teach an explicitly culturally relevant lesson during the study. Her lesson on segregation utilizing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech sparked questions about her Whiteness that she said she was not prepared to handle initially. However, with her cooperating teacher’s support and modeling of culturally relevant teaching, she was pleasantly surprised by how manageable and powerful her conversations were with her second grade students. Other participants either missed opportunities to engage in culturally relevant teaching (Becca) or did not attempt to do so at all (Kim and Abbey). For example, in one of her written stories, Becca indicated that she desired and had ideas about how to take a culturally relevant approach to her lesson on a famous Afiican American but she didn’t think her cooperating teacher would approve. Current Urban Teacher Education Eflorts: Problematic Conceptualization of Identity as Pedagogical Gap. The second body of literature that framed this study focused on the ways in which colleges of education have attempted to cultivate within a mostly White middle class female teacher candidate pool the dispositions, skills and knowledge of stars and dreamkeepers. Much of this work has been characterized by an infusion of multicultural educational perspectives into preservice coursework and the use of urban schools for field experiences. Varying degrees of success and failure of these efforts have been documented (Cockrell et al, 1999; Obidah, 2000). Multicultural and urban teacher education courses and field work tend to exhibit positive short term gains in engaging firture teachers in issues of diversity. However, a strong contingency of teacher educators report resistance on the part of teacher candidates to critically engage in 218 issues of diversity, while teacher candidates consistently report feeling inadequately prepared to teach urban and/or diverse student populations. More specifically, I argued that current efforts to prepare teacher candidates for urban and diverse learners have not been as successful as hoped because these courses and field experiences operate from psychologically-based conceptions of identity that are rigid and deterministic. When teacher candidates are resistant to urban teacher education and multicultural education theory (e. g. white privilege, dysconscious racism, culturally relevant pedagogy, etc), it is implied that their allegiance to their cultural backgrounds (i.e. their established identities) is so strong it sharply reduces their ability to think and act in socially just ways that promote learning for their future urban and/or divers students. The findings of this study support and challenge research that documents the presumed effects of the predispositions of teacher candidates preparing to teach in urban and diverse schools. Becca and Abbey came from culturally insular backgrounds with little to no contact with those culturally different from themselves, however all participants in this study were initially interested in teaching in settings that were different from their communities of origin as indicated in their choice of an urban placement for their student teaching internship. And although a direct causal connection cannot be made between these dispositions and the differential ways in which they seemed to impact participants’ urban teaching experiences in this study, Becca’s example suggests teacher candidates with culturally insular backgrounds can and do make commitments to urban teaching that are not rooted in the deficit perspective that would prevent them from developing into star teachers and dreamkeepers. And even though 219 Kim and April came to their teacher education with more exposure to cultural diversity, they still grappled with learning how to teach in predominantly African American urban schools. Similar to the findings of Agee (2005), participants in this dissertation study support the notion that teacher candidates do come with the desire to negotiate their teaching identities in ways that will make them effective urban educators. More research is needed to investigate the ways in which teacher education can support teacher candidates in ways that help them develop into the kinds of teachers we know are best for urban and minority students. Narrative in Teacher Education & Teacher Education Research. The literature on narrative in teacher education was used to build a rationale for the method through which the phenomenon of urban teacher preparation was conceptualized and analyzed in this study. Highlighting how narrative has been utilized as both phenomenon and method of teacher education pedagogy and inquiry, this body of work was positioned to challenge the deterministic conceptualization of identity within the urban teacher education literature. Together they make a case for the potential for narrative identity work as a way to help teacher candidates process their established and actual identities and learning to teach experiences while consciously constructing their designated identities in ways that align well with the documented dispositions, skills and knowledge of effective urban educators. Through “collaborative accounts” (Thomas, 1995, p. 8), this study contended that teacher candidates and myself as a teacher educator, constructed their identities as emerging urban educators through writing stories, exchanging stories and discussing their learning to teach experiences in urban classrooms. Although this conceptualization of 220 .“. identity construction foregrounds the individual, its dialogic approach to identity construction also gives contextual factors significance with respect to the interpretation of the identities constructed. Considering identity construction in this way, as the analysis and negotiation of established, actual and designated identities, challenges static notions of identity that restrict individuals’ ability to change “who” they are in response to their environments. The “work” of narrative identity construction allows an individual to negotiate how much of their established identities affect their actual identities, as well as negotiating how much of their established and actual identities affect their designated identities. For example, a major contention of this study has been that, contrary to dominant paradigms within urban teacher education, having an established identity as a White middle class person does (and should not) preclude that individual from negotiating an actual identity that includes learning the ways of thinking and being that will enable them to enact a designated identity as a successfirl urban teacher in the future. Additionally, the concept of narrative identity work proposed and encountered in this study served as an important mediator of participants’ urban student teaching experience. As Thomas (1995) asserts, “Teacher narratives are vehicles for bringing out aspects of their accumulated experiential knowledge.” (p. 13). Through the writing and sharing of stories about practice, teacher candidates were given an opportunity to think and reflect upon their practice in a way that was both personal and practical. They were free to choose, within the observations, which aspects of their teaching upon which they wanted to reflect. In story exchanges, they were then given the opportunity to further explain and firrther reflect upon the ways they were constructing their actual identities as 221 urban teacher candidates. When I asked participants what, if any benefit they received from participating in these narrative exchanges, they all responded similarly to Abbey. A: Urn, it’s really helpful to voice my opinions because I would have never, I mean I always think them, but then they get put away, but it’s nice to actually have someone listen and respond to what you are going through. Loughran (2006) advocates that “the rhetoric of the need to ‘listen to students’ voices’ needs to be matched by real world actions of doing just that.” (p. 136). The narrative exchange process in this dissertation study foregrounded teacher candidates’ voices as they were considered the primary narrators of the teaching identities they constructed. However, as discussed in the next section, my role as a collaborating narrator proved to be useful in a different way. The Role of Second Person Identifying Stories. When I asked participants how the study’s narrative identity work was different from interactions with cooperating teachers and university field instructors, they all said they appreciated the lack of judgment within the first two second person identifying stories I wrote about each of them. A: Well, especially at the beginning they were really objective. . .You weren’t just talking about me, you wrote about the students and it seemed to give more like a feel of the whole classroom, not just what I was doing I guess. While their school-based and university teacher educators seemed to focus on evaluating their individual successes and failures, the second person identifying stories I wrote appeared to widen the lens with which teacher candidates could gain perspective on what was going on in their classrooms. Second person identifying stories, coupled with story exchanges also acted as prisms that shined a complicating light on situations and urban 222 teacher education topics that the teacher candidates did not readily see like race. They also provided an opportunity to help teacher candidates reflect upon their use (or not) of culturally relevant teaching, an equally important aspect of the learning to be urban teachers. This suggests that teacher candidates want and/or need more than evaluative interactions with teacher educators. They need and desire opportunities to make connections between what they are doing as individuals and the impact this has on broader learning contexts. Narrative identity construction as urban teacher education research. Thomas (1995) recalled that during the 19805, narrative within teacher research gained importance as stories were beginning to be considered, “devices for communicating, interpreting and giving meaning to our experiences” (p. 3). As such, narrative came to be a more widely accepted form of inquiry as it provided a powerful window into the minds of teachers. The findings of this study support this line of research in that teacher candidates’ thinking was made viewable within stories and conversations about stories that served as mediators of experience. As units of analysis, the stories written and exchanged were then interpreted as cases of how participants specifically negotiated their established, actual and designated urban teaching identities. For example, Becca’s narration of her actual identity as a teacher candidate with an intimidating CT clarified her motivations to adopt culturally relevant teaching within her designated identity. Additionally, the narrative identity work proposed and conducted during this dissertation study was believed to reveal areas for potential intervention within teacher candidates’ development of the skills, dispositions and knowledge of effective urban educators. For example, looking at Abbey’s narration of her established identities as a 223 middle class learner helped me to understand why she so adamantly and consistently judged her students negatively within her actual identity as a student teacher struggling in an urban classroom. And although I was not able to change Abbey’s mind when challenging her to consider alternative ways to interpret her experiences, her stories still gave me insight on how urban teacher education needs intervention with respect to preparing teachers like her for urban classrooms. In providing a window into the minds of teacher candidates, narrative inquiry demonstrates tremendous pedagogical promise within urban teacher education. With dysconsiously racist and/or culturally insular thinking as major hinderances for many urban teacher candidates, the utility of narrative identity work to make these thoughts visible and thus illuminated as spaces for intervention is certainly significant. Storytelling could be utilized early and throughout an urban teacher education program to identify those dispositional factors that are potentially problematic and build upon the ones that facilitate the desired designated identity. Other Implications While the narrative identity work conceptualized in this study has been contextualized within and for urban environments, this study’s findings also have implications for teacher education in general, especially with respect to student teaching. If student teaching is to be teacher education like Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann (1987) suggest it can be, the narratives within this dissertation study suggest the student teaching experience needs more fine tuning. Teacher candidates need more ways to negotiate the many fine lines they walk (in terms of role, respect & authority) to maximize their learning-to-teach. The stories of the teacher candidates in this study also 224 suggest that some (or more) explicit dialogue with K-12 students about what a “student” teacher is and does and what that means in terms of expectations for respect and authority could be extremely useful. Additionally, student teachers are still experiencing a wide enough range of mentoring experiences to warrant more consistent training for cooperating teachers that are aligned with a program’s objectives for the internship year. Limitations Although this study utilized a qualitative methodology that did not presume generalizability, the small number of participants makes the study’s ability to bolster any claims about the utility of narrative identity work to urban teacher education more difficult to argue. More studies, with more participants across a wider variety of urban teacher education contexts would provide a richer base from which to evaluate the merits of narrative identity work within the field. Similarly, the four participants in this study were only observed during the latter half of their student teaching internships. Although this time was selected to avoid the possibility of coercion (I was their course instructor during the first half their internships), studies across the entire student teaching internship and even the entire teacher preparation career would be beneficial to understanding the ways in which teacher educators can better support the development of future urban educators. This is especially relevant as Hollins & Guzman (2005) found that many studies investigating the effects of urban and multicultural teacher education (e. g. prejudice reduction) report only short-term positive influence on teacher candidates’ attitudes and beliefs and that it was difficult to assess how sustainable the influence remained over time. As such, the impact of this particular study cannot be determined at this time. F ollow-up interviews, including more narrative exchange sessions would be 225 necessary to determine how and if the identity work that occurred during this study had a lasting (or any) impact on participants’ development of the skills, dispositions and knowledge of effective urban educators. It is also important to note that the teacher candidates sampled in this study were not representative of national trends of urban teacher candidates in important ways. For example, April and Kim had significantly more exposure to diversity than is normally documented in urban teacher candidates. This does not and should not mean that important lessons cannot be gleaned from these kinds of teacher candidates. It does however alter their ability to speak on behalf of those who are identified as the most problematic in regards to becoming effective urban teachers. With urban teaching identities being conceptualized as the narration and negotiating of established, actual and designated identities, via the exchange of 1St person and 2"d person identifying stories, this particular narrative of inquiry is incomplete as important institutional narrators are missing. Due to scheduling conflicts, I was only able to interview one Cooperating Teacher face-to—face, while one other submitted an electronic response to open ended questions. I was also only able to collect electronic responses to open ended questions from two participants’ field instructors. All gave rave reviews for their respective interns. I would have liked to have probed about specific incidents that I observed in the classroom that would shed light on the relationship between the CTs and Field instructors, including their understanding of their roles as professional mentors and university supervisors. Additionally, other 2nd and 3rd person stories are missing (e.g. stories from students, principals, and other school staff). Future Research Agenda 226 In this dissertation, I lay the groundwork to begin a research agenda that utilizes narrative inquiry to address a key dilemma in urban teacher education. In the firture I would like to address the aforementioned limitations with longitudinal work across a variety of urban teacher education programs thus providing a more robust assessment of the utility of narrative identity work to engender the characteristics of effective urban educators as the findings of this study could not support any such claims. I would also like to explore the potential for narrative identity work within professional development settings as the high turnover rate for urban teachers indicates it is just as important to sustain urban teaching identity development as it is to initiate it. I believe first-year and early career teachers would find narrative identity work to be a tremendously supportive way to analyze and refine their practice, giving them tools to help them to thrive within challenging yet promising urban schools. Specifically, I would like to refine the design and implementation of the narrative identity work process utilized within my dissertation study to place more emphasis on the educative aspect of the process. For example, when analyzing participants’ oral and written narratives, I found teacher candidates were not likely to recognize within their own experiences, key issues in urban teaching (e.g. race, class, gender) unless I brought these issues to the participants’ attention during a story exchange session. Providing more focused writing prompts for study participants in addition to making a more concerted effort to engage in critical discussions during story exchanges will help to make the narrative identity work richer in terms of engendering the dispositions, skills and knowledge of effective urban teaching. 227 CONCLUSION “...teachers and tutor will want to move from considered reflections to beliefs that the foundation for their mutual professional development is trustworthy. That is, to move from writing to reflection to accepting the possibility of a personal professional response which has its focus the classroom and then widens out beyond the school to a consideration of the moral purposes of education - the imagined future. ” (Thomas, 1995, p. 20) In this dissertation, narrative defined identity work has been offered as an investigative and generative tool for urban teacher education. Despite the disciplinary dilemmas and specific limitations and questions left unanswered within this particular narrative of inquiry, the teacher candidates’ stories encountered here powerfully demonstrate storytelling’s tremendous potential for future (and current) urban educators to mediate their learning to teach and teaching experiences in ways that will enhance their professional (and personal) development. As such, this dissertation concludes with a story of an imagined future for urban teacher candidates, myself as an urban teacher educator and the work in which I hope to engage with them. The Urban Teacher Narrative Identity Project has given me the opportunity to study and support the development of urban teachers across their careers for about 10 years now. And as I ’ve been listening to urban teachers ’ stories of struggle and triumph, I ’m realizing just how true the old adage is, “T he more things change, the more they stay the same. ” I don ’t say that pejoratively, I just mean that just as I 've seen great progress made in the ways the field has approached and accomplished the training of teachers for urban schools, there are things about this work that haven ’t changed and perhaps won ’t. It is certainly promising that star teachers and dreamkeepers are less and less being viewed as anomalies but the expected outcome of aggressive recruitment, sound preparation and more comprehensive support from their formal teacher preparation. Also, despite continued pressure to “teach to the test ” and other consequences of our nation 's love affair with high stakes accountability measures and market models of education, teacher education is moving away fi'om the methods fetish and is moving 228 toward pedagogies and philos0phies that highlight how effective urban teachers (do and should) think as the locus of learning to teach. I ’m a little leery about my next appointment. Things have not been going well with one of the members of one of my first year teachers ’ group. It was easy to see during our last whole group meeting that some of the other members are growing more and more impatient with how Dana is displaying a lack of accountability for the troubles she ’3 having in her classroom. I must admit, that I am too, but like the hope I have for her in regards to the students she has problematized, I work hard to see the bigger picture and continue to believe that Dana can succeed as urban teacher. Much like the teachers and teacher candidates I encountered during my graduate studies, Dana is a typical teacher candidate. She is White and comes fi'om a middle class background. Prior to this year, Dana did not have any exposure to urban and/or minority students or communities. She recently moved to the city as her husband began a doctoral program in engineering. Her lack of experience with urban students is one reason why her principal strongly suggested she join our group. Before we meet, I re-read the email Dana sent to request our meeting. She wrote, “I don ’t think this story thing is working for me. The people in the group just don ’t understand my situation. They all have great kids who love them and that want to learn. Plus in that last story you wrote about my math lesson, you made me sound like a monster, like it was me picking on that kid instead of the truth which is that kid needs some Ritalin or something. You aren ’t there every day when he ’s tormenting me. ” I decide to begin the conversation by leveling with Dana. “It wasn 't my intention to make you look like a monster Dana but that dialogue in the story I wrote, it came from transcripts, from the audio recording. I didn ’t make that up. That '5 what you said. ” “Well, not just the dialogue, I mean, I don ’t know. What am I supposed to do when they ’re all disrespectful like that? What am I supposed to say to make them respect me? ” I can see that like the teacher candidates I work with on campus, Dana wants me to give her a trick or technique to magically charm her kids into compliance. But I know better. I know that much of Dana ’s problem lies within the way Dana thinks about her kids. She doesn ’1 see that but I’m hoping sharing my experience as a new teacher will help her to see that the change she is looking for must begin within herself 229 “I 'm going to tell you a story Dana. It ’s about my first year teaching. Unlike you, I didn ’t go to college to learn to become a teacher. I took a sub job at a small private preschool owned by one of my personal mentors in my hometown after I didn’t have any luck finding a job after graduation. I had actually applied to an alternative teaching certification program and was turned down. Anyway, I take this sub job and ended up staying at the school to become a teaching assistant in my mentor 's room. A couple of months into the school year, one of the teachers quit. Since I had a bachelor ’s degree and some experience, I was offered the job. In her infinite wisdom and I assume with good intentions, the teacher that was leaving warned me about four students who would surely give me the same hell they had given her. To be honest, at first I bought into their reputations, and so I was determined to get a hold on this behavior situation quickly. Instead of sitting at a traditional desk, I decided to sit at one of the children ’s tables and assigned all four of the ‘bad’ kids to my table. After a couple of weeks, I started to see how my opinion of them mattered, A LOT! I started to see that when I expected them to behave well, they did, for the most part. And when I didn ’t, they fulfilled that prophecy as well. I also got to see how smart these kids were. So I decided that sitting so close to me wasn ’t going to be about control anymore, it was going to be about me being close to my students and being interested in them as individuals. I committed myself to finding ways to keep these kids so interested and engaged in their learning that they wouldn ’t have a good reason (from within the classroom) to act out. I couldn ’t control what happened when they left my room, but I could make sure I did everything possible to get them to buy into their education. That worked for us, most days. Of course we had bad days. I mean, they were four years old and learning the fundamentals of literacy and numeracy. That’s pretty life changing at four years old, but I had every expectation that they could do well and all four of them did. ” Dana didn ’t seem at all persuaded by my story. “Okay, so you 're saying that I ’m trying too hard to control them, that ’s why they don ’t respect me? ” “I ’m saying that my problem was that I didn 't think very highly of my students at first and when I expected them to behave like nutcases, they did. But when I changed my mind about them, they changed their mind about me and our work together. What I want for you is to see that how and what you think about your kids matters and it aflects the way you teach them. I want you to be able to see your kids as people with complex lives 1 inside and outside of your classroom, not merely as trouble makers out to get you. ’ 230 “Well, I do get that they come from broken homes and... ” I interrupt Dana, “See that’s what I ’m talking about Dana, you just called your students’ 9 homes ‘broken. ’ That tells me that you think something is wrong with their homes. ’ “Well... ” “Well why are you saying that? ” “ Well, the parents aren ’t married and they work all the time and they don ’t send notes back home or make sure their kids do their homework because they just don ’t value education. I mean, like my folks worked a lot too but they always made sure I did my 1 homework and wouldn ’t dare let me speak to my teachers the ways these kids talk to me. ’ “Okay, Dana. I ’m going to level with you. First of all, do you know for a fact that all of your students parents ’ aren ’t married? But even before we get there, so you 're saying that married couples are the only people who can have a fimctional family? Do you see how that ’s a negative judgment of people who don 't have families that look like yours? ” “Well I didn 't mean it like that. ” “And you have a right to your opinion, but think about it this way... What If being you, being from a two parent home was not the standard? What if you were a single parent? Would you want your child’s teacher to treat them as if they were less capable than a student who lived in a two parent home? ” “Well no, but...I don 't know. I just don ’t understand why these people don 't invest time in their children. ” “You ’re assuming again Dana. How do you know that? How do you even know you 're kids come from single parent homes? ” 9 “Well I guess I don ’t really know. ’ “And even if they do come fiom single parent homes? What are you saying about their capability to learn and succeed? I ’mfi'om a single parent home. And my mother valued education highly. She made sure I did my homework. She returned notes. And why do you assume that because your students ’ parents aren 't doing school and parenting like you experienced it, that they aren ’t investing in their children? ” 231 Dana sighs in exasperation. Sensing my own exasperation, 1 take a deep breath and try to speak calmly, “Look Dana, I realize you have a lot going on in your situation. You do have your hands full. In my opinion, your class is too large and your district ’s curriculum is extremely rigid. But I still believe you have more control over what goes on in your classroom than you think. And if I can be completely honest, one of your biggest problems is the way you think about your kids. All you see is what you think is wrong with them. And it doesn 't look like you ’ve tried to build any kind of community or establish any kind of trusting relationships with them. How do they know that you even care about them? ” “Well I show up every day don 't I? ” “Yes, you do. But what do you do besides just show up physically? What do you do or say that shows your students that you care? How do you show them that you are interested in their success as learners?” "Well I try to come up with all of these fun activities, but they don ’t want to do them. T hey just don ’t want to learn. ’ “Okay, have you ever asked yourself if maybe your idea of fun is not the same as theirs? ” “When I was a kid... ” “Dana, do you realize that you keep referring to your own experiences as if that is the only, quote unquote, right way to have lived? ” "But that '3 what I know. ” “I understand that but what I ’m saying is that everyone isn ’t like you. And that you seem to devalue your students because they aren’t like you. ’ 9 “I don ’t mean to. I really do want to believe that they can all succeed. But their behavior 9 is so outrageous. ’ “What I want you to consider is that maybe their behavior is a reaction to you. Maybe they act out because they don 't think you care. Maybe they act out because it makes them feel powerful. Maybe they act out because you all are cramped in that tiny overheated classroom. Maybe they act out because they are bored and need more academically rigorous work. My point is there are multiple ways to look at this situation but the one 232 that is least helpful to you and your kids is the one that operates from the premise that your kids are fundamentally bad or bad just because they don ’t come families that don 't look or work like yours. ” 9 “Maybe I ’m just not cut out for this. ’ “Well, that 's something you need to figure out. You really need to ask yourself why you are doing this. And you need to be honest about what and how you think about your students because whether we recognize it or not, what we believe manifests itself if our actions. ” ”Well do you think I ’m cut out for this? " “I think if you want to be, you can learn to be. But it 's going to take a lot of soul searching and un-learning of some ways of thinking that you ’ve had your entire life. If you ’re willing to do the work, I think you can be a great urban teacher. So let me ask you, do you want to do this? ” “I don’t know anymore. I thought it was a good idea because I wanted to help out, but I was not prepared to do this. Not one bit! " I told Dana that I had an idea I wanted her to try. Even though I didn ’t want her to think that there was a magic list of things to do for her to become a star teacher or a dreamkeeper overnight, I felt obligated to give her some practical advice. I asked Dana to work on building relationships with her students. I suggested she pick one student, an especially diflicult one and try to become their friend. I reiterated my first year teaching experience with the Fantastic Four, encouraging Dana to remember how it was my thinking and expectations that was the main ingredient to our success. Dana did not leave our conversation convinced that she was cut out for urban teaching. In fact, she looked more tense and perplexed than when she arrived. However, when she showed up at the next group meeting and shared a story about a short but positive conversation she had with her focal student, I knew that something had changed. Dana was still doubtful but a little more open. And it is that opening that I have seen time and time again that ignites a passionate fire in individuals I have had the privilege of witnessing become great teachers for urban kids. 233 1. APPENDIX A Initial Interview Questions Would you like to use a pseudonym for the study? Identity 1. How do you describe and/or define “identity”? In other words, how do you think people become who they are? Do you think identities are given, socially constructed, personally chosen, etc. . .? If you could describe yourself in 5 words, which 5 adjectives and/or nouns best describe who you are? a. Which of these are most important to you? Which 5 adjectives and/or nouns would your friends use to describe who you are? Which 5 adjectives and/or nouns would your family use to describe who you are? Which 5 adjectives and/or nouns would your students use to describe you as a teacher? In this study, I am defining identity as the stories we tell about ourselves. And by story, I mean the telling or re-telling of anything that has ever happened, is happening or will happen. So, I’m going to ask you to tell me some stories about how you became who you are today. -Can you tell me something you remember happening or doing your childhood that you think had a profound impact on who you are now? (maybe a trip, or a family or cultural tradition) -Can you tell me something you remember happening or doing in high school that you think had a profound impact on who you are now? (activities you were in, your success as a student) —Can you tell me something you remember happening or doing in college that you think had a profound impact on who you are now? Demographic Stuff (if not implicated in stories above) a. Where are you from? How did this shape who you are? b. How did your family shape who you are? Your parents, siblings, extended family? c. How would you describe your family’s socio-economic status? 1. Were you aware of this as you were growing up? ii. How did you know? (I. What are you earliest memories of school? How would you describe yourself as a student? 234 7. 8. 9. 10. 6. Please share some of your significant memories of elementary school, middle school, high school, and college. How do you identify racially and/or ethnically? When did you first become aware of yourself as a racial being? What is your gender? How old are you? If you don’t mind sharing, how would you characterize your socio-economic status growing up? Would you say this has changed over the course of your life? Teaching Aspirations, Preparation and Experience 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. I6. 17. 18. Why/How did you come to choose teaching as a career? a. Was there any person and/or any experience in particular that influenced your decision to teach? Why did you choose to do your teaching internship in Chicago? Do you intend to teach in an urban area after your internship? Why or why not? How well do you think your undergraduate education has prepared you for your teaching internship? How well do you think your undergraduate education has prepared you for teaching in an urban area? 3. Were there any specific aspects (courses, field experiences, degree requirements) of your teacher preparation that have especially prepared you for this urban teaching experience? Have you had any other urban teaching experiences outside of your formal teacher preparation? a. If so, please describe those experiences. Have you ever lived in an urban environment before? a. If so, please describe that experience. Have you had any prior teaching experience with students are culturally and/or socio-economically different from you? 3. Have you had any prior teaching experience with African American children?* i. If so, please describe that experience. Attitudes, Beliefs and Thoughts about Teaching and Learning in Urban School Settings - 19. 20. How would you characterize a good teacher? Do you think there are any differences between an urban teacher and a teacher in any other school setting? If so, what are those differences? 235 21. What do you bring to the table that you think will make you a good urban teacher? (What personal and/or professional skills, knowledge, attitudes and/or beliefs do you think you have now that will help you to be a successful teacher in an urban school setting? ) 22. What do you think you still need to learn to be good urban teacher? (What personal and/or professional skills, knowledge, attitudes and/or beliefs do you think you will need to acquire in order to be an effective teacher in an urban school setting? ) 23. What do you think is the most significant challenge that urban students face? a. What do you think is the most significant challenge that urban teachers face? b. What do you think is the most significant challenge that urban schools face? ' 24. What do you think is the most significant strength of urban students? a. What do you think is the most significant strength of urban teachers? b. What do you think is the most significant strength of urban schools? 25. What effect do you think race has on teaching and learning? a. What effect do you think race has had on your personal teaching and learning? b. Can you give a specific example? c. What effect do you think race has on teaching and learning in urban school settings? 26. What effect do you think gender has on teaching and learning? a. What effect has gender had on your personal teaching and learning? b. Can you give a specific example? c. What effect do you think gender has on teaching and learning in urban school settings? 27. What effect do you think socio-economic background has on teaching and learning? a. What effect has your own socio-economic background had on your personal teaching and learning? b. Can you give a specific example? c. What effect do you think socio-economic status has on teaching and learning in urban school settings? Expectations and Thoughts about Internship Experience 28. What did you hope to gain from your teaching internship in Chicago? 29. Did you have any anxieties about your internship experience? a. What challenges did you anticipate? b. Did you have any concerns about living and/or working in Chicago? 236 c. Do you have any anxieties about leading teaching? Study Participation 30. What do you hope to gain from participating in this study? 31. Do you have any anxieties about participating in this study? a. What challenges are you anticipating? 32. Do you have any questions about participating in this study? 237 9:59.“? APPENDIX B Narrative Exchange Questions Questions about participants’ Observation Day Stories Ask “Track Changes” questions about individual stories. How did writing your story help you to reflect on your teaching? Questions about ML story What were your initial impressions about the story I wrote about you? Do you think I captured the situation accurately? Did I omit anything significant? If so, what? Did I add anything significant that you didn’t see or hadn’t considered? How, if at all, did my story help you to see your teaching in a new or different way? How is the story format different from conversations about your teaching that you have had with your field instructors and/or CTs. (For first and second Observation Day stories) I purposefully left out my questions, insights, perceptions, analysis of the ways in which I saw race, class or gender affecting your interactions with your students. Do you want me to share some of these? How, if at all, did my story help you to see urban teaching in a new or different way? 238 APPENDIX C Story Exchange #3 Questions - Ask “Track Changes” questions about individual stories. - How did writing your story in the future tense help you to reflect on your hopes for how you want to be teaching in the future? Questions about ML story 9. What were your initial impressions about the story I wrote about you five years from now? 10. What did you think I was trying to convey about your development as an urban teacher? -Share what I was trying to convey a. Abbey - -highlight praise of students, especially when talking explicitly about good behaviors, thoughtfulness of teaching content -not basing decision to teach in inner city (or any place) on this year’s experience -removed the disciplinary methods as reflection of difference in school/classroom situation also because they were ineffective. -Suggest” Punished by Rewards” by Alfie Kohn (Temporary compliance, authentically supporting children) -“rewards” weren’t culturally relevant (e. g. Magic School bus video) - building relationships with students (not in story b/c I didn’t see it on my visits) b. Kim —- highlight focus on attentiveness, creativity, enthusiasm, thoughtfulness, focus on life skills development (e.g. kindness, cleaning up, conflict resolution) -being proactive about discussions of race, especially with little ones -Suggest Tenorio article (Raising Issues of Race with Young Children) Me Pockets c. Becca -— highlight willingness to talk about race, consistent and explicit about behavior expecations d. April — highlight explicit instruction, thoughtfulness, strong content knowledge, building a caring/considerate community -relax, play more 1 1. Did I add anything significant that you didn’t see or hadn’t considered? 12. Did I omit any significant changes or developments that you think you will have accomplished as a teacher in 5 years? 239 l3. 14. How, if at all, did my story help you to see your teaching in a new or different way? How, if at all, did my story help you to see urban teaching in a new or different way? Exit Interview Questions 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. Has your definition of what characterizes a good teacher changed as a result of your internship? Abbey — knows students, connects home w/ school, minds on/hands on/disciplinary regime/expectations and consequences/integrated subjects Kim — effective strategies to support all students, teach and be a fiiend, confident, attend to and support physical, mental and emotional lives of students, balance btwn personal & professional Becca - dedicated, attentive to individual needs, helps all students be successful, plans well, flexible April— care about students, success of each & every student, strong content knowledge, effective & engaging lesson, balanced Has your definition of what characterizes a good urban teacher changed as a result of your internship? Abbey— knowing where kids come from, understanding less parental involvement, discipline is different, understanding children have trust issues Kim — utilizes all skills, best practices into play, takes advantage of what you do have, understand that you might have to do more Becaa — no different fundamentally than good teacher, different personality than a suburban or rural teacher, more flexible, more knowledge of administrative issue, resources, more creative, has to like challenges April — fundamentally the same, more sensitive to different things depending on context What more do you bring to the table now, that you have learned from your internship experience, that you think will make you a good urban teacher? What do you think you still need to learn to be good urban teacher? Did your internship give you any more or different insight into how or if race effects teaching and learning? If so, what was the effect 0 race on your teaching in your internship? a. Probe for specific examples. 240 38. Did your internship give you any more or different insight on how or if gender has any effect on teaching and learning? If so, what was the effect of gender on your teaching during your internship? 3. Probe for specific examples. 39. Did your internship give you any more or different insight into how or if socio- economic status effects teaching and learning? If so, what was the effect socio- economic status had on your teaching during your internship? a. Probe for specific examples. 40. Has your opinion of the strengths of urban students changed? Abbey — open, will tell you anything, resilient (homeless), do have good parents, most are happy (even in when in trouble) Kim — energy & willingness to learn, life application skills, parents are willing, motivated (more so than Lansing) Becca — very motivated, enthusiastic, curious April — hard workers, positive attitude Expectations and Thoughts about Internship Experience 41. Have you gained what you wanted from your teaching internship in Chicago? Abbey— classroom management, yelling isn’t bad, experience with entire weight of teaching Kim — standards (GLECs to ILS), behavior management Becca —how to teach, plan, behavior management, urban/Chicago specifically April — classroom management, differentiation, patience (I. What has been your biggest challenge? e. What has been your biggest success? Study Participation 1. How has the story format been different from conversations about your teaching that you have had with your field instructors and/or CTs? 2. Has writing the stories been helpful to you in thinking about and reflecting on your teaching? 3. Has reading my stories been helpful to you in thinking about and reflecting on your teaching? 4. Do you regularly reflect on your teaching in writing? a. If so, how often do you write about your teaching? What sorts of things do you write about? 241 b. 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