This self-reflective article describes my experience as a disabled-Latino faculty member in a teacher preparation program at a minority-serving urban university. This personal narrative of the physical, emotional, attitudinal, and resource aspects of the author's experience highlights barriers and challenges experienced in the educational and…

This essay -- written autobiographically as a confession -- charts uncomfortably and reflexively salient experiences and emotions of a queer educator of color. It unveils and analyzes unresolved feelings as messy examples in his journey as an urban school teacher, as a graduate student, and eventually as a university academic and administrator. In…

Collaborations and partnerships among schools and community members have been described as a way to provide better educational opportunities for students. Such school-community partnerships have been described as relationships that involve exchange and engagement with mutually defined goals benefiting all participants. However, the process of…

Concerned that various reforms promising greater professional autonomy and status as well as student success are actually disempowering teachers, impoverishing intellectual life in schools, and serving as a portal for the marketization of teaching and education, editors invited teachers to respond to the ways in which the proliferation of…

The article explores the ways "uneven geographical development" conditions and is conditioned by local placemaking practices. Guided by David Harvey's work along with Henri Lefebvre's three dimensions of spatial production--spatial practices, representations of space, and spaces of representation or the "spatial imaginary"--I…

Describes experiences of a Philadelphia teacher who is transferred irregularly from school to school as student enrollments shift. Focuses on difficulties of understanding how the new school operates, obtaining supplies, getting to know a new staff and student body, and teaching students with special needs. Recommends that frequently transferred…

The author describes his feelings as the only teacher at his school to support the New York City teachers' strike in 1961. (SJL)

Given most AmeriCorps members' passion and dedication, a recent college graduate assigned to an overcrowded Oakland middle school felt guilty about her half-hearted commitment to Teach for America. She gradually realized her situation was all too realistic and typical of teachers serving in underresourced schools across the nation. (MLH)

This article argues that with changes in attitudes and actions in classrooms, teachers can alter what happens in urban schools and transform the lives of students. Ten precepts are offered to assist them in that role: teach more, not less, content to poor, urban children; ensure all children gain access to conventions/strategies essential to…

Reports on discussions by East San Francisco Bay veteran primary school teachers who shared their experiences of teaching in economically strapped, racially mixed, bilingual, urban school systems. Offers observations, audiotaped records, and transcripts made in these teachers' schools by graduate students, teachers, and professors associated with…

An educator tells the story of her experience as a beginning teacher, and describes how and why she left the classroom after two years to follow different directions within the field. Her story of professional growth, personal reflection, and self-assessment suggests that, at least in her case, statistics about attrition rates for beginning…

Engaging students requires giving them a say in what they learn and how they will learn it. However, in strictly disciplined, rule-bound schools with test-driven curricula, this cannot happen. Edison Schools, Inc., a for-profit Education Management Organization (EMO), and Confluence Academy, an Edison-run school located in one of the most…

Teacher shortages, like the one schools face today, are not new. Periodically over the last 50 years there were fewer teachers available than were needed, and the response was primarily to step up recruitment efforts and issue temporary teaching credentials to those without qualifications. Three things are new however: (1) The requirement that…

Suggestions are made for reducing teacher and student alienation in urban schools by encouraging cooperative planning by all concerned individuals. (JD)

Responds to article by Bill Linn concerning the urban student's alienation and suggests that Linn may have a defeatist attitude. (MKM)