This paper discusses the shift from a clinic model to a community model for the practicum experience for literacy education graduate students. The traditional program for the remediation of struggling readers followed a deficit model. Therefore, the reading specialist would pull out the child from regular classroom instruction to isolate a reading problem using standardized assessments and then to remediate the problem with programmed instruction. While the shifts in the understanding of reading process which occurred in the 1980s and 1990s influenced instruction and assessment and the role of the reading specialist, researchers have found that instruction of struggling readers still tend to be routinized. This has often resulted in what appears to be a lack of personalization, a disregard of experiences, strengths and vulnerabilities that the child brings to the tutoring situation. Therefore, the process of transitioning from a clinic to a community model described in this article was made based on the belief that today's reading clinic component of literacy specialist program needs to equip its graduate students to face the challenges of the classroom as well as the challenges in transcending their prior understandings and experiences teaching reading.