Urban educational contexts are increasingly complex, both in terms of what count as "urban" communities, and in regard to the increasing diversity of schools in these settings. Given that school-based learning experiences are a core element of nearly all teacher education, it is critical that we develop a better sense of how early career teachers are conceptualizing these experiences within urban contexts. This issue is of particular importance given the fact that the majority of teachers being prepared today do not have personal or educational experiences in urban settings (Sleeter, 2001). Findings from this study demonstrate not only the pervasiveness of deficit perspectives in teacher learners' conceptualizations of "real urban schools," a term that emerged from the participants' group discourse, but also the power of critical inquiry as a framework from which to begin disrupting some of these assumptions. The article concludes by offering suggestions for how field experiences can be reframed in order to function as sites of possibility and change, rather than as living laboratories that uphold current institutional and societal inequities.