The purpose of this report is to record as accurately as possible the activities of the Ford Training and Placement Program for the training of educational personnel. The program accepted a theoretical construct based on the premise that a school is a social system. A four-point proposal was developed, featuring: (1) Focused preparation--personnel…

In terms of training teachers, the Ford Training and Placement Program is unique. It uses the cadre-model in the internship and placement year of the training program. The teacher training is focused on an attempted immersion of the university-based student into not only the grade level or subject-matter specialty in which he seeks a degree, but…

Learning and Action through Social Education and Reading (LASER) is a program for urban community-school leadership and curriculum development. It seeks to break down the walls between schools and the communities they are intended to serve. It consists of seven interrelated components: Community-School Relations, Educational Leadership…

During the 1960-1970 school year, the Cleveland Public Schools began implementing a More Effective Schools (MES) Program in two elementary buildings. This report is the evaluation of the third year of operation of the program (1971-72 school year). The MES Program was designed to attack the poor achievement patterns of inner-city children through…

This paper examines the practice of successful urban teachers, exploring the validity of National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) and Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) urban teacher assessments. Results from a literature review and empirical evidence indicate that successful teaching occurs when…

A case study of the practices of a white teacher working in an urban elementary school with a large majority of African American students shows the problems caused by detached and unreflective teaching practice. The study emerges from a joint ethnographic research and classroom-based educational project at the school. The teacher worked with…

Managing student behavior can be one of the greatest concerns and a laborious enterprise for prospective teachers in urban schools. Urban teachers must respond to the needs of their students by creating culturally responsive classrooms that spotlight a variety of instructional practices, methodologies, and behavioral interventions in an effort to…

How do new teachers become confident and competent while they are interns in inner-city neighborhood schools challenged by many problems, often associated with economic shortfalls and cultural differences between the students and their teachers? Many science teacher education programs place a lot of emphasis on the planning stages of curriculum.…

The purpose of this case study was to document the journey of three novice career change science inductees as they became middle-level science teachers in urban low socioeconomic status (SES) schools and included post-internship employment status data on all nine science teachers who completed the alternative certification program, up to the time…

This second volume, the follow-on to "Teaching Music in the Urban Classroom, Volume 1: A Guide to Survival, Success, and Reform," extends the conversation to include educational leadership, teacher education, partnerships, and school reform. As with Volume 1, classroom music teachers, inner city arts administrators, well-known academics,…

This article discusses the use of Esmeralda Santiago's autobiography "When I Was Puerto Rican" (1994b) as the foundation for an experiential learning project that brought two language communities: suburban college students studying intermediate Spanish and urban Puerto Rican students in an English-as-a-second-language (ESL) class. The…

Jersey City State College (New Jersey) has assumed, as its primary mission, the challenge to address urban concerns, including urban teacher preparation. The revamped Junior Field Experience Program (JFE) is a required course for all prospective teachers. This requirement intends to prepare prospective teachers to deal with cultural diversity by…

This project was designed to give children opportunities to discover and to investigate plants, animals, and ecological relationships in their own neighborhoods. Through hands-on, natural science investigations, children have opportunities to find and observe a variety of plants and animals, look at them closely, sort them to analyze their…

The Teaching Events Stress Inventory was designed to measure the degree of stress caused by thirty-six events associated with the teaching profession. The inventory was completed by 4,934 elementary and secondary school teachers employed by the Chicago Board of Education. Event one on the inventory, the first week of the school year, was given an…

This booklet was developed to assist teachers of Third World students in a workshop setting to understand the impact of institutional racism on schools, and provide them with viable skills so they might assist Third World students to cope and survive more effectively in the society. The topics discussed in this booklet are as follows: What is the…