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Urban Immersion: Changing Pre-Service Teachers' Perceptions Of Urban Schools, Connie Schaffer, Deborah Gleich-Bope, Cindy B. Copich

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

This research investigated the impact of an Urban Immersion (UI) program which partnered urban schools with a university’s teacher preparation program. The UI program provided experiences for pre-service teachers by completely immersing them, along with their university instructors, in urban schools where they worked and learned alongside K-12 teachers and students. Data collected from pre- and post-experience surveys provide statistically significant evidence that the UI program reshaped the perceptions of pre-service teachers regarding urban schools and also increased their confidence and interest in teaching in an urban setting. The success of traditional field experiences is indecisive (Mason, 1999; Sleeter, 2001); …