Voices in Education: Guiding Teacher Candidates to Successfully Teach in Urban Schools and Communities

Teacher retention in Urban schools has been an issue over time (Green et al., 2011; Moore et al., 2018; National Education Association, 2003). New teachers as well as experienced teachers are leaving the teaching field because of job dissatisfaction (Buckley et al. (2004). Understanding the various reasons and how to resolve them is a concern. Low salary, lack of resources, school management of student behavior, non-teaching obligations, receiving supportive/constructive feedback, high-stake testing are just a few of the many reported concerns (Buckley et al. (2004).

There are also debates about the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs that can lead to teacher success in urban schools and communities. This is important because first year and early career teachers are more apt to find work in high-needs schools (Bruno et al. (2020). Waddell (2004) asserts it takes years to develop an effective teacher with teacher mentoring in place. Yet, scholars (e.g., Tapper, 1995; Waddell, 2004) have found that a large percentage of new teachers reported there was a lack of support (e.g., mentoring, professional development, and administrative) to guide their success during their first-year teaching experience. Hence, teacher candidates as well as new teachers are more apt to feel unprepared to meet the needs of a more diverse student population in urban settings (Cavendish et al. (2021). As a result, newly trained teachers are more inclined to leave their career than experienced teachers (Moore et al., 2018). This negatively effects school operations as well as student achievement. The effectiveness of schools depends on the ability to retain and train teachers over time.

Considering that most teacher candidates are White, middle class, females it is important to examine the knowledge and training that teacher candidates need to be successful in urban schools (Howard, 2019). Some of the teacher candidates may lack experiences that address students’ learning who are culturally and linguistically different than themselves. When this happens, we do not see what the students could have achieved with appropriate instruction that addresses their needs. The end result can be considered an educational equity issue (Howard, 2019). Basically, teachers who are trained to teach in urban schools are better prepared and normally stay longer within the school (Cavendish et al., 2021).

Please join us as we consider all that our teacher candidates need to teach all students that will be in their classrooms.

—Linda E. Martin and Thalia M. Mulvihill, The Teacher Educator

Teacher professional development is changing as well as increasing in recent years as a response to the Covid pandemic and calls for greater equity and inclusivity. As we revise professional development, it is essential that we engage the voices and perspectives of teachers rather than imposing ideas without consultation. Teachers know their areas of improvement and the areas where they need support and engaging them in the curation of professional development is essential.

—Mary Beth Gasman, Rutgers University

Teacher retention has become an important policy initiative in nations that aim to build a strong and resilient teaching workforce to support student learning. Unlike Finnish and Singaporean teachers, not many teachers in the United States choose the teaching profession as a first career choice. In Finland and Singapore, only one academically rigorous teacher preparation program exists for those who desired to become teachers. In contrast, there are more than 1,500 different teacher education programs in the United States, indicating a wide range of quality in preparing prospective teachers. New and beginning teachers are more likely to leave their teaching careers within five years if not enough support is provided to help reduce their levels of stress and feelings of isolation. This is especially so in urban schools that are often characterized by a greater number of underrepresented students and a higher demand for teacher accountability. In the last two years, many teachers also faced enormous challenges (e.g., safety concerns, a high level of technostress, burnout, declining mental health and personal well-being) due to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, there is a need for teacher preparation programs to consider the following strategies: professional learning opportunities in designing and using culturally responsive pedagogies and assessments (Koh, 2023) across different learning environments (i.e., face-to-face, online, and blended), content courses in emerging AI technologies (e.g., ethical use of ChatGPT, intelligent tutoring, automated assessment and feedback, data mining and learning analytics for formative assessment) and use of social media networks (e.g., Ng et al., 2023), leadership opportunities for teacher candidates to develop professional identities (Gul et al., 2022), and high-quality mentoring programs for first-year teachers to become acculturated to the teaching profession and the urban school climate (Mosley & McCarthy, 2023; Sparks, 2020). As Mosley et al. (2023) aptly point out, effective mentoring serves as a resource for teacher stress. Both teacher mentors and beginning teachers found that mentoring helped provide instructional and social emotional support. This suggests that it is important to ensure that every teacher candidate, or new teacher in urban schools and marginalized communities will be mentored by an experienced teacher for the first three years. Finally, developing a culture of care, trust, openness, and academic freedom (Shuls & Flores, 2020) by increasing teachers’ autonomy to make instructional and assessment decisions in their diverse classrooms will give a signal to teacher candidates that the teaching profession is a well-respected career.

—Kim Koh, University of Calgary

“Why Don’t They Want to Teach Us?”: Preparation and Retention for Urban Schools

Over a decade ago, a colleague who taught in a teacher preparation program whose special emphasis was preparing teachers for the bustling city in which the university was located, lamented the university’s failure to prepare teachers for urban schools. To make her students more comfortable with teaching in an urban context my colleague had a relationship with a local high school where she taught one English class each semester. Over the course of the semester, the teacher-preparation students were to visit her class and get to know the high school students. One semester, her teacher-preparation students gave lots of objections as to why they could not visit the high school. Frustrated, my colleague ordered some campus vans and brought the high schoolers to the university. While sitting in the classroom with the soon-to-be teachers, one of the high school students asked, “How many of you are going to look for jobs in this city?” Not one hand went up. The almost all White, female teacher candidates started in with a series of excuses. “I will do it eventually, but I don’t think I’m ready yet.” “Urban students deserve experienced teachers.” “I don’t want to contribute to more school failure because I don’t know what I’m doing!” My colleague accompanied the students on the ride back to their high school and one of the students said to her, “Ms. ___ why doesn’t anybody want to teach us?”

That question reverberates in my mind whenever we discuss issues like teacher retention in urban schools. Despite our attempts at preparation, including more diversity in our courses, or exposing students to ideas like culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies, we still experience horrible retention rates in urban schools. The elephant in the room in this discussion is that most of our teacher candidates in traditional university programs DON’T want to teach in urban schools. Increasingly, novice urban teachers come from alternative programs and education management organizations (EMOs). Their career trajectory is to teach a few years (preferably in a Charter School), become an administrator, and head on to some policy position or perhaps graduate school.

We must acknowledge that we cannot make our candidates choose urban schools which suggests we must consider selecting students on the front end who declare they WANT to be urban teachers and then provide them with enough support through their first 2 to 3 years. We cannot just certify them and turn them loose to flounder in poorly resourced schools filled with inexperienced colleagues. One of the things I like most about the ABC situation comedy, “Abbott Elementary” is the way the experienced teachers support the new teachers. In the episode where Mr. Eddie (played by Tyler James Williams) thinks he has perfectly planned every day to ensure that he covers the school district’s mandated curriculum, experienced teacher Mrs. Howard (played by Sheryl Lee Ralph) asks him a series of questions—“What happens if a student is absent?” “What about snow days?” “What’s your plan if there is a special assembly?” Her careful and insightful questioning helped him see that he could no plan for every eventuality. Teaching requires a kind of flexibility that many professions do not. The sense you get from the Abbott Elementary staff is that they WANT to be at Abbott. They are not seduced by the charter school down the road. They are willing to roll up their sleeves, cope with bad administration and bureaucracy and sometimes parents who do not appreciate what they are doing. But they have colleagues who are willing to support them and encourage them as they learn. The new teachers at Abbott—Jeanine Teagues (Quinta Brunson), Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams), and Jacob Hill (Chris Perfetti) work together and love their school despite its shortcomings. We will never retain people who don’t want to be in urban schools in the first place. And until we do a better job of selecting and supporting those who do, we will continue to experience the incredible turnover that keeps new teachers leaving urban schools at ridiculously high rates.

—Gloria Ladson-Billings, Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Teacher retention is a serious problem almost everywhere. I heard recently that a high school in our urban area lost 16 teachers last year, or about 25% of its teaching faculty. There were multiple reasons why, but one was teachers believing they lacked the necessary skills and motivation to be successful. And it is not a problem only in urban schools. Even teachers in suburban and rural schools are working with increasingly diverse student bodies.

Though it won’t solve all problems I believe that good internship and other experiences in schools will help. Teacher candidates at my university begin internships during their first year and continue them throughout their programs. They receive valuable hands-on experiences working with students and mentoring from teachers and other professionals. These experiences not only build their skills but also instill a sense of self-efficacy that they can successfully help students learn and deal with various issues. By the time they graduate they have spent over 1,000 h in schools. This is valuable experience that cannot be gained from courses. Good internship experiences can also help students feel a sense of belonging. Believing that you are where you should be raises not only the comfort level but also the motivation to learn and to stay in the profession.

—Dale Schunk, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

The Finnish educational system is built on inclusion, equality, and equity. In Finnish teacher education we prepare teachers to teach in inclusive schools and classrooms. We adhere to a broad international definition of inclusion as referring to UNESCO's ‘education for all’. This definition creates room for the large diversity of students in Finnish schools, including, for example, immigrant students and gifted students, in addition to students with special needs. We emphasize the importance of ethical sensitivity in teacher’s professional ethics and conduct for teachers’ ability to address the needs of both their different learners and their families. The concept of equity is used in current Finnish educational policy, which comprises two important dimensions: inclusion and fairness. Today, the concept of equity has replaced the concept of equality in attempts to address inclusion. In Finland teachers’ professional ethics call for education that is inclusively offered to all and that provides every student with equal access to quality schooling. Teachers’ professional ethics advocate ethical sensitivity with a social justice orientation to help educators recognize and reduce group and individual barriers among students and thereby promote students’ educational opportunities (Tirri & Kuusisto, 2023). Some of the key current issues in Finnish education that require special ethical sensitivity from the teacher are related to the gender, religion, and nationalities of students. Teachers’ ethical codes acknowledge the current plurality in Finnish society and advise teachers to equally respect parents’ cultures and worldviews and ensure they do not become the basis for discrimination (Tirri, 2023). In teacher education we teach all our teachers the value base of teacher’s professional ethics and guide them to acknowledge their implicit beliefs and possible stereotypes to be able to provide equal learning opportunities to their students and to build democratic moral communities both locally and globally (Tirri & Kuusisto, 2022).

—Kirsi Tirri, University of Helsinki

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.