Preparing Teachers for Hispanic Immigrant Children: A Service Learning Approach

Abstract

One response to the need to prepare future teachers as multicultural educators is to use service learning with an immigrant population as part of a teacher education program. This article documents the impact of a project that engaged preservice teachers in tutoring struggling young English language learners. Content analysis was used at the thematic level on student journals written to accompany the semester-long experience of tutoring. Overall, the preservice teachers gained an understanding of the challenges facing the immigrant families, developed respect for the families' home cultures, and gained confidence in their ability to teach children from diverse backgrounds.