Community Immersion
Immersive learning builds bridges across social and cultural differences.
What It Is
Community immersion allows individuals who are not familiar with the people and communities where they will work immerse themselves in these settings. This gives them the opportunity to reflect on their assumptions, attitudes, and the knowledge base of their profession and to gain cultural competence. In the education field, it is an approach that has evolved with changing composition and diversity of schools and the continuing preponderance of white and female teachers.
How It Works
Communities become integral partners in educator preparation in different ways. Individuals can participate in:
- a residency program, where they live and work in a community and take courses for a specified period of time; and
- a field experience-based program, where methods courses are held in urban schools and summer exposures include exploring and learning about the community and interning with community agencies.
What Changes
Teachers construct their own knowledge based on their experiences with peers and the community. One study by Jennifer Waddell reports teachers’ development of self-understanding and critical consciousness.¹ Teacher candidates became aware of their naiveté about the community and its struggles with race and segregation, and their own privileged lives. They gained insight into their own thought processes and the need to be more reflective of their own assumptions. The program also impacted candidates’ identities as teachers in urban schools. The most prevalent theme was the importance of building relationships with students. In Waddell’s study, one teacher candidate reflected:
I made the assumption that these kids have parents that do not want them or are tied up in drugs and alcohol. I was wrong, [for] some kids this is true, but not all. Making these assumptions about these kids is wrong of me to do. I will take this lesson learned into my teaching as well as my life.
Approach In Action
STEP-UP (Summer Teacher Education Partnership for Urban Preparation) is a four-week teaching and community internship and summer residency program for preservice teachers from Illinois State University. It seeks to better prepare students, mostly white and female, to teach effectively in poor, urban, and ethnically and racially diverse schools in Chicago, Decatur, or Peoria. STEP-UP has a strong focus on the role community plays in education and the ways in which teachers are a part of the greater community effort to improve the quality of life for all residents.
Students live with host families in the communities where they intern and learn about the daily routines of children, parents, and extended family members. They teach during the day, participate in community projects in the afternoon, and attend classes in the evening. “This infusion, this allowing candidates to experience firsthand and start to confront — their own race, their own class, their own sources of privilege — leads to a much stronger teacher when they enter the field,” says Robert Lee, who ran the program.
Although the cost of the internship can be steep ($8,000 per intern in 2016), the program contributes to teacher retention: The majority of participants remain teaching in their urban schools for five years.
Learn More
Endnotes
¹ Waddell, J. (2013). Communities as critical partners in teacher education: The impact of community immersion on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and teaching in urban schools. Current Issues in Education, 16(2), 1–16.
