Preparing Special Education Teachers for Urban Settings

Abstract

In this article, we describe a special education personnel preparation program designed to prepare special educators to meet the increased demand for urban special educators. The urban school environment demands special educators who are prepared to teach students not only with diverse linguistic, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, but students for whom poverty, disease, and transience are major elements of their life style. The program was designed to provide immersion in urban schools while learning the instructional and collaborative skills needed to thrive in an environment that few of the graduate students had been exposed to. In addition to its focus on urban education issues, the sequence of the internship was unusual in that interns completed their internship during the initial rather than final year of the program. Through an analysis of interviews with graduate students and mentor teachers from all three years of this project, we provide a discussion of the expanded role and responsibilities of special educators in urban settings and the effectiveness of an immersion year on special educators.