Feminist education — the feminist classroom — is and should be a place where there is a sense of struggle, where there is visible acknowledgment of the union of theory and practice, where we work together as teachers and students to overcome the estrangement and alienation that have become so much the norm in the contemporary university. — bell hooks

Due to demographic shifts and trends in the U.S. school age population, new teachers will need to be adequately and responsibly prepared to teach a group of students who may not dress, worship, or talk like them. Consequently, teacher educators must educate soon-to-be teachers beyond basic child development theory and (the often limited) history of American education. Teacher educators have an imperative ethical obligation to prepare the next generation of teachers to teach and serve all students and families, and not simply those students whom are perceived to be the cultural norm –  white, middle income, heterosexual two parent family, able-bodied, protestant, and English speaking.

What makes the role of teacher educators more critical has less to do with demographic shifts and trends, but more to do with the fact that those groups of students who have traditionally been marginalized in our democracy are now becoming the majority student group in public schools. Of course, most teachers feel that they have the ability to teach students, regardless of a child’s skin color; however, many pre-service teachers feel anxiety about teaching students who appear to be “culturally different.” Future educators are disenchanted with the possibly of teaching in classrooms, where students may have different norms, values, traditions, or languages that differ from their own.

Explicitly speaking, most pre-service teachers feel some discomfort about the possibility of having to teach racial/ethnic minority students from working and lower-income families, and students who have moderate to severe learning disabilities. And, of course, a budding teacher’s biggest, often unnamed fear is to find herself teaching in a high poverty, high density school. Yet, the reality is that the majority of teaching jobs will be concentrated in lower-income and high poverty school districts.

So, the question is what is the role of teacher educators in preparing our future teachers for teaching all students and serving all communities? The role of the teacher educator is to provide a safe space where our future teachers can experience discomfort in a pedagogically fabricated comfortable space. This begins by:

• Engaging future educators in reflection of basic social realities (of teaching, professional and personal identity).
• Unmasking social inequalities, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, classism in education, schooling and in society in general through discussion, readings, and research.
• Exposing the social reality of, and historical processes of, white privilege inside and outside of school contexts.
• Fostering in future educators a critical consciousness that serves the purpose of connecting teaching to transformative practices in a democracy and eradicating injustices in society.

All of the above requires that the teacher educator and pre-service teachers take risk, and such risk takes place through on-going reflection, dialogue, and self-critique. It is my hope that such authentic and honest conversations would create in future educators the courage to teach “the other,” while simultaneously working to (re)construct their own identities as cultural workers.

Suggested Readings

Evans-Winters, V. (2009) Leaders cloaked-as-teachers: Toward pedagogies of liberation. In S. Groenke &

J. Amos Hatch (Eds.), Critical Pedagogy and teacher education in the neo-liberal: Small openings, pp. 141-156. New York: Springer.

Friere, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

hooks, b. (2003). Teaching community: A Pedagogy of hope. New York: Routledge