ABSTRACT
As our school districts and society at large grow more diverse, teachers face the daunting challenge of meeting the needs of students from diverse social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. Like many teacher education programs, our middle education program in a MidAtlantic state consists predominately of bright, young, White, middle-to upper-middle-class women. Many of our students come from large, diverse cities; however, few of them have had many experiences with diversity. They either attended private schools or were tracked into public school classrooms with predominately White classmates. We understand the difficulties that many of these future teachers face as they gain employment in schools and classrooms that are quite different from those that they attended.
