ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to describe an eight-week critical, project-based field experience with two partners: a juvenile detention facility and a suburban middle school in the Midwest region of the United States. The critical, project-based field experiences were embedded in a course, Teaching Language and Composition, which was designed to prepare preservice teachers to teach writing. This chapter demonstrates how critical, project-based field experiences are key to creating the space where praxis occurs: the teaching and learning needed to support preservice teachers as they conceptualize and appropriate the tools needed to teach writing to middle and high school aged young people.
