ABSTRACT
Northern Arizona University's (NAU) main campus, nicknamed the Mountain Campus, is located in Flagstaff, Arizona, a growing town of about 52,000 at an altitude of 7,000 feet and just 80 miles from the Grand Canyon. Tourists, residents, and students enjoy Flagstaff's mild climate, beautiful environment, recreation opportunities, and cultural attractions on the nearby Navajo and Hopi Reservations. My students begin their courses in teacher education at the Mountain Campus with the classes I teach: theories and methods for teaching reading and language arts in nine semester hours of instruction. These undergraduate students come with notions of literacy education that typically reflect their experiences as elementary students, most often in small, predominantly White schools in Arizona.
