ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of the challenges that teacher educators and their partners in P–12 schools have met over time and continue to face in preparing effective teachers to meet the needs of P–12 students. It examines how Loyola University Chicago and its school and community partners are working to address these challenges through the Teaching, Learning, and Leading with Schools and Communities, program. During the early years of the republic, few people had access to education and those prepared to teach found education through small academies, religious institutions, private colleges, and home schooling. As the common school movement took root in the 1830s, the demand for teachers increased and prompted the growth of normal schools and institutions offering more formal training to teachers who staffed public schools. The increased pressure on P–12 schools from the US Department of Education has further confounded the relationship between schools and teacher education programs.
