CHAPTER 13: Service Loitering: White Pre-Service Teachers Preparing for Diversity in an Underserved Community

By the printing of this chapter, 40 percent of learners in America’s classrooms are children of color, while the teaching population remains around 85 percent White and female (Applied Research Center 2000; Landsman & Lewis, 2006; Sleeter, 2001). How, then, are teacher education programs addressing the need to prepare White pre-service teachers for multicultural classrooms? This nearly apartheid milieu (Kailin, 1999) should impart a raison d’être to expand community-based service-learning activities in diverse communities and integrate them in teacher education curricular offerings (Boyle-Baise, 2005; Jones & Abes, 2004; Murrell, 2001; Zeichner & Melnick, 1996). To be sure, the benefits of service-learning are great for all prospective teachers and connect to several principles in multicultural education, such as the importance of the community in the learning process (Pang, Nembhard, & Holowach, 2007). Cooper (2007) notes that “community based experiences are effective in creating in middle class pre-service teachers an awareness of the cultural strength of students and their families” (p. 245).