Working Together

This book provides illustrations of urban school-university partnerships recognized by the Dr. Shirley Schwartz Urban Impact Award awarded by The Council of the Great City Schools. The authors share their work by blending practitioner and researcher voices to offer other school and university based educators, policy makers, and foundation leadership potential solutions to the complex problem of preparing educators and enhancing teaching within urban schools.

In each chapter, the authors describe their urban partnership story, the greatest challenges they faced, how they responded to those challenges, and evidence of impact. Given that each partnership is unique, the authors conclude each chapter by offering a set of questions for discussion.

This book serves as an excellent resource for educators interested in establishing urban school-university partnerships that improve educator quality, strengthen the pipeline of urban educators, and expand Pk-12 students’ learning experiences. The book is divided into three sections: (1) Teacher Candidate Preparation, (2) Teacher Professional Development, and (3) Principal Development.