Earlier this month, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation provided formal comments to the U.S. Department of Education about proposed changes to federal teacher preparation rules. Several Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellows added their voices to the thousands of public comments that were submitted. WW Perspectives offers a sampling of some of those submissions in a series of posts. This is the fourth post in the series; other responses can be found here, here, and here.

From Onika Samuels, 2011 WW Teaching Fellow (Michigan):

As an educator and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, I take great pride in teaching low-income students. I know that a lot of teachers are intimidated by teaching at-risk students. But at some point we have to take charge and make change happen. Many teachers do not feel prepared and, unfortunately, teaching students cannot be fully achieved if teachers don’t understand students. At-risk students can learn. Fancy equipment is not needed to teach students. Trained and quality teachers are what are needed. That is why teacher preparation needs reform. I would be glad to help prepare teachers to teach.  I believe that until we are able to have real conversations, real actions toward mending achievement gaps will not be accomplished.  The change must comes from preparing teachers to deal with these challenges.