“Each week, students in the course traveled 10.5 miles, leaving behind their lush suburban campus to enter a dilapidated, distressed section of Philadelphia, home to Sun Valley High School.1 At Sun Valley, the prospective teachers worked one-on-one with a 12th grade student, who had been assigned to him or her for the semester” (Connor, 2010, p. 1171).
“At Sun Valley and other high schools in the Philadelphia School District, the senior project includes four components: a 10 page research paper; 15 h of field work connected to the selected topic; a formal oral presentation delivered in front of a panel of adult judges; and a portfolio demonstrating the “learning journey” (RMC, 2008, p. 1)” (Connor, 2010, p. 1172).
“In addition to helping their partners to complete the research paper piece of the senior project, the Villanova teacher candidates were also expected to learn from the high school students with whom they worked and to draw connections between what they were experiencing at Sun Valley and the course readings and lectures. They depended on the high school students to help them complete three major course assignments, each of which was designed to help them to learn how to learn about students, about teaching, or about themselves” (Connor, 2010, p. 1172).