Crossing over to Canaan by Landson Billings

¶ … Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms by Gloria Ladson-Billings.

Ladson-Billings is an African-American educator, and she has taught in a variety of multicultural situations. She also helped create a multicultural education program at the University of Wisconsin, the "cohort" program that attempts to prepared teachers to teach in multicultural classrooms. She believes teachers are not being prepared to deal with the situations in these classrooms, and that multicultural children are being shortchanged as a result.

The author is an education professor at the University of Wisconsin. However, she began her career as a teacher in the Philadelphia School System, so she has classroom experience in a diverse educational setting as well. She is African-American, a minority in schoolteachers, and she is an author, as well.

The Cohort program "failed" for a number of reasons. The student teachers were extremely overworked and did not have enough time to actually think about the teaching they were doing and what they were trying to accomplish. In addition, students found they needed more input and guidance from experienced teachers, and the program was revised to include more input in this area. Perhaps the biggest reason there were problems with the program were the attitudes of many teachers, which is one reason the author wrote this book. She feels too many teachers do things the same way for years, and never attempt to change or grow with new teaching and learning methods. She wants young teachers to be more open to change.