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An Emerging University- 
School-Community Partnership:  
A Story in Two Acts 
Authors 
SEUNGHO MOON  
JON SCHMIDT 
ANNA PRESS 
DAVE ENSMINGER 
MITCH HENDRICKSON

keywords: 
Partnership, Narrative Research, Community 
Engagement  
 
abstract 
This paper shares narratives regarding an 
institutional effort to build a sustainable 
partnership with schools and communities. 
Loyola University Chicago has developed and 
strengthened partnerships with eight community 
schools in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) District 
over the past decades to promote equity and social 
justice in the urban context. The sustainability of 
partnerships is an ongoing issue in university-
assisted community schools. Guided by 
poststructuralist versions of narrative research, 
the five authors write and share memories about 
their engagement in university partnerships with 
communities and schools. This paper explores 
the “how” of partnerships rather than reiterating 
strategies of “what works” in partnerships. The 
authors articulate the complexity of community 
partnerships and crucial elements to consider for 
advancing partnerships. As examples, the authors 
explore the creation of a field-based teacher 
education program (Teaching, Learning, and 
Leading with Schools and Communities; TLLSC) 
as well as a community-centered, justice-oriented 

graduate program (Curriculum, Culture, and 
Communities; 3Cs). These degree programs focus 
on educating students as research practitioners in 
the ongoing sustainable support and collaboration 
among schools, universities, and communities. An 
asset-based frame is employed across narratives 
in developing and implementing degree programs 
and offering core courses. The subjectivities 
of each author enrich the conversations on 
ongoing efforts to build sustainable, trust-based 
partnerships. Drawing from our narratives, the 
authors hope PK-20 educators, university leaders, 
and community leaders collaboratively and 
critically reflect on their practices in partnership 
and utilize some of our narratives and themes 
as starting points of an ongoing conversation. 
Overall, this paper contributes to extending the 
approach to community partnership and equity-
oriented education, highlighting the value of 
university-community partnerships for local 
schools and institutional efforts. 

 
introduction
We live in a world of stories – stories of lived 
experience in a context-dependent on cultural and 
political discourses. We also live in a world of 
complexities – a space of imagining different 



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approaches to education, drawing upon “open, 
dynamic, relational, creative” possibilities (Doll, 
2012, p. 10). The  five  authors of this paper, with 
different roles and responsibilities in UACS 
(University Assisted Community Schools) projects 
in a university, examine the complex, dynamic 
nature of mutual benefits among partners and 
sustainable partnerships using our lived 
experiences and associated narratives. This paper 
uses these researchers’ vignettes to explore an 
institutional effort to create sustainable 
partnerships with local community schools.   
 
The partnership framework Loyola University 
Chicago (LUC) developed and implemented has 
been discussed in other publications (Schmidt et 
al., 2020; Schmidt et al., 2021). These publications 
describe how LUC has collaborated to create 
partnerships with local public schools and 
organizations in a metropolitan area. Major issues 
in community-university partnerships are 
discussed, including centering relationships, 
sustainability efforts, interdisciplinary 
collaboration, and mutual benefit (Schmidt et al., 
2020; Schmidt et al., 2021).). During our research 
meetings for this specific study, the authors 
discussed the value of telling stories about our 
experiences throughout these partnerships and the 
institutional effort to make them sustainable. 
Extant literature on community partnerships 
addresses what works well in creating and 
implementing school and community partnerships 
and how to replicate promising models in other 
public schools (Jentleson, 2011; Soska & 
Butterfield, 2010; Yamamura & Koth, 2018). For 
example, the Professional Development Schools 
(PDS) model emerged in the 1990s, asking 
universities to reform teacher education practices 
to more effectively meet the needs of urban 
students, their teachers, and teacher candidates by 
providing pedagogy in authentic school settings 
(Hunzicker, 2018; Wong & Glass, 2005). Successful 

pathways to the development of UACS include 
collaborative leadership, mutuality, and whole 
community development, as well as acknowledging 
UACS’ benefits and challenges (Clark-Louque et al., 
2020). In addition to this frame of “what” works, 
this paper explores the “how” of community 
engagement. It emphasizes the “process” and lived 
experiences of developing and implementing 
partnerships.  
 
Methodologically, the authors adopt 
poststructuralist narrative research versions to 
explore relationships across schools, communities, 
and university units. Memory writing is applied as 
a major data source and data-gathering process 
(Richardson, 2000). In her memory writing, Miller 
(2010) emphasizes political, discursive, and 
conflicted memories in portraying her professional 
experiences in curriculum theorizing. 
Poststructuralist versions of narrative research 
“disrupt and contest any grand narrative” and 
highlight “impossibilities of interpreting, 
representing, narrating any one ‘history” (Miller, 
2010, p. 9). According to Miller (2010), memory 
writing and remembrances of the past are never 
“full” or “accurate,” yet, historical meanings are 
discursively and politically constructed and 
represented through memory writing. During 
research meetings from the fall of 2021 and spring 
of 2023, the five authors shared their experiences 
with university-community-school partnerships. 
They interrogated discursively, culturally, and 
socio-politically constructed meanings of mutual 
benefits, relationships, and partnerships in 
community engagement. During the data collection 
and analysis processes, the leading author of this 
paper underscored that the acts of “remembering” 
is political, partial, and impossible to represent the 
realities. Rather, our memory writing is an effort to 
interpret the discursively constructed historical, 
political, and cultural “meanings” of our lived 
experiences with partnership and community 



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engagement. The selected memories in this paper 
are the results of the authors’ scholarly, 
professional endeavors to explore multiple layers of 
community partnership practices. Thus, the 
authors create a space to conduct community 
partnership research differently to share the chaos 
and complexities involved in university-school-
community partnerships. A prelude and two acts 
with two scenes are the frames the authors employ 
to illustrate and theorize our lived experiences.   
 
This paper illustrates vignettes to explore an 
institutional effort to create sustainable 
partnerships with local schools and communities. 
During the research meetings, the authors have 
reflected on the memories and stories we share and 
how they represent our experience collaborating 
with schools and communities. Guiding reflective 
questions include (a) what lived experiences are 
involved in community-university-school 
partnerships and how meanings are interpreted 
discursively, (b) what memories the authors share 
in the process of building sustainable partnerships 
via institutional efforts, such as developing degree 
programs, and (c) what we learn, relearn, or 
unlearn via such efforts to create partnerships from 
our lived experiences and subjectivities.  For 
example, we were interested in “paradoxical 
thinking” (Strier, 2014) that cannot be 
essentialized with a predictable, linear version of 
partnership, such as effectiveness vs. relationships. 
We work in a “non-profit” organization, yet “profit” 
is inevitably required to run and manage this 
tuition-driven private, urban higher educational 
institution. We work in an environment where staff 
turnover has been a reality at university, and local 
school levels and partnership efforts may therefore 
shift with new leadership. Yet, we seek to sustain 
the core principles of partnership. Disorder and 
chaos may be present within a partnership as it 
evolves, yet the foundation of the partnership, its 
emerging and sustained multilayered relationships, 

remain constant. These stories are woven to 
represent how relationships are embedded in our 
work and the institutional efforts that have been 
made to support this work through field-based 
teacher education programs and community-
centered graduate programs.   
 
We present our story as a drama in one prelude 
and two acts. The prelude offers the context of 
Loyola University Chicago’s efforts to reframe 
community-centered teacher education. The two 
acts with multiple characters share stories to 
deliver diverse perspectives on partnership. These 
stories include the ideation, development, and 
delivery of university-assisted community school 
and academic degree programs. The prelude of this 
paper illustrates the development of a teacher 
preparation program, entitled Teaching, Learning, 
and Leading with Schools and Communities 
(TLLSC).  This paper shares a nonlinear, indirect 
communication between an instructor and a 
graduate student in a transformed doctoral 
program, entitled Curriculum, Culture, and 
Communities (3Cs). In between, we incorporate 
stories from the community and school partnership 
work. These stories and vignettes will invite 
readers to participate differently in these complex 
dimensions of partnership. Ultimately, this paper is 
a critical space for co-creating scholarship based on 
lived experiences and their complexities of them in 
universities and communities while simultaneously 
articulating the dilemmas and conflicts associated 
with UACS. It provides discursively and politically 
constructed experiences and realities of faculty 
members and graduate students who have 
interacted with students, families, community 
members, partnership leaders, and other university 
faculty and researchers. The key to this shift 
toward community and student-centered research 
in practice, as well as its continued evolution, is the 
reflection of data as lived experiences among those 
involved in the work of UACS. A larger project 



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examines different stakeholder perspectives to 
provide stories and insight into a sustainable 
partnership model. Many diverse voices of 
teachers, community organization leaders, and 
school leaders are represented and theorized. The 
university-side narratives are the main focus of this 
paper.

cast of characters  
Moon. Faculty/Co-director of the new doctoral 
program (3Cs Program) 

Schmidt. Faculty/Instructor of the new doctoral 
program (3Cs Program) 

Press. Doctoral student in Schmidt’s class (3Cs 
Program) 

Ensminger. Faculty/Co-director of the new 
doctoral program (3Cs Program)/ Previous Chair 
of teacher preparation program (TLLSC)  

Hendrickson. Director of UACS initiative   

prologue: centering 
partnership in education: 
wherein loyola university 
chicago launches an 
apprenticeship-based teacher 
education program (tllsc)   
Teacher education faculty, including Ensminger, 
determined that we needed to work closely with 
school partners to determine the necessary skills, 
knowledge, and dispositions that a graduating 
teacher candidate would need upon entering the 
classroom.   

In the 1990s, the Professional School Development 
model emerged (Hunzicker, 2018), providing 
the impetus for teacher preparation programs' 
transformation. In 2010 professional organizations 
in the U.S. (i.e., AACTE 2010, NCATE 2010) 
messaged the need for teacher preparation 

programs to prioritize clinical experiences and 
effectively partner with local PK-12 schools and 
community organizations when preparing future 
teachers. These set the stage for the Dean of 
LUC’s School of Education (SOE) to challenge 
teacher education faculty to “throw away” the 
traditional approach to teacher education with its 
disconnected and segmented courses and limited 
clinical experiences. The Dean challenged LUC’s 
faculty to change how teacher preparation occurred 
to prepare teachers to teach ALL students.  
 
To guide this restructuring process, LUC’s 
teacher educators developed a set of enduring 
understandings (EUs) that represented the practice 
and profession of teaching across all certifications 
(e.g., Elementary, Secondary, Special Education, 
etc.). Next, we envisioned the clinical experiences 
that would address these EUs. Clinical experiences 
served as the principal component of teacher 
training; content would be centered and delivered 
in authentic learning and teaching spaces (Ryan 
et al., 2014). Situating clinical experiences at the 
core of training meant the delivery and discussion 
of supporting content materials would occur in 
schools. TLLSC’s redesign resembled clinical 
training in medical professions, with candidates 
developing professional knowledge and skills 
through interactions with university faculty, PK-
12 professionals, and PK-12 students in school 
buildings. We engaged partner schools in this 
redesign. PK-12 educators helped identify and 
refine the nature of clinical experiences and 
develop the projects and activities that reflected the 
work of professional teachers.     
 
One particularly memorable event involved student 
dispositions. LUC faculty had developed a set 
of critical dispositions for candidates to develop 
during the program. Some faculty questioned 
the inclusion of a self-care disposition (e.g., 
maintaining one’s intellectual, emotional, and 



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physical well-being to fulfill one’s professional 
responsibilities effectively). Faculty discussed 
dropping this disposition, but when presented at 
a working session, school partners took an ardent 
stance on including a self-care disposition arguing 
that in-service teachers need to develop ways to 
cultivate their well-being. Faculty were surprised 
by how strongly teachers and administrators felt 
about this. We might have removed it had we 
not dialogued with partners and listened to their 
perspectives. Instead, we kept the disposition 
and worked on how to address it meaningfully in 
program design.            
 
Without our partners’ active participation, 
LUC’s teacher educators may have made some 
short-sighted decisions around the needs of our 
candidates, which could have impacted their 
growth and development as future teachers. This 
experience validated the work we were doing 
together and helped us develop a better program 
and ensure that our partners’ future colleagues 
(LUC teacher candidates) would be better prepared 
to take on their roles as teachers in Chicago Public 
Schools (CPS). It also was an essential experience 
in our partnership work and signaled that all of 
us were prepared to discuss, sometimes debate, 
and ultimately arrive at key decisions together. 
Teachers in our partner schools play an essential 
role in preparing future teachers; they guide the 
development of future colleagues. They begin 
to facilitate candidates’ development from the 
first semester as candidates ask them about their 
experiences, and later in the program, they co-
create lessons and co-teach during internships. 
In addition, teachers often advocate for hiring 
our graduates or provide guidance in their job 
searches. Ensminger reflected: “What is exciting 
is we now have graduates teaching in partner 
schools whose classrooms are the setting for our 
candidates’ field experiences. I think this only 

strengthens the partnerships and experiences of 
our candidates.” This is the type of sustainability 
we continue to strive for.  
 
Through the process, faculty laid the groundwork 
for TLLSC and its implementation in partnership 
with schools in our community. Although LUC’s 
SOE had partner schools from the get-go, 
teacher candidates had not fully engaged them 
in developing clinical experiences or identifying 
what they could do while in schools. The main 
goal of TLLSC is to prepare future teachers in 
diverse urban settings. Spending time in partner 
schools develops a commitment to working in 
urban schools. They enter their careers with 
realistic perceptions of working in this context and 
serving diverse student populations. One graduate 

remarked: “Although my first year was hard and 
I worked long hours, I never felt surprised or felt 
I was not prepared to work with my students and 
their families.” Administrators in our partner 
schools are familiar with the apprenticeship-based 
experiences of candidates in the program. One 
local school partner administrator said: “I want to 
fill my school with LUC graduates. They get it; they 
understand what it takes to work in my school.”

Spending time in partner 
schools develops a commitment 

to working in urban schools. They 
enter their careers with realistic percep-

tions of working in this context and serving 
diverse student populations. One graduate 

remarked: “Although my first year was hard 
and I worked long hours, I never felt surprised 
or felt I was not prepared to work with my stu-
dents and their families.”



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act 1: evolving and sustaining 
partnerships:  
Wherein Loyola University Chicago establishes 
and grows multiple community school 
partnership initiatives 

scene 1: reimagining schools 
as centers of community 
Hendrickson. Director of UACS initiative  
 
Several years into LUC’s education partnership 
with public schools, faculty discussed deepening 
relationships and connections to local 
neighborhood public schools. The relationships 
established through TLLSC were thriving but not 
comprehensive in intent. LUC’s flagship full-school 
partnership with Senn High School generated 
dozens of in and out-of-school projects and 
demonstrated the opportunity to extend this full-
school model to other partner schools. Funding 
through the university's five-year strategic plan 
provided institutional/management support and 
enabled the SOE to apply for Community School 
Initiative funding. The SOE, on behalf of the 
university, entered into full-school partnerships 
with seven additional schools in the community. 

 
The community schools model encourages schools 
to connect with diverse community partners to 
support students, teachers, and families. With 
investment, proper coordination, and strategic 
partnership development, schools become support 
centers that meet students’ physical, psychological, 
academic, social, and emotional needs. Community 
school efforts subsequently generated more than 
100 out-of-school (OST) programs, including 
academic support, athletics, book clubs, digital 
media, poetry, anime and manga, arts and music, 
and student leadership. More than 1500 students 
enrolled in programs during the 2019-2020 school 

year alone, and more than 500 parents participated 
in adult programming (e.g., tax preparation, ESL, 
cooking and nutrition, fitness, and gardening 
workshops).   
 
Seven full-time Resource Coordinators (RC) 
coordinate site-based work while LUC engages 
more than 420 faculty and students who volunteer 
in programs. Campus-based learning programs 
also emerged: Civic leadership, post-secondary 
exposure, science internships, STEM projects, 
and a local news reporting bureau. One principal 
noted: “Our partnership with LUC has a powerful 
impact on the Kairos (pseudonym) community. 
The collaboration benefits every student in this 
building; it reaches the whole child and encourages 
social, emotional, physical, and academic growth.  
Our partnership with LUC helps us connect home, 
school, and community in a way that makes 
student success possible at Kairos.”  This positive 
feedback illustrates that LUC’s implementation 
of the community schools model as a strategy for 
supporting area public schools has successfully 
prioritized the needs of students attending partner 
public schools.     

Universities have multiple, sometimes 
contradictory, roles, one of which is as agents of 
positive social change. This is particularly true 
for the potential for universities to influence local 
public schools positively. Most partners are excited 
by the prospect of working with the university, 

This work uncovers more and 
more potential for sustained col-

laborative action. Relationship-building 
and mutuality in those relationships must 

remain a central component of the partner-
ships' planning, implementation, and evalua-
tion.    



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engaging university resources, and exploring 
community-based research opportunities focused 
on neighborhood schools. For example, Chicago 
Public Schools is eager to build more school-based 
partnerships and thriving community school 
models in collaboration with Loyola University 
Chicago. This work uncovers more and more 
potential for sustained collaborative action. 
Relationship-building and mutuality in those 
relationships must remain a central component of 
the partnerships' planning, implementation, and 
evaluation.    

scene 2: emerging hubs of 
support as described by moon, 
a professor in 3cs program 
Loyola University Chicago and partner schools 
value family interests, their needs, and available 
resources to create and/or develop ongoing youth 
and parent programs. These programs move 
beyond the idea of schools as academic centers to 
consider more holistic approaches to children’s 
development and relevant family support. 
Even before the pandemic hit in 2020, Socio-
emotional learning (SEL) has been a core thread 
that runs through UACS programs. Educators 
and community leaders emphasize the core 
components of SEL, such as self-awareness and 
building and sustaining relationships (Weissberg 
et al., 2015). Developing hubs of support that 
prioritize children’s well-being means that SEL 
needs to be equity-centered, which includes 
the centrality of identities, including race and 
ethnicity (Humphries & McKay-Jackson, 2022). 
At one of the dozens of diverse programs that span 
LUC’s community school partnerships, Author A 
exchanged ideas with a fourth-grade girl about 
her experience in a program that teaches circus 
skills and provides mentoring, and emotional and 
academic support. 

Delphia (pseudonym): Before, I didn't like to wear 
my natural hair out.  

 
Moon: I love your hair! I really love it.  

 
Delphia: Thank you. And now, when I take out my 
hair, I could wear it to school and didn't care.  

 
Moon: So, would you mind telling me more of your 
natural hair? Because I really love it. What made 
you have a different idea about your hair?  

 
Delphia: My natural hair is really short, like her 
hair, and but like more curly. And before, I didn't 
think I could wear it out because I used to be so 
insecure about myself. And now, when I look in the 
mirror, I have more confidence in myself.  
 
Delphia, a young Black student, said she now feels 
more confident wearing her hair naturally. She 
credited the program’s instructors, who helped 
her become prouder of herself and her identity. 
The authors in this paper argue that UACS can 
be a framework to interrogate existing metrics 

for student success, particularly in historically 
and politically underresourced communities. 
Creating supportive partnerships can help bolster 

UACS centers education and 
family support in the context of 

local neighborhoods so that students 
and families have adequate support for 

their academic, intellectual, and socio-emo-
tional growth. Simultaneously, the university, 

as part of the community, becomes another 
hub to provide resources to support students 
and community members.



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learning contexts that promote healthy, culturally 
responsive socio-emotional learning. UACS centers 
education and family support in the context of local 
neighborhoods so that students and families have 
adequate support for their academic, intellectual, 
and socio-emotional growth. Simultaneously, the 
university, as part of the community, becomes 
another hub to provide resources to support 
students and community members. The web of 
hubs aims to provide resources and educational 
support, acknowledging and building upon 
all community members' different roles and 
responsibilities.  

act 2: institutionalizing 
partnership philosophy and 
practices:
Wherein Loyola University Chicago seeks to 
teach collaborative partnership strategies to 
professionals in the field 

scene 1: a new graduate 
program emerges by moon, 
schmidt, and ensminger 
“So, where shall we start?” I, Moon, started the 
Ed.D. in Curriculum & Instruction (C&I) Program 
Review Task Force meeting with this open-ended 
question to prepare for faculty response to the 
urgent call to evaluate the current C&I graduate 
programs:  
 
The [C&I] program has experienced a recent 
reduction in applications and admission. There are 
also questions related to consistency of procedures 
for students across their experience within the 
program. The program faculty believes that the 
clarification of the purpose and procedures of the 
program would enhance marketability and the 
overall quality of the program. 

The message was clear. The new goal was to run 

a graduate program based on market values, 
including high enrollment rates. “Hmmm…” I 
sighed in front of my colleagues in the task force 
comprised of several Teaching and Learning 
(T&L) affinity group faculty members, including 
Ensminger and Schmidt. I could not ignore the 
neoliberal influence in higher education. Profit-
driven market values have become the prerequisite 
to maintaining a graduate program. It was the first 
time I became acquainted with the term “RtE” 
(Revenue to Expense) to make “both ends meet” 
(or increasing the revenue more than expenses). 
Upper administrators kept using talking points 
such as “no money, no mission.” The relationship 
between the two words starting with “m” for 
mission and money is, of course, complicated. An 
institution cannot pursue money (a.k.a. profit) 
exclusively, as it’s supposed to be dedicated to 
social change with the pursuit of the public good. I 
felt the pressure to navigate this conflict.        
 
“Unfortunately, the program is suspended for one 
year, although our current Ed.D. in C&I program 
has a few admitted students.” I had to share with 
colleagues the sad news of the suspension of 
C&I Program for the 2018-2019 academic year. 
One colleague initiated our conversation based 
on existing assets: “We are in a great city at a 
university with a social justice mission. Faculty 
are working on community-embedded research 
with local schools and communities.” Another 
colleague named our unique, rigorous, field-
based, apprenticeship-based teacher education 
program (TLLSC). “We could consider changing 
our program name to highlight a curriculum 
that is community-embedded and social justice-
oriented.” I felt positive energy, like something 
new would emerge from this collaboration with 
dear colleagues. We were all aligned in our views 
of asset-based education and our vision of higher 
education partnering with communities.  



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In a draft proposal for 3Cs Program, faculty 
articulated a shared vision, emphasizing the 
mission of LUC and the strengths/assets 
disposition that guides the School of Education 
(SOE). Thus, the School creates a graduate 
program that prepares master’s and doctoral 
students to focus on working in settings that 
promote university-school partnership and/or 
teacher preparation/PD in field-based settings. 
This vision builds on two major strengths of 
LUC’s T&L affinity group: (a) University-School-
Community Partnerships and (b) Field-based 
teacher education preparation. In working on 
new graduate programs, faculty found value in 
the university’s social justice mission enacted 
via in-depth, ongoing partnerships with local 
communities. We made conscious efforts to 
develop a new graduate program that could 
embody LUC’s mission and commitment to 
advocating social justice. 3Cs Program faculty 
underscored this mission-driven purpose and 
ensured that the value of the new graduate 
program was well aligned with community 
schools’ emphasis on sustainable partnerships. 
3Cs Program was created at the intersection of 
a partnership philosophy and a commitment to 
generating ongoing, sustainable support. Notably, 
the notion of “education” is not limited to PK-
12 schooling but also schools, universities, and 
communities.   
 
I sensed the need to educate curriculum specialists 
as experts in developing and implementing 
socially-just curriculum and programs to advance 
equity in organizations and communities. In 2021, 
the T&L affinity group launched a new graduate 
program emphasizing curriculum, partnerships, 
research, and practice. Although the upper 
administrators pushed the program redesign due 
to budgetary concerns, we built it focusing on 
the assets of LUC and principles of community 
engagement and effective partnership practices. 

Paradoxically, 3Cs Program enrolled a cohort of 
30+ students for the first year of implementation. 
We emphasized mission over money, and the 
return on investment followed. 

scene 2: a reflective dialogue 
between schmidt 
“Faculty/Instructor of the new doctoral program 
– 3Cs Program) and Press (Doctoral student in 
Schmidt’s class)  
Stage Notes: Press’s narrative is in italics; 
Schmidt’s narrative is in regular font 

“Spring” semester was full of snow, not rain. It 
felt dreary, but hopeful. I was acclimatizing to 
LUC, learning about its programs and people. 
This was my second semester of the 3Cs Program 
as a doctoral student, and I was enrolled in a 
course about teaching and learning in urban 
communities. The pandemic was still raging so 
class was virtual, of course. The professor was 
explaining an assignment and I immediately felt a 
sense of confusion. “We have to do what?” I asked 
a classmate in a private chat. “I think we need to 
find a school and figure out how to help them help 
themselves.” Something about this felt wrong to 
me. Why would the school need an outsider to step 
in and “help”? Wouldn’t this play into deficit-based 
thinking? 
 
This critical and healthy tension is ever-present 
in our collaborative work with community 
organizations and schools. LUC’s SOE uses a place-
based engagement strategy (Yamamura & Koth, 
2018). A deep commitment to relationships with 
and among our partners is at the heart of the place-
based strategy. This means being present with 
organizations in the work. Likewise, community 
school strategies enable us to be present in the 
struggles and celebrations and, we think, engage 
in work that generates new learning opportunities 



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for students and opens new collaborative ventures 
with existing partners.     
 
We intentionally seek to partner with local 
organizations and institutions to reflect our 
mission and values. As a result, local partnerships 
are, we believe, more likely to be sustainable, 
accountable, mutually beneficial, and less likely to 
reflect one-off, transactional projects.   
 
I’m sitting in an online class about teaching and 
learning in urban contexts, being asked to partner 
with a local community school that I’ve never 
visited to develop an asset map. I don’t know any 
of the schools and lack direction on asset mapping 
too. I feel lost.    
 
Cognitive dissonance is an important component 
of transformative learning (Mezirow, 2015). Too 
much dissonance may lead to panic and flight from 
learning and prevent the student from achieving 
new insights and, ultimately, a new sense of 
equilibrium. Navigating these spaces is challenging 
for both students and educators. I have always 
believed that the most powerful learning is when 
students can work through the discomfort and 
puzzle the solutions out on their own or, more 
ideally, in collaboration with their peers.   
 
This wasn’t the only assignment that provoked 
discomfort. Many times, over the course of 
the semester I had to grapple with my own 
positionality in context. As someone who’s new 
to this city, what is my role in trying to “help”? 
What does it mean to insert myself into a school or 
community and then just as quickly leave? How 
can I do meaningful contextualized place-based 
work without ever having visited these places?     
 
Ohito (2016) critiques the ability of preservice 
education programs to prepare white teachers for 
engagement with marginalized racial identities 

adequately. Her article was one of the first we 
read in our redesigned Teaching and Learning in 
Urban Communities course offering. Her critique 
provides a way to acknowledge the elephant in 
the room. The course intended to offer a lens 
through which to examine the realities of urban 
learning spaces that have long been influenced, 
if not characterized, by historical, institutional, 
systemic, and cultural racism. Our journey began 
introspectively by examining our social identities 
and how we have been socialized into implicit and 
unconscious biases. We moved to an examination 
of how our organizations and institutions have 
been similarly marked by racism. This preparation 
enabled us to consider schools and school systems 
as well as classrooms both imprinted by racism 
but as places where we can intentionally conduct 
anti-racist work. I asked students to engage in asset 
mapping to support the school’s work to be present 
in its community, which is often neglected due to 
the unrelenting asks placed on schools. Though 
short-term and confined to a single semester, the 
resulting map, I felt, could be a resource for schools 
to enact new partnerships and/or energize existing 
ones. Asset mapping turns deficit thinking on its 
head. Instead of believing that schools must do 
all the work, it communicates that community 
partners stand ready. Instead of viewing 
students and families as problems to be fixed, it 
communicates that families bring experiences, 
resources, and insights that can enrich school 
communities.  
 
Thankfully, the instructor welcomed this discourse 
and emphasized that the steps we were taking 
as students in this course connecting with 
university-assisted community schools were part 
of a larger journey. Starting with the theoretical 
underpinnings of community schooling, we 
built our way up to conducting group projects. 
My partner and I met with our school’s 
administration and counseling teams multiple 



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times. Our discussions changed our direction, and 
I appreciated the opportunity to glean insight into 
their many successes but was also cognizant of 
the ongoing traumas. The asset mapping project 
wasn’t about stepping into a school community 
to solve problems, it was about considering the 
resources that already exist within and outside 
those school walls in collaboration with school 
staff.     
 
One of my first opportunities upon moving to this 
in January of 1991 was to join a research team 
at the ABCD Institute (Asset Based Community 
Development) of a prestigious private research 
university. The Institute has moved to another 

private university (ABCD Institute | DePaul 
University, Chicago). The philosophy of asset-
based development has deep implications 
for communities and their schools. At Loyola 
University Chicago, ABCD addresses how we might 
approach our work with communities and how 
teachers might approach their work with students. 
Asset-based community development informs 
our SOE approach by addressing the question of 
how we might work with communities and how 
teachers might work with students. Do we address 
the perceived problems we see, or do we seek to 

develop communities, classrooms, and students 
based on the skills, interests, and talents our 
students and citizens offer? The asset-mapping 
project becomes an opportunity for students to 
develop this disposition and this skill set. It often 
helps them to uncover the hidden and engage in 
generative discussions that lead to productive 
relationships and positive outcomes.   
 
After the semester ended, we were invited 
to attend a staff meeting to discuss the asset 
mapping project.  Asset mapping wasn’t about 
choosing a school at random and “helping them 
help themselves” it was about reciprocal learning 
and sharing. This asset-mapping experience 
in partnership with a local school generated 
important perspectives, but there’s still work to 
be done to figure out how best to nurture these 
relationships catalyzed by coursework into 
mutual, sustaining bonds.   
 
From TLLSC’s advent to 3Cs Program's 
construction, we are moving toward in-depth 
collaboration with community organizations and 
schools. We hope to develop professionals with 
a disposition to seek partners, collaborators, and 
“co-conspirators” (Smith, 2020) beyond the walls 
of their institutions. The haranguing notion that 
“I” should be able to do this on my own, we hope, 
begins to dissipate as we move closer to fuller, 
more sustainable expressions of partnership 
in our work. The community school work that 
Loyola University Chicago has engaged in over 
the past five years provides us with the concrete 
opportunity to live out the vision we put forward in 
our academic programs.   

conclusion 
As educators, we seek to advance an understanding 
of schools as deeply rooted in, shaped by, and 
responsive to their communities. We seek to 

The philosophy of asset-based 
development has deep implica-

tions for communities and their schools. 
At Loyola University Chicago, ABCD address-

es how we might approach our work with com-
munities and how teachers might approach 

their work with students. Asset-based commu-
nity development informs our SOE approach by 
addressing the question of how we might work 
with communities and how teachers might work 
with students. 



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build learning opportunities at our university that 
engage our students in schools and communities 
throughout their learning experiences, including 
apprenticeships in schools, internships with our 
school and community partnership, and academic 
projects with practical relevance that engage and 
support schools and communities. We continue to 
build on-campus partnerships across the university 
to help us all strive toward the university's vision 
and mission.     
 
In 2011, LUC set out to transform teacher 
preparation by developing an apprenticeship, 
site-based model. Supported by extant literature, 
we quickly realized that school and community 
partners would need to support the university to 
generate and sustain this model (Daniel, Quartz, 
& Oakes, 2019). Participation in our program 
redesign process was an enormous benefit to us but 
also a benefit to our partner schools, organizations, 
and cultural institutions. They would gain well-
trained professionals, have access to eager students 
seeking to provide support in classrooms and 
community spaces during their four years of 
university education and be able to share and 
advance the importance of their work among 
developing teachers. Teachers learning in authentic 
teaching spaces was the mantra. Indeed, our 
student graduates are sought after, highly thought 
of, and make significant contributions not just to 
the individual classrooms but also to their schools 
and communities. The field-based model is paying 
dividends.  
 
This work is ever-evolving. We see a beginning 
point of this journey – our work to revise and 
revitalize our teacher preparation program, a 
second leg of the journey – our work to expand 
and deepen our work with partner schools through 
community school partnership, and a concluding 
(at least for now) stage of the journey during 
which we have built 3Cs Program, the doctoral 

program. They cannot remain as static programs 
representative of a “completed” approach to 
university school engagement work and education 
within our institution. Instead, they represent 
a deep engagement with our communities 
and community partners to change the face of 
education for our students and communities. 
Multiple approaches and strategies are required to 
advance equity through community engagement 
and university-community-school partnerships. 
This paper has articulated how institutions 
developed degree programs (e.g., TLLSC and 
3Cs Program) for advancing partnerships as an 

evolving process, continuously collaborating 
with faculty, staff, community leaders, and 
school personnel. This process is complex and 
complicated, as articulated in the narratives 
presented in the paper about mutual benefits 
in partnerships and relational trust to create 
and sustain new degree programs. The authors 
anticipate that these snapshot versions of 
narratives inspire other educators and community 
leaders to revisit their practices in partnerships and 
offer another approach to community engagement 
supported by university resources and mission.   
 

They cannot remain as static 
programs representative of a 

“completed” approach to university 
school engagement work and education 

within our institution. Instead, they repre-
sent a deep engagement with our commu-

nities and community partners to change 
the face of education for our students and 
communities. Multiple approaches and strat-
egies are required to advance equity through 
community engagement and university-com-
munity-school partnerships.



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The curtain does not fall on this enterprise. The 
stage does not now go dark. The actors do not 
retire to their homes and then choose a new 
opportunity for performance. The story continues 
through our commitments to emerging forms of 
teaching and learning, community partnerships, 
and full community engagement. One of the roles 
of the university in community engagement work, 
we believe, is to generate collaboratively, share, and 
hold the vision of deep community engagement 
that is premised on authentic, trusting, and 
powerful relationships among our organizations 
and institutions. Holding a vision is a sacred act. 
It requires patience, commitment, and wisdom: 
patience to know that we are not yet there; 
commitment to know that we are moving ever 
closer if we stay the course; and wisdom to know 
we will never truly arrive. The work continues. 



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