ABSTRACT
Diversity is an increasingly important fact of life in the United States, and the effects of a new mix of population-linguistically, culturally, religiously, and economically-quickly made themselves felt in the classroom. It is hard to overstate the importance of this issue. In the residential borough of New York City in which many of the new teachers profiled in this book received their teacher preparation, more than 50 different languages are spoken. Several schools are located in the immediate vicinity of this college, along with several large public housing projects, an Orthodox Jewish community, a wealthy enclave of expensive homes, and a Chinese neighborhood that is quickly becoming predominantly Korean, as well as areas settled decades ago by Irish, Italian, and German families.
