Professor Leitze (Quote 1):  The urban experience program is a pre-student teaching experience.  Our students are there all day in the urban schools just like they are with student teaching; however they're taking 18 credit hours of course work on top of working in the elementary school all day.  So what basically happens is about two hours every day our students leave the elementary classroom, walk down the hall to a room in the school that the principal has given us, and have a class with a Ball State professor who has traveled to the urban school. Then after that two hour block of whatever that class is, they go back to the elementary classroom and continue their work there with the teacher and the children in the classroom.

Professor Leitze (Quote 2):  The requirements for getting into this program are basically the students must be at least of junior standing and be admitted to teachers college ready to begin their junior level practicum courses. That also requires that they have passed a test that's called the PPST and that they've taken certain courses that ready them for their methods courses.

Professor Leitze (Quote 3):  This program is very advantageous for pre-service teachers or teaching majors because they get so much more experience working with students than they would get if they took the exact same courses and stayed on campus.  In fact, it's what we call an immersion program where are students are immersed in the elementary school and as a result they learn so much more about teaching.  They're able to take the theory that they learn in their Ball State classes and pretty much immediately apply it in the elementary classroom.  So it's a wonderful, wonderful experience for our students to ready them for the role of teaching in an urban school.