Guide our feet: Teacher education and servant-leadership in a Children's Defense Fund Freedom School

This qualitative narrative study presents the Children's Defense Fund Freedom School as an exemplar of an educational program with a model of spiritual education, which supports the preparation of pre-service teachers by nurturing an ethos of service. The purpose of this study is to examine the potential for a summer experience of servant-leadership in a Children's Defense Fund Freedom School to be a catalyst for pre-service teachers becoming servant-leaders who experience, "a long-term, transformational approach to life and work -- in essence, a way of being -- that has the potential for creating positive change throughout our society" (Spears, 2004, p. 8). I collected and analyzed life-stories of undergraduate students who said they want to become teachers and experienced service-learning through at least one summer of servant-leadership in the context of Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools.;This qualitative study yielded three themes used to identify an ethos of service, which were used to analyze the collective interpretive voice of the study participants. Findings suggest that pre-service teachers who choose a service-learning experience in a CDF Freedom School have shared pre-dispositions and values. These pre-service teachers interpret the CDF Freedom School program as transformational and more helpful in learning to teach than traditional teacher preparation in the context of the university. In particular, the training component of the program is described as "eye-opening" and needs further scholarly research to further understand its influence.