Journey to Becoming a Teacher: The Experiences of Students of Color‪.‬

INTRODUCTION According to the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future (1996), there are currently more than 50 million students in K-12 schools in the United States, a number which is projected to increase to 55 million by 2008. Along with the influx of students has come an increase in the diversity of the student population (Futrell, 1999), where currently one in every three students is of an ethnic or racial background other than European American (Futrell, 1999; Rettig & Khodavandi, 1998; Villegas & Lucas, 2002). As Villegas and Lucas (2002) have noted, one in seven of these children lives in a home where English is not spoken, and one third of whom have been identified as being of limited English proficiency.