This paper presents the story of a university/public school collaborative program that in June 1991 was awarded the American Association of Higher Education's Presidents' Forum Award for Exemplary Work in Accelerating Minority Achievement. The Louisiana program was implemented by the College of Education of the University of New Orleans and two elementary schools of the New Orleans Public Schools to enhance prospective teachers' abilities to teach reading and language arts to at-risk, urban students and to introduce the prospective teachers to an instructional context similar to one in which they would most likely be employed. Two mornings a week, the prospective teachers attended language arts lectures, seminar discussions, and demonstration lessons at the elementary school, and taught two groups of students using such techniques as word identification plans, the directed reading-thinking activity, cloze and maze passages, creative writing and bookmaking, language experience stories, learning games, and visual arts and drama. The paper describes instructional activities, assessment procedures, parent support for the program, the reflections of prospective teachers in their dialogue journals, program strengths and weaknesses (the latter including lack of support from administrators and regular classroom teachers); and goals for the program's future. (Contains 14 references.) (JDD)