Service learning in preservice teacher education helps students to understand themselves and diverse members of the community, develop intercultural competence, and investigate more deeply what it means to be a member of the community. "Human Diversity, Power, and Opportunity in Social Institutions," is an introductory course that requires reading, writing, discussion, and a 10-week service learning project in the community. The students, mostly middle class, European Americans from small towns and suburbs in Michigan, volunteer in settings that bring them into contact with diverse ethnic, socioeconomic, and linguistic groups. To study how students' lives were affected by their community experiences three exemplary stories were constructed using narrative analysis. These stories suggested that the narrative is a form through which preservice teachers can better interpret the educational lives of diverse learners and their own roles in those lives. By linking their personal stories with those of children and adults in schools and communities, preservice teachers can learn to recognize the needs, aspirations, and contributions of diverse Americans. (Contains 39 references, and 2 charts on methods in multicultural education.) (LH)