Journal of Research in Childhood Education 2009, Vol. 23, No. 4 Copyright 2009 by the Association for Childhood Education International 0256-8543/09 421 mance of overlapping mutual self-interests (Goodlad, 1990). Research often explores how preservice teachers learn from these partnerships, looking at teacher educators’ perceptions or teaching techniques used in one-on-one tutoring, but often failing to report how the collaboration beneits the K-12 children. Surprisingly, few studies investigate what children gain from literacy partnerships with universities. As the opening vignette states, children grow from these collabora- tions. This research describes how a litera- ture experience with preservice teachers inluenced 30 children, speciically looking at what these children gained. Literacy Partnerships In literacy partnerships, preservice teach- ers often work with one child or a small group of children to gain ield experience and methods in reading instruction (Rich- ards & Brumield, 2003; Wolf, Ballentine, & Hill, 2000; Worthy, Patterson, Salas, Prat- “A Taste of College”: Children and Preservice Teachers Discuss Books Together Deanna Day Washington State University Note: Deanna Day is Assistant Professor, Education, Washington State University, Van- couver. I looked forward to going to the university for a long time. It was fun with Aaron [pre- service teacher] to talk to someone who likes Star Wars as extreme as I do. I learned an- other person’s perspective and also how my views related with other persons. I gained conidence in talking and sharing my ideas and interests with people exceeding my miniscule age. (Christian, 4th-grader) In the last 20 years, many universities have been restructuring their preservice programs to partner with public schools to create opportunities for prospective teach- ers to observe and have hands-on experience with children (Cox, Fang, Carriveau, Dillon, Hopkins, & Nierstheimer, 1998; Lasley, Matczynski, & Williams, 1992). In these partnerships, the university and school work together to ensure exemplary perfor- Abstract. Partnerships where preservice teachers work with children have been found to be effective in providing real world ield experiences for university students. However, little is known about what children gain from these collaborations. This research attempts to rectify this by analyzing a year-long literacy partnership in which 30 children and 55 preservice teachers participated in literature circles together, looking speciically at what factors inluenced the children during this engagement. Through observations, free writes, interviews, and pen pal journals, the impact of the collaboration was examined. Results from this study suggest that the children had signiicant relationships and personal advocates, the children gained conidence in talking in literature circles and managing them, the children considered different perspectives and issues, and the children gained perspectives on college. Ultimately, the children’s worldviews were enlarged.