This paper presents information regarding two university field programs in two elementary schools in New Orleans (Louisiana), serving culturally diverse children, and it attempts to reveal the influences of each school context on preservice teachers' acquisition of pedagogical content knowledge, their concerns and dilemmas, and their frames of reference about teaching children in a nonmainstream school setting. Study participants were 85 female and 3 male preservice teachers majoring in elementary or exceptional education. The study was designed along the lines of participant-observational field work deriving its data from field notes of teaching observations as well as texts such as dialogue journals. Major themes emerging from the inquiry dealt with the differences between the two schools; and preservice teachers' unrealistic expectations, anxiety, negative frames of reference, feelings of failure, and desire to manage the students. Findings supported the benefits of pluralistic school experiences for future teachers and suggested that contextual conditions unique to a particular school may influence what preservice teachers learn and how they think about teaching. Examples of preservice teachers metaphors about teaching, semantic maps, final reflective statement, and dialogue journal entries; and a list of the six most frequently stated items on the semantic maps are appended. (Contains approximately 45 references.) (CK)