Teaching in Rural Places

Thriving in Classrooms, Schools, and Communities

Amy Price Azano, Devon Brenner, Jayne Downey, Karen Eppley, Ann K. Schulte

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000220438
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This teacher education textbook invites preservice and beginning teachers to think critically about the impact of rurality on their work and provides an overview of what it means to live, teach, learn, and thrive in rural communities. This book underscores the importance of teaching in rural schools as an act of social justice—work that dismantles spatial barriers to economic, social, and political justice.

Teaching in Rural Places begins with a foundational section that addresses the importance of thinking about rural education in the U.S. as an educational environment with particular challenges and opportunities. The subsequent chapters address rural teaching within concentric circles of focus—from communities to schools to classrooms. Chapters provide concrete strategies for understanding rural communities, valuing rural ways of being, and teaching in diverse rural schools by addressing topics such as working with families, building professional networks, addressing trauma, teaching in multi-grade classrooms, and planning place-conscious instruction.

The first of its kind, this comprehensive textbook for rural teacher education is targeted toward preservice and beginning teachers in traditional and alternative teacher education programs as well as new rural teachers participating in induction and mentoring programs. Teaching in Rural Places will help ensure that rural students have the well-prepared teachers they deserve.

Part One

Rural Contexts

1

Becoming a Rural Teacher

Devon, one of the authors of this book, graduated from a small high school in rural Michigan—there were 89 people in her graduating class—a mix of farming families, families who commuted an hour to work in automotive plants, and families that operated tourist places for the summer people who came to boat and fish on the lakes in the area. After Devon graduated from college with a degree in elementary education, she got married and got a job teaching fourth grade in her hometown. The principal remembered her from middle school. Her teaching partner was her former sixth-grade reading teacher. Her high school health teacher now took her students for physical education (PE) twice a week.

There were so many wonderful things, and so many challenges, about teaching in this small rural community she loved so much. She already knew the families of most of her students. Based on their addresses, she had a good idea of how long each student spent on the bus to get to school and whether they were lake families or farm families. She ran into parents at Tuesday $2 Taco Night at the Highland Beach Inn (because everyone goes to $2 Taco Night) and hoped no one noticed when she ordered a second beer. She went to wrestling matches and the Homecoming parade because these are important in the Addison Schools community.

Devon taught fourth grade with a team of three other teachers—and together they shared the work of planning lessons. She mostly planned social studies. She also came in early to teach one section of eighth-grade Spanish for a little extra pay. The middle school wanted to start Spanish early, and she had a minor in Spanish—and pretty limited language skills. She was glad that a new class of eighth-graders rotated through every nine weeks. As a fourth-grade teacher, Devon got to teach Michigan history. Together, she and her students studied the Native Americans that first lived, and continue to live, in Michigan. She and her students learned about the French explorers and Polish miners, and the history of the logging industry that changed the landscape from forest to farmland. She taught about the role Michigan played in the Civil War, the northern migration of African Americans from the south in the middle of the twentieth century and the history of desegregation. Devon had limited resources for teaching these topics—the textbook she was given was out of date, for example, and she had limited technology. But she brought in local resources (the director of the community museum) and got ideas from the magazine of the state’s social studies organization. As she taught, she tried to help her students understand the history and evolution of the place they all lived. She loved teaching in her small hometown district and hoped that reading and writing about the history of the state helped her students have a greater sense of their place in the world and their potential to make the world a better place.

This book is about teaching in a rural place. The chapters in this book are intended to help you prepare to be successful, and to thrive, in a rural community, in rural schools, and in your own rural classroom. In a lot of ways, teaching is teaching. No matter where you teach, much of the work of the profession is the same. Teachers everywhere build relationships with students and their families, set goals for learning, plan units and lessons, assess student learning, and celebrate growth. At the same time, your work as a teacher in a rural school can be very different from that of your colleagues in non-rural places—different contexts, different resources, unique challenges, and many powerful advantages that are the reasons that many teachers choose to work in a rural place.

Some people know from the start that they plan to spend their career teaching in a rural community. They already have reasons that spark their interest in being a rural teacher. You might be thinking about rural teaching because you want to be near family or you love the mountains or the prairie or because suburban life does not appeal to you. On the other hand, some people are hesitant about the idea of teaching in a rural place. Maybe you are considering rural teaching because you want to follow a partner or because your teacher preparation program is placing you somewhere rural or because someone assigned this text as reading, and you wonder whether teaching in a rural place will be a good fit for you. We, the authors of this book, care about, work in, and love rural places, but we recognize that not everyone sees the advantages we see. We believe that rural teaching is a great option for any new teacher, and we are not the only ones. Many rural teachers report that they really like their jobs. On average, rural teachers report greater satisfaction about their work than their non-rural colleagues (Player, 2015). We hope you will, too.

For Discussion

Think about teaching in a rural school. What appeals to you about this kind of work? What are you looking forward to, and why? What makes you uncertain about teaching in a rural school? Why?

Rural schools, and the communities they serve, are diverse. Whatever makes the place you teach unique will also make the job of teaching in that place unique. Rural schools are found on the rolling hills of farmlands, in the winds of wide-open prairies, nestled in the valleys of mountains, deep in the woods, and on the slopes of desert landscapes. Rural schools may be located in places with great natural beauty with amazing opportunities for outdoor recreation. Other rural schools may be in more industrialized settings with oilfields and wind farms. Rural communities may have thriving economies or may be grappling with economic uncertainty and decline. Some rural areas thrive because of tourism or the arts, others are growing because of new technologies and the rise of telecommuting. The students in rural schools may have lived in the area for generations, or they may be relative newcomers, or both. Some rural schools are incredibly small, with just a handful of students in one room serving grades K–8. Other rural schools are quite large, with hundreds of students in each grade, often coming from many miles away after district consolidation. In some ways, this diversity makes it hard to generalize about rural teaching, but there are some commonalities that are worth noting. In this chapter, we are going to talk about some of the advantages, and the challenges, of teaching in a rural school. Not all the benefits or challenges apply to every school, but many rural schools share these characteristics.

Living in Rural Places

Many rural teachers come to a rural community to be close to family. If you grew up in a rural area, rural teaching may allow you to go back home after earning your college degree. This is not uncommon. Compared to other college graduates, teachers are more likely to live and work in or near the community where they graduated from high school (Reininger, 2011).

Some people choose to work in a rural place because of natural resources and outdoor recreation. If you have an interest in outdoor activities that your rural community provides—hiking or skiing or mountain climbing or hunting or canoeing or just watching the sun set and gazing at the stars—teaching in a rural school can place you in or near outdoor spaces and great natural beauty. Increasingly, some rural schools are offering a four-day school week, in part to aid in rural teacher recruitment and retention. Teachers who enjoy the outdoors may appreciate three-day weekends and the opportunities they provide for recreation (Turner et al., 2019). Likewise, some teachers choose to live in a rural place because they prefer a more peaceful lifestyle—places with less traffic, less congestion, and often much lower crime rates than metropolitan areas (National Center for Victims of Crime, 2014).

Some teachers also note the lack of amenities in many rural places can be a deterrent to a career as a rural teacher. Depending on the location and the community, there may be few (or no) restaurants or coffee shops near where you teach, or you may have to drive a long way to find a gym or a grocery store or live theater or concerts by the bands you love. There may be other resources that you appreciate more in your rural place, but the lack of dining, shopping, and entertainment options can be a source of concern.

Living in Smaller Places

Not all rural teachers choose to or have the ability to live in the community where they teach—but if you do get to live where you work, you may have a greater chance to become a member of the community and get to know your neighbors. Whether you are from there, or new to a place, if you teach in a smaller community you may have opportunities to build deep roots in a community. If you are a member of a religious or social organization, or as you go about your day-to-day activities outside of school, you will have many opportunities to interact with the community, to make friends, and to find ways to be a leader in the community. As you do, you will gain knowledge that will help you in your work as a teacher. You are more likely to know if there are changes or challenges or needs in the community that impact students or that you may want to address in your teaching (McGranahan et al., 2010).

Sense of Community

One of the biggest advantages of being a rural teacher is the opportunity to build relationships with students and their families (Ulferts, 2016). Teaching is primarily about building relationships. In a rural school district, you may be more likely to get to know your students and watch them grow and develop. You may have opportunities to teach the same student in more than one grade or class, or to teach multiple siblings from the same family. These lasting relationships can be rewarding, giving you the opportunity to watch children learn and grow over time. They can also be helpful in your work as a teacher. Relationships with students and their families can serve as the foundation for solving problems and supporting student learning. Ms. Cummins worked as the gifted and talented program director in the St. Francis Indian School in South Dakota after teaching there. She told us:

When I talk about rural communities, I think about knowing entire families, them walking in the door and me being able to talk to Grandma about the fry bread she makes that’s my favorite and talk about the kid’s kindergarten teacher whom I know. It’s a whole lifestyle, a way of being that feels so different from what I know my friends in cities experience.

Smaller communities can help you build familiarity that leads to relationships and that can help you as a teacher (Ulferts, 2016). As a rural educator, you will have opportunities to meet students or their families in out-of-school settings. You may see your students’ families at the local diner or cross paths with them hiking on a trail on Saturday afternoon. You may run into your students at a Scouting event or volunteering in a community clean up, riding their bike on the side of the road or at work at the convenience store. Encounters outside of school can give you a new perspective on your students. You come to see them as whole people and learn about their interests and their passions. You may see a student that you find challenging to work with during the school day in a new light outside the classroom. Knowledge about their interests or families can help you understand what makes your student unique or have more compassion for their challenges. Also, bumping into students and their families outside the classroom can give you a chance to reinforce what’s happening in the classroom, to remind students to return permission slips or complete an upcoming project.

Knowing families also poses challenges. Teachers can develop preconceived notions about students based on interactions with their siblings or their parents. When you teach the fourth sibling in a family, your memories of the older siblings, and their behavior, may influence your expectations. Students and families might already have concerns about you if their older students did not do well in your classroom. Navigating this familiarity can be tricky. Devon taught in the same hometown where she grew up, and one year she taught the child of someone she thought of as a personal rival during high school. She had to work pretty hard to get beyond that feeling of rivalry.

It is also important to recognize that not all rural communities have the same feeling of community and stability that we describe here. Some communities are marked by economic and social division, and in many rural communities the student enrollment is in flux, for example, as migrant workers follow the growing season or new industries attract new residents. In these cases, your work as an educator can help create a welcoming environment that builds a feeling of community for you and for your students. Wille and colleagues (2019) described how school districts in Colorado welcomed displaced persons new to their community, saying, “Schools are an important institution in rural communities and as such, can serve as a leader in facilitating the integration of refugee families.”

Overcoming Isolation

Of course, becoming a member of a tight-knit community is not automatic, and many rural teachers have reported that one of the greatest challenges they face is a sense of social isolation (Anttila & Väänänen, 2013). This particularly can be the case if you do not have friends or family members outside of school. A feeling of social isolation can arise if you do not feel as though you have a strong network of friends or opportunities for social engagement where you live and work. If you are not from the community where you end up teaching, you may have few social contacts outside of school when you first start teaching. For people who are single, teaching in a rural area may mean a relatively small dating pool. You may be able to make friends through work, religious institutions, or social clubs in the area, but a feeling of closeness may not be automatic. In the second section of this book, we provide some guidelines that can help you to learn about, and possibly put down roots in, your rura...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Teaching in Rural Places
• PART ONE Rural Contexts
• PART TWO Thriving in Rural Communities
• PART THREE Thriving in Rural Schools
• PART FOUR Thriving in Rural Classrooms
• Index