Teaching Students from Rural Areas

What do you know about students from rural communities?

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) published a classification system has identifies major locale categories—city, suburban, town, and rural.

What does it mean to be rural?

• A rural territory can be:
• Fringe: less than or equal to 5 miles from an urbanized area
• Distant: more than 5 miles but less than or equal to 25 miles from an urbanized area
• Remote: more than 25 miles from an urbanized area
• Determined by census data

"In American popular culture, the word 'rural' invokes images of sunny farms and little red schoolhouses—while 'urban' means drugs, poverty and crime. But those who know the reality of both worlds will tell you that rural schools face many of the same challenges as their urban counterparts" (Lockette).

Literacy

• 26.7% of rural students have an IEP
• 20.8% of adults 25 and over have a bachelor's degree or higher
• In rural NC, 23.8% of students ages 5-17 live in poverty
• However, the graduation rate for rural areas is 80.6%, much larger than the city average of 71.1%

Literacy

• Not a marked deficit in the literacy of rural students, but a lack of attention for rural areas, so the "Literacy Innovation in Rural Education through Collaboration" federal grant was created
• Professional development for teachers
• Summer learning labs for students
• Access to high-quality reading materials
• Online networking nationally

Language

• Rural areas may or may not have a wide range of lingual diversity depending on the area, so this is on a case-by-case basis
• Many times, there is a North/South dichotomy in which people with either accent are looked down upon or made fun of
• The use of positive classroom culture and ELL resources will be critical

Culture

• While some rural areas are not racially/ethnically diverse, others are rich in diversity
• “We need to give [students] a way to experience real diversity, and the diversity we have [in rural Georgia] is something we don’t talk much about." - David Dixon, theater instructor
• Small towns have unique cultures!

Culture

• A foreign exchange student's thoughts on rural USA
• What would you add and agree or disagree with?

“Part of the equation is to get students to start looking seriously at what it means to live in a rural place. They have questions about the world around them, and that’s a place to start teaching" (Lockette).

Teaching Strategies

• Awareness and real-world thinking:
• Long bus rides are common for rural students. Is boarding a bus at sunrise compatible with a child’s biological clock? Students in a science classroom research scientific insights on biology and human performance to come up with ways to make their schools better places to study.

Teaching Strategies

• Awareness and real-world thinking:
• Where are those truckloads of trees going? Why do we have a landfill to store other folks’ garbage? Why are we warned not to eat the fish we catch? Looking into these local issues can lead to global lessons about how the environment affects us—and how we affect others living downstream.

Teaching Strategies

• “I love the questions my students ask. They’re very open and they really want to know things. They want to know about my hair, and they want to know why one of my students—who is from Detroit— has an accent. We find ways to talk about these things and learn.” -Valerie Lane

Teaching Strategies

• Some students may have "pop-culture stereotypes" of people of different races.
• We need to go further than a "heroes and holidays" approach to deeply engage students in diverse ideas and content
• Ideas?

“For the most part, rural schools are preparing students to leave the community.” - Rural education advocate Rachel Tompkins

Teaching Strategies

• Goal-setting and college preparation
• Encourage big dreams!
• Remember that home is great too!

As educators, our call is to help rural students thrive where they are AND beyond.

References

• Lockette, Tim. "Tapping the Power of Place" and "Three from the Country." Teaching Tolerance, Fall 2010.
• National Center for Education Statistics. "Rural Education in America." Web.
• The Rural School and Community Trust. "Increasing Early Literacy in Rural Communities." Web.