Author: Rachelle Kuehl

By Chea Parton

February 16, 2023

Photo Credit: Chea Parton; The photo is of Chea’s family’s farm in Indiana

Those of y’all who tune in to the Reading Rural YAL podcast have heard me say this before, but I’m going to say it again:

As a working-class rural kid, I firmly and truly believed that in order to be a published writer, you had to be from New York City, L.A., or Chicago. I was an avid reader and noticed that pretty much every book I read was printed from a press that was located in one of those places, and that the writers on the dust jackets usually lived there or some other city.

Even in my rural school, I didn’t read (or at least don’t recall reading) any rural YA literature—at least none that celebrated or critically considered rural people, places, and cultures from an appreciative perspective. When we read Charlotte’s Web, I remember thinking it was an absurd story. When your whole livelihood revolves around raising and selling and processing livestock, no spelling spider is going to keep you from being able to feed your own family.

But we never talked about that side of the story. We never considered the repercussions for the farmers.

On top of that, because we rely on our experiences as students to inform our own teaching practices, I didn’t invite my rural students to read and analyze rural texts either. The only difference was that they were brave enough to call me out on it. Two of my self-proclaimed “non-readers” once waxed poetic about Where the Red Fern Grows with me while they were supposed to be talking about Chopin’s The Awakening. During our exchange, not only did they tell me that they were readers, they told me what they wanted to read, and what they wanted to read were rural stories that connected to their experiences.

Because I had never been asked to consider the power and benefits of using rural stories in my classroom, I asked them (hopefully with kindness) to turn their discussion to The Awakening even though I knew with about 98 percent certainty that they hadn’t read it (and secretly hoped they’d keep talking about Where the Red Fern Grows because they had).

Reading tells us what kinds of stories are possible. What kinds of lives can be and should be represented in literature. Reading tells us what kinds of things get published, and when we don’t see our realities and experiences represented in fiction, it’s easy to believe that they shouldn’t be. Getting a book published is hard enough for people who are telling stories that are attractive to the publishing industry and market. It’s an even harder feat for folks whose stories aren’t. So, who would blame them for not writing them? But if they don’t write them, then kids like my students, like me, don’t get to read them.

This is why I started the Literacy In Place Rural Teen Writing Contest. I want rural young folks to know that rural stories matter – that their stories matter. I want to make space for rural teen writers to be encouraged to write their stories and be recognized and honored for doing it well. I want them to know that there are people in the world who both want to and need to hear those stories.

And so, I introduce to you the winners of the first ever annual Literacy In Place Rural Teen Writing Contest.

Our winner is Allison Strange of Lawndale, North Carolina for “Fate for a Cat.” Stay tuned for the Reading Rural YAL series featuring her work, including an interview with the author herself! Her prizes also include a classroom visit from Jeff Zentner and class set of copies of Rural Voices by Nora Shalaway Carpenter.

Runner-up goes to Kevin Evilsizer of Franklin Township, Indiana for “Heart Strings”. Keep an eye out for the Reading Rural YAL episode featuring an interview with the author later this spring. His prizes also include a signed copy of books by J.R. Jamison and Veeda Bybee who served as guest judges of the contest.

The judges felt that a third story deserved recognition, so even though it wasn’t planned, honorable mention went to Luke Urban of Franklin Township, Indiana for “Roof Top Farmer”.

Our guest judges used the criteria for the Whippoorwill Book Award for Rural YA Literature to evaluate students’ stories. Each one features a strong voice, effective use of literary conventions, and aspects of rural culture. I hope you’ll make time to read them (or maybe even assign them to your students) and leave some encouraging feedback.

The next contest is already in the works, and I’m hoping to see even more rural teen writers submit their work. This year’s theme is: Eat, Dance, and Be Rural: Celebrating Diverse Rural Cultures. We invite writing from all genres (fiction, narrative nonfiction, poetry, etc.) written by students in grades 9–12. This year’s guest judges include rural YA authors Kalynn Bayron (This Poison Heart), Pedro Hoffmeister (Too Shattered for Mending), and Terena Elizabeth Bell (Tell Me What You See). Prizes include a virtual class visit from Monica Roe and class set of her Cybils Award-nominated book, Air, as well as publication on the Literacy In Place website and guest spots on the Reading Rural YAL web series. More information can be found on the Literacy In Place website contest page. The submission portal will open July 1, 2023 and close December 1, 2023 with winners announced in February of 2024.

I hope you’ll encourage the rural teen writers in your life to submit their stories. I can’t wait to read them!

Dr. Chea Parton is the founder of Literacy In Place and a visiting assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at Purdue University. Reach out to readingrural@gmail.com with questions and follow @readingrural on Twitter, @dr_chea_parton on Instagram, and Literacy In Place on Facebook for contest updates as well as other rural teaching resources and news.

By Erika L. Bass

February 7, 2023

Photo credit: Aliza Fones in Storm Lake, Iowa

When I first moved to Iowa, I will admit, I held some pretty common views of rurality in this state. Iowa is just corn and soybeans, right? That’s what everyone seems to say. Even as an emerging rural scholar who knows that rural communities are nuanced and are not monoliths, I still answered the question (usually asked incredulously), “What’s in Iowa?” with the answer: “Corn.” Rurality in Iowa is so much more than corn. 

Sure, Iowa is the largest producer of corn in the United States. Sure, there are eight times as many hogs in the state as there are people. Rurality in Iowa is often equated with farming, but family farms have been in decline for decades (Edmonson, 2003). With the increase in corporate, large-scale farming, rural communities in Iowa are continuing to evolve. Because farming is no longer the main employer of rural Iowa, these areas are becoming more diverse. Because of job opportunities in meat packing plants in rural communities like Storm Lake, more immigrants and refugees have moved to the area, and some communities now have more people of color than White people. Rural communities are working on ways to entice young people to stay or return to their hometowns by revitalizing Main Streets; some rural communities like Bancroft boast having no empty storefronts on Main Street. Rural communities are investing in leadership pathways for community members and seeking ways to get high-speed broadband to their communities. Rural places in Iowa are dedicated to empowering their citizens to engage with the community and build a sustainable future.

Working in a teacher preparation program provides me with a unique opportunity to interact with Iowa’s rural communities and schools. I have had the great pleasure of meeting rural teachers from across the state who have helped me to better understand how to prepare future rural teachers. That is, while many of our preservice teachers may not imagine themselves living or teaching in a rural community, the reality is, if they plan to teach in Iowa or surrounding states, there is a good chance they will get a job in a rural community. Neighboring states to Iowa have school districts classified as rural in percentages ranging from 60%-80%, so the probability of getting hired in a rural school is high.

To know what rural teachers in Iowa need, it’s important to know what rural districts in Iowa look like. Are students attending a small school within their community, or are they traveling great distances to attend consolidated schools with members of communities that are not rural or have vastly different rural experiences than theirs?

Consolidation, dissolution, and restructuring of Iowa’s school districts has been happening for at least the last fifty years (Grubbs, 2016; Maeder, 2016), likely beginning long before we started keeping records. According to the Iowa Department of Education (2022), in 1965 there were 458 school districts in the state. As of 2019, there are 327, with rumors suggesting another consolidation in the near future. In an article in The Des Moines Register, Grubbs (2016) mentioned having been a member of the state legislature in the early 90s, when Iowa restructured or dissolved school districts four times during his four-year tenure—that’s once each year!

Consolidation inevitably affects rural teachers. Sometimes, this might mean having to find a teaching job in another community because the consolidated district does not need as many teachers as several districts would. Those who remain or teach in consolidated districts have to reconcile the different social, cultural, and learning needs of students who live in very different places. For example, Manson-Northwest Webster School District serves students from communities ranging from approximately 170 people to communities of 1,700 people. These students may have some commonalities; however, the social, cultural, and learning needs of those students can be quite different. Teachers will have students who consider themselves to be “town kids” versus “country” or “farm kids” (even if their family doesn’t farm; you may be classified as a “farm kid” simply because you live on old farmland). Knowing these differences is important to engaging students in the classroom, but also important to bridging cultural divides—providing students with opportunities to learn with peers from different backgrounds.

While school consolidation is a reality, there are still smaller school districts in existence in Iowa. With these smaller school districts, who have avoided consolidation up to this point, this might mean a teacher is the only person in their department. For example, a community just an hour north of my university has one English teacher for the entire high school; however, a more nearby rural district has two English teachers in their high school. To work in rural districts, teachers need to be willing and prepared to be self-regulated and self-motivated. They also have to be confident in their abilities, as they may not have content area colleagues to bounce ideas off of. However, that doesn’t mean they can’t build a community of practice. Communities of practice can extend beyond locale boundaries. Preparing preservice teachers to teach in rural communities means preparing them to have a community of practice outside of their building as well as inside of it. Rural teachers can connect through their local Area Education Associations (AEAs) through professional development opportunities; they can connect at state-level conferences like Iowa Council of Teachers of English or the Rural School Advocates of Iowa (the state affiliate of the National Rural Education Association); and they can connect through more informal ways like staying connected with colleagues with whom they attended their teacher preparation program.

Knowing what appeals to people about rural communities can equip teacher educators who want to encourage preservice teachers to consider building a career in a rural community. Recently, Iowa State University sociologists have done research on what brings people back to their rural communities (Sowl et al., 2021). They found that the smaller the school and community, the more likely people are to return home after pursuing post-secondary education. They also found that when young people are engaged in their community, they are likely to return, suggesting that university teacher preparation programs may want to invest time and effort into programs that increase community engagement for rural youth. Rural communities in Iowa are continually seeking ways to keep and attract young people to their communities.

I am still learning about the rural communities that make up my state. However, just like every community I’ve lived in, I feel like I am a part of this community. This is my home and I care deeply about it. Place matters, so as I continue to live and work here, I want to learn even more about Iowa’s rural communities so I can better prepare future teachers to thrive in these special places—places that certainly have much more to offer than “just corn.”

References

• Edmonson, J. (2003). Prairie town: Redefining rural life in the age of globalization. Rowan & Littlefield.
• Grubbs, S. (2016, December 19). Davenport superintendent is right: Fix the school funding formula. Des Moines Register. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/iowa-view/2016/12/19/davenport-superintendent-right-fix-school-funding-formula/95615642/
• Iowa Department of Education. (2022). Reorganization, dissolution, and sharing. Iowa Department of Education. https://educateiowa.gov/pk-12/school-business-and-finance/financial-management/reorganization-dissolution-and-sharing
• Maeder, D. (2016, February 24). Iowa children need equitable funding. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/iowa-children-need-equitable-funding-dan-maeder/?trk=hb_ntf_MEGAPHONE_ARTICLE_POST
• Sowl, S., Smith, R. A., & Brown, M. G. (2022). Rural college graduates: Who comes home? Rural Sociology, 87(1), 303–329. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12416

Erika L. Bass is an Assistant Professor of English Education at the University of Northern Iowa. Her research focuses on rural education, teacher preparation, and writing instruction.

By Shikhar Kashyap

January 24, 2023

This piece originally ran in The Daily Yonder on December 20, 2022

Image credit: Xandr Brown/Unsplash

Imagine you are in a conversation with a friend who is talking about rural India. Assuming you don’t know anything about the topic, where would you go to investigate what “rural India” looks like? 

If you are like me, you would probably search Google Images. We do this sort of searching every day.  

But what kind of images come up, and what stories do these images tell? Are those stories accurate and representative? 

To understand how these images can unintentionally create specific narratives in our minds, I performed a simple comparison between the image results for the search terms “rural America” and “rural India.”

I used the Google Images search engine and examined the first 50 image results (as of 11/09/22) for each search term. I looked at the images and the description text displayed directly underneath the text (without clicking the image) to define the major themes or ideas about rurality that the image (along with the descriptive text) conveyed. The searches created very different portraits of “rural.” 

Here is what I found: 

First, images of “rural America” tended to show nature or rural buildings and infrastructure. Two-thirds (66%) of the “rural America” images had  forests, farms, animals, etc., representing “connectedness to nature,” while 82% of the images contained rural buildings/infrastructure, like roads, barns, homes, street views, etc. (Note that some images fit more than one theme, so the total is more than 100%.) A fifth (20%) of the images showed some sort of action/productivity, and a similar amount (22%) showed innovation, transformation, and change. 

The images that came up for the search “rural India” were different. They painted a more nuanced picture of rurality, with people at the forefront of transformative change. First, nearly all the images for “rural India” (96%) had people in them, compared to 20% for “rural America.”  Women and women-led self-help groups were much more prominent. Three quarters (74%) of the “rural India” images showed women, compared to 10% for “rural America.” 

Some other big differences were that “rural India” images were four times more likely to convey action or productivity (80%) than their  American counterparts and more than twice as likely (52% vs 22%) to show innovation in rural spaces.  

It’s obvious that these visuals construct different narratives of “rurality” for America and India. 

People who search for “rural India” see  people leading transformational community change, women self-help groups, and technology. And people who search for “rural America” see traditional rural infrastructure and nature, along with the economic and social decline represented by dilapidated infrastructure and the absence of people. 

Half of the cortex of our brain is devoted to processing visual information. Images and the narratives they create shape our perceptions of the world. When images are skewed, our perceptions of people and places can change accordingly. That’s especially true for young students who increasingly rely on Google in their studies.

The dramatic differences between images of rural America and rural India may reinforce misconceptions and stereotypes for both places. We need technology that helps us push beyond simple first impressions, rather than reinforces them.  And we all need to watch out for common pitfalls in how we consume information. We need to think critically about what images mean, where they come from, and how they influence our perceptions.

Shikhar Kashyap is an international doctoral student in curriculum and instruction at Virginia Tech. He grew up in Mysore, India. This article grew out of an assignment in a graduate course in rural education with Amy Price Azano, Ph.D., director of the Center for Rural Education at Virginia Tech.

By Amy Price Azano

December 6, 2022

Main Street Luray and site of the old Brown’s Restaurant (fourth building on left, beside the bridge).

Photo credit: Tracy Black

When I was a kid there were very few dining options in my small hometown of Luray, Virginia. This was long before we had a Walmart and the variety of fast food options on the western end of town along the bypass. In fact, one could stay on that bypass and not even know the secrets on the business route through a two-mile stretch of town on Main Street.

We had a Kentucky Fried Chicken when you could still say “fried” instead of KFC, and a few doors down to the now-closed Pizza Hut sat the McDonald’s with the early 1980s signature “McDonaldland Playground,” the highly problematic area where kids could play inside the “burger jail” and where my best friend broke her tooth after playing on the shaking metal purple Grimace! After McDonald’s moved to its higher profile location on the bypass, the building was repurposed as a Mexican restaurant, Rancho’s, owned and operated by a local family, where you can find the best white sauce in Virginia. Long before Rancho’s, we had Mindy’s, where I remember first trying Mexican cuisine. And, if families were going through a rough time, Mindy would allow them to barter their payment: enchiladas for local veggies or other homegrown produce or services. There were a few diners and various, unassuming places where regulars gathered—like the little restaurant at the Intown Motel where my Nanny and her friends met every Monday morning for breakfast. 

My youth is remembered by these establishments: cramming into a corner booth at McDonald’s after a football game–just like you might see in an old movie about small towns; getting the best greasy cardboard pizza from Betty’s where you could also order a fountain soda and listen to the jukebox; driving the strip on Friday nights from Bo’s Belly Barn on one end of town down to the turnaround spot at the Tastee Freez on the other. Or, on special occasions, driving up on the mountain to Dan’s Steakhouse on the western, Massanutten ridge, or to Big Meadows to the east on the Skyline Drive. These weren’t just restaurants- they were the places that held us. Dan’s with its red-and-white checkered tablecloths where the steaks were served on over- and oval-sized warmed silver plates, barely big enough to contain the massive ribeyes. The same Dan’s where many years later we hosted my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary amidst my father’s cancer diagnosis. Based at the foot of the mountain on the other end of town was Brookside Restaurant. Owned for 15 years by the Wakemans, it was a humble stone structure from the late 1930s that blended into its natural surroundings. Farther up at Big Meadows is where one of my parents’ best friends, Phillip Campbell, worked as a cook and eventually a chef. We still can’t drive on the mountain with my Dad without hearing him reminisce about some crazy tale—no doubt grown taller through memory—of him and Phillip. 

And smack dab in the middle of town, like a rare jewel from the Orient, was Brown’s Chinese Restaurant, a family owned establishment that closed several years ago. My family was middle class by Luray standards, but going out to dinner was always something special and there was nothing more special than going to Brown’s. My parents usually shared the chef’s specialty “Rainbow Beef,” and I loved the sweet and sour chicken. My sister and I each ordered wonton soup and shared the egg rolls. There were no city markets or delivery options then. Chinese food wasn’t an afterthought in Luray but rather a cultural experience with food and the Chu family. The owner and chef, Alan Chu, would often come out to say hello, and like most places in Luray, my parents would know everyone in the room. My mother rarely drank alcohol but at Brown’s her drink was served in an exotic green Tiki glass, and my sister and I would argue over who would get the small umbrella on top. I can close my eyes and see the exotic wall art, hear the family members speaking Chinese, and now view the fading paint on its facade with nostalgia. 

A couple months ago there was a buzz on Facebook among my Luray friends and family. Brown’s was back–at least by way of a cookbook published by Chef Alan Chu, titled Family Recipes. Its dedication page reads: 

To all my Virginia friends & customers, I am forever grateful for all your business & support for 42 years at my Brown’s Chinese & American Restaurants. 

The book includes a family history, along with photos, describing a 157 year history of the Chu family in the United States, including Chef Chu’s grandfather’s service in World War II, and how the family’s love of food traveled from China, across the US, and eventually found a home in Luray, Virginia. Recently, my mother gifted me a copy of the cookbook. Since then I have regularly observed Facebook posts with home cooked efforts from the cookbook—like my Mom’s favorite Chung Far Har, tagging Mr. Chu with a note of gratitude. After my own triumphant attempt at sweet and sour chicken, I sent a photo and message to Mr. Chu’s daughter who is a dear childhood friend of mine. She shared that her Dad had no idea how much Brown’s had meant to everyone until people started posting about the cookbook. I’m not sure I realized how much it meant either, but I know that tasting that tangy sweet sauce took me back to my childhood home, to those secrets hiding in plain sight, and to the memories that built my sense of place. 

Amy Price Azano is the founding director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Rural Education and an associate professor of rural education and adolescent literacy in Virginia Tech’s School of Education.

By Rachelle Kuehl

November 21, 2022

In October, my family and I drove from Virginia to Minnesota to say goodbye to my wonderful father-in-law, who passed away at the age of 84 after a long illness. My children missed a full week of school, and when we returned, I worked with my fourth grader, Jamie, to make up his language arts assignments. Together, we read several chapters of Blood on the River: James Town, 1607 by Elisa Carbone (2007), the historical novel his class had been reading during small-group instruction. Blood on the River is a story about the first British settlement in America at Jamestown and serves as a perfect tie-in to the fourth-grade Virginia Standards of Learning for history and social sciences.

Although I have lived in Virginia for many years, I previously only had a vague sense of what went on at the Jamestown settlement, and reading this story with Jamie was a reminder of just how powerful a vehicle historical fiction is for teaching about events from the past. From this book, I learned about the Virginia Company of London stockholders who funded the expedition to America with the hopes of expanding the British empire and increasing their own wealth. I learned about John Smith, the commoner-turned-sea captain who (from the eyes of the narrator, Samuel), was a good leader because he stood up to corruption, worked hard alongside his hired laborers, and aimed to negotiate fairly and peaceably with the Powhatan people who had inhabited Virginia’s land long before the arrival of the British. Although I had already known that many settlers did not survive the first winter at Jamestown, I was able to experience the danger and loss of life on a personal level as Samuel described the constant quest for food and warmth and the persistent need to dig graves for those who died. I saw the way the Powhatan people were rightfully wary of the newcomers at first, but valued their humanity—and the opportunity to trade—enough to share nourishment and shelter, without which none of the Jamestown settlers would have survived. I met Pochahontas, who was a younger girl when she encountered the settlers than the Disney movie would have us believe. I learned how British people continued to arrive at Jamestown because letters describing the horrific conditions there were blocked by investors whose financial interests would have been threatened by their receipt. I learned that unscrupulous new leaders quickly unraveled the delicate trust built between Chief Powhatan and Captain Smith by plundering the Powhatan camps and forcing the chief and his people into a ceremony declaring them as British subjects.

My father-in-law grew up in rural Walnut Grove, Minnesota, one of the places Laura Ingalls Wilder had lived and where the Little House on the Prairie television series was set. While we were nearby for his funeral last month, we visited some of the historical sites related to Laura’s life, including a museum gift shop that sold copies of the beloved books I grew up reading that taught me a very one-sided version of pioneer life. From Laura’s point of view (which was then shared by me as one of her many young readers), it seemed reasonable for White families to move westward, claiming land inhabited by others—sometimes forcibly—and to begin building farms and towns upon it. A novel I recommend to explore events in this region during this time period from a more nuanced perspective is Resisting Removal: The Sandy Lake Tragedy of 1850 by Colin Mustful, a Minnesota historian (and my brother!) who is also the founder of History Through Fiction, an independent press dedicated to sharing stories that combine historical research with compelling fictional narratives. Although I grew up in Minnesota and had read the Little House books dozens of times, I never knew about the forced removal of Ojibwe citizens by the US government Resisting Removal describes—nor had I ever heard of the massacre of 38 Dakota men ordered by Abraham Lincoln in 1862—until Colin started researching both events.

While we were in Walnut Grove, Jamie’s class was on a field trip to Jamestown. We hated that he had to miss it, so we’re planning to visit the historic site as a family this spring. Having read Blood on the River, I know I will take much more interest in seeing the places mentioned in the book and learning about the historical figures depicted as part of the story, and I’m sure Jamie will too.

Our reading of this novel was timely as we approach Thanksgiving this week, a time when, as a nation, we celebrate a story about the Pilgrims and “Indians” that is part of our shared cultural history but is based on a narrative that overlooks the atrocities inflicted on the Indigenous people who inhabited this land long before the Europeans arrived. To help our students—and ourselves—understand the truth of history, we can recognize Native American Heritage Month in our classrooms; we can read historical novels like the ones I’ve mentioned; we can pair historical novels with contemporary fiction to demonstrate the through lines connecting past and present events (Kuehl, 2022); and we can seek out other resources to help students avoid “The Danger of a Single Story” (Adichie, 2009). For nonfiction reading, I recommend An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2015), which was adapted for young people by Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza (2019). The National Congress of American Indians has resources available on their website, and Virginia Tech’s American Indian and Indigenous Community Center has programs and resources designed to educate the public and to celebrate the contributions of Indigenous people historically and in the present day.

At the beginning of each chapter of Blood on the River, Carbone embeds quotations from primary source documents to show where she obtained the information to construct her story. Many of the quotations are from John Smith’s own writing about the events in Jamestown, which he wrote from England after he suffered an injury and left America to recover. Was he actually a “good guy,” then, or did he merely wield his pen, a weapon his character describes as “much more powerful than [the] sword” (Carbone, 2007, p. 88), to paint himself in a flattering light? As educators, it’s crucially important to help students think critically about the answer to that question when approaching any historical text. Who is telling the story? What is their goal in writing it? Whose perspective is left out? As we gather with family and friends for the holiday, let us be more aware of the stories we’ve been told and of our duty as engaged citizens to examine and, when necessary, disrupt them.

Rachelle Kuehl is a research scientist in the Center for Rural Education at Virginia Tech and the project manager for the Appalachian Rural Talent Initiative. Her articles about children’s literature and literacy education have appeared in journals such as The Reading Teacher, The Journal of Children’s Literature, English Journal, English in Education, and Reading Horizons.

By Heather Lynn Wright

November 15, 2022

Photo caption: Heather (far left) and her twin sister Nicole (far right) visiting Nannie (center) at her Southern Pines home in the mid-1990s. Chocolate bread pudding not pictured.

The idea of home has been heavy on my heart this semester. I’m currently working on a place-based grant within my college-level English courses where we’re studying the idea of home. I—a rural identifying person—am living and teaching in a rural community that is not my original home. There’s a greenway, but it isn’t my greenway. There are mountains, but they aren’t my mountains. There’s far more than my comfortable one stoplight and the barbecue sauce isn’t always vinegar based. 

In 2019’s Appalachian Reckoning (edited by McCarroll and Harkins), there is a haunting piece by Jim Minick, “How to Make Cornbread, or Thoughts on Being an Appalachian From Pennsylvania Who Calls Virginia Home But Now Lives in Georgia.” Minick begins with “Step 1: Home” and proceeds to give a working definition of home.

Home, verb. To find the place, as in homing pigeon; not “Let’s go home” but “Let’s home”; the journey, however long it takes.

Home, noun. The destination; the place where I’m born, again and again, every morning; where I break the fast of darkness with a glass of water drawn from this one well; where I plant and am planted; where I nourish and am nourished; where—despite ticks and bears and isolation—I want to live and die; where – somehow – I come closest to feeling I belong. (p. 356). 

As a former professor of mine would say: That’ll preach. 

How do we define home?  Is it where we’re born? Or is it where we choose to be rooted and planted? Is it where we thrive (or survive)? 

When I think about home, I think of my classroom. I’m a nester. I need to feel safe and literally at home in the area that I spend the majority of my time. My classroom feels like home and more than anything, I want my students to feel safe in that space as well. I think of my wonderful students. I teach two classes of seniors. Senior year is such an exciting—yet impossibly scary—time! There are so many choices—but so many decisions to be made. There are countless opportunities—but countless chances for plans to be derailed by decision letters that don’t begin (or end) with what we wanted in our dreams. For seniors, the fall semester is spent applying to schools. We perfect college essays and letters of interest. We fill out all the mandatory paperwork and forms. We patiently wait for decision day to come in. I encourage my students to share their good news. We celebrate and I scream and clap/flail my arms in excitement. 

For many students, what lays heavy on their minds (especially being in a small rural community) is whether “to stay” or whether “to go” the following year. The way my students describe home is such an interesting look into their experience of place (or what I perceive to be their experience). Some can’t wait to get out of town and to explore bigger cities in bigger states. Others want to pursue opportunities in their hometown and are excited about their next move. I tell them all the time: You will be where you’re supposed to be. If that’s what your heart wants, you are perfect with where you want to plant yourself in this time and in your chosen place. 

Minick has a running image of cornbread throughout his piece—this running symbol of cornbread as home, as welcoming, of safety. I told my students about chocolate bread pudding and how it tastes like love and home to me. Growing up, once a month or so, my mom would pack up my twin sister and I into the minivan and we’d go see my great-grandmother, Nannie, across the state. Nannie, regardless of what time we’d arrive, would always have homemade spaghetti (never from a can) and freshly made chocolate bread pudding. Nannie was the only one who would ever make me my favorite dessert—it’s made over a double boiler and my grandmother always asserts that it’s far too tedious of a dish. Chocolate bread pudding always tastes like home to me because of the reminder of Nannie and the feeling of being so loved and special. 

I asked my students to write recipes of their home. They could start out with a recipe that reminded them of home or they could think of the elements of their place (the mountains, the football field, their friend’s house, etc.). The results were beautiful and it was such a wonderful insight into the narratives of my students, the things that mattered to them, and the things that crafted their home. 

I truly believe that being a teacher is the greatest occupation in all the world. As teachers, we have the honor and the privilege to do life with students. If home is a journey—where we choose to plant ourselves or be rooted from some spell of time—we are one stop on the path of our students. However, if we are seeking the narratives and stories of our students—if we are honoring their identities and experiences in the classroom—hopefully we are helping to prepare them for that next step, regardless of where it might be. Sometimes it’s students that help point the way to home (even a different home than the one we may have envisioned for ourselves). 

Heather Lynn Wright, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of English education at Gardner-Webb University. This blog post was written last year, when she taught English at a rural North Carolina high school.

By Keith Perrigan

November 11, 2022

This piece originally ran in Cardinal News on November 11, 2022

Recently, a tremendous amount of attention has been paid to the decline in student achievement in Virginia since 2019. Simply enter any combination of “Virginia,” “NAEP,” “SOL,” “cut scores,” “higher expectations,” etc., and a plethora of news articles, OpEds, and reports will fill your screen. Rightly so. Ensuring our current students recover academically from the effects of the pandemic, and other factors, is critical to their personal destiny, and our Commonwealth’s collective future success. The warning siren has sounded and school divisions across the Commonwealth, and the Nation, are responding in earnest to the academic crisis that has evolved. However, we’re facing another crisis that is receiving far less attention and may be potentially more devastating. That less covered crisis is student mental health. The nonpartisan research arm of the Virginia General Assembly (JLARC), released a major new study, http://jlarc.virginia.gov/pdfs/reports/Rpt568.pdf, this week providing much needed voice to this silent crisis. 

According to the JLARC study, of the fifteen areas considered, student behavior problems were rated the most serious. It was reported that more than half of all middle school students and two-thirds of high school students are nervous, anxious, or on edge. Ten percent of middle school students and thirteen percent of high school students indicated that they had seriously considered suicide in the last twelve months. A concerning number of students also reported attempting suicide. COVID-19 obviously had an impact on these alarming statistics, but pre-pandemic changes in allowable billable services that Medicaid covers prevented, and still prevents, many students from receiving much needed mental health support. 

Just this week, more than half of school divisions in Southwest Virginia were notified that their community mental health provider was ending their partnership beginning December 12, 2022. This sudden and unexpected change is partially due to difficulty in receiving reimbursements from Medicaid because of changes at the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services. This unexpected announcement will significantly intensify the problem in Virginia’s highest poverty region. 

Unfortunately, there is another sneaky factor that is quietly impacting student academic performance and student mental health. That factor is absenteeism. One in every five students across the Commonwealth was chronically absent (missing 18 days of school or more) last year. If we learned nothing else from the pandemic, we now have clear data that in-person learning, and face-to-face interactions are key to both student achievement and student wellbeing. Virginia has a partial solution to this issue which is to account for chronic absenteeism in school accreditation. However, that is not enough for many families who remain disengaged. 

Unfortunately, Virginia provides very little support to students whose parents don’t ensure they attend school regularly. The courts are already inundated with crime and mental health issues and can’t effectively deal with truancy. Additionally, Virginia is one of 24 states that doesn’t recognize educational neglect in its Code. As a result, the Department of Social Services is unable to support chronically absent students either and is already overwhelmed with their current caseloads.  

It goes without saying that if students aren’t at school, they miss valuable instruction and suffer academically. However, chronically absent students also miss out on meals, behavioral supports, mental health resources, and other important services that most schools now provide to students daily. The cold hard data released in the JLARC report shows that we are in the middle of a crisis which the pandemic has exacerbated and now is the time to act.  

Thankfully, JLARC released recommendations for how to deal with some of these issues.  Those recommendations include allowing psychologists from other fields to be provisionally licensed to work in schools and assisting school divisions in making partnerships with community health providers. These recommendations may help, but more must be done during the upcoming General Assembly session.  

One simple change that will help improve test scores and student mental health is to provide chronically absent students needed support by adding “educational neglect” to the Code of Virginia and to provide additional resources to DSS to support these families. The purpose for this is not to be punitive, but to open doors to students who need support regarding school attendance that aren’t currently available. Schools must continue to work hard to engage families, but chronic absenteeism is a community issue that will take a community solution. This is especially true in high poverty communities where absenteeism is largely a factor of conditions created by poverty. 

Another change that could have immediate impact is to provide more flexibility in Medicaid billing to ensure Community Service Boards can provide the mental health services our students need. School divisions have been using Federal COVID response funds (ESSER) to fill those gaps, but those one-time monies will run out soon. There have also been proposals before to add Medicaid navigators to the Virginia Department of Education to help schools better leverage Federal resources to provide health services to students. It’s worth considering how these positions could provide technical advising to schools, especially small high poverty schools in Virginia. The mental health of our students should not be negatively impacted because of bureaucratic red tape. Medicaid should be a benefit, not a barrier. 

Virginia’s very future is at stake as we deal with the academic, behavioral, and mental health needs of our students. Talking about mental health and developing solutions is much less popular than addressing student achievement, and certainly much harder. However, we can’t significantly improve student achievement if we don’t ensure that chronically absent students return to a school environment where their mental health and other needs are being met. I hope the General Assembly will consider giving voice to all three issues during the upcoming Session. Virginia’s students deserve it and the successful future of our Commonwealth depends on it.

Keith Perrigan, Ed.D., is the Superintendent of Bristol Virginia Public Schools and the President of the Coalition of Small & Rural Schools of Virginia.

By Jennifer C. Mann

October 6, 2022

This piece originally appeared in EdNC on September 26, 2022.
Photo credit: Eric Mann

I’m writing this for others like myself — for those of us who grew up poor and rural and who never saw ourselves in educational leadership or among educational scholars. Growing up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in a town with a thousand people and thousands of cattle and chickens and acres of tobacco and grain, I never knew anyone with a PhD. I only vaguely understood what one was.

I left my home at 18 in search of a successful life, which for me began with college far from my rural community. I found myself in Raleigh, North Carolina, with the idea that success meant no one could look at me and recognize a background of poverty and rurality. For the next 18 plus years of my life, I carried this belief with me — perpetually trying to cover my roots. 

Looking for “normal people”

I spent 13 years as a public school teacher in Wake County and eventually started secretly dreaming of being part of real educational change. I remember thinking that I wanted to get my PhD in education but repeatedly saying to myself that people from backgrounds like mine aren’t made for spaces like Academia.

I attended an open house at North Carolina State University with one goal — to see if there were any professors or prospective students who were “normal people.” I didn’t define that for myself, but I always knew normal people when I saw them — the sort of people who had life experiences like mine. Fortunately for me, the education booth was being represented by a professor from a working class family, who talked and sounded fairly normal.

To this day I believe that had that booth been represented by an Ivy league educated professor who was the child of professors, I would have walked away, reinforcing the belief that this space wasn’t for me. I was still skeptical, but I applied. I got in. And I’ve been working on my PhD for a couple years now. 

Staying the course

A few realities stand out to me. Most academic literature I read is written by people unlike myself. I sit in classes with people unlike myself. I exchange ideas with people who don’t understand everything I bring with me. But that to me is why it’s important to be in this space.

On the lonely days, I tell myself I’m here to train up the next generation of teachers, and it’s important, especially for future educators from poor rural communities to be educated by someone they can see themselves in. So I stay the course. 

Recognizing rural community wealth

It wasn’t until recently that I did more than stay the course. I attended a summit on rural education at Virginia Tech, and while there, for the first time, I was in a room full of professors and PhD students from backgrounds like mine.

But I noticed something. They weren’t trying to hide their roots like I often do. Not a hint of shame was detected when they mentioned where they were from — instead they were filled with pride over their rural backgrounds. That weekend they spoke of the rural cultural wealth within their communities, including rural resourcefulness, rural ingenuity, rural familism, and rural community unity. They showed me that there are brilliant scholars from rural backgrounds, and that I ought to lean into the truth of my experiences. 

Rewriting rural narratives

So this article is my first step. I want other educators who might be thinking that educational leadership and scholarship isn’t for people like them to know that it is for people like us. We have a wealth of knowledge and experience to share with the world. We cannot allow a false perception of us or our communities be a hindrance to true success. It’s important for us to be in these spaces, making decisions that impact education on large scales.

We understand valuable truths that some others don’t. Our presence in these spaces enriches the spaces — if we are our authentic selves. Being my authentic self isn’t so simple when all my life society, media, and texts have written a narrative about my rural community that oversimplifies it at best and negatively stereotypes it at worst. It’s on us to rewrite the narrative and show to the educational community that rural educators, leaders, and scholars possess an incredible wealth of knowledge, largely gained through our rural experiences. 

So if you’ve secretly dreamed of higher education, I want you to know what I wish someone had told and shown me — there are people like us here, and we deserve to be here.

Jennifer C. Mann is a doctoral student in the Literacy and English Language Arts Education program at N.C. State. Her research includes critical literacy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and the social emotional well-being of marginalized students. She has spent 15 years teaching students ranging from kindergarten to college, spending the majority of that time as a high school English Literature teacher, specializing in instruction to culturally and linguistically diverse students.

By Rachelle Kuehl

Last October, I had the opportunity to visit a small school about an hour from my home in Southwest Virginia. The view along the drive to this school, with the sun rising behind the mountains casting light on thousands of orange and yellow leaves in their full fall glory, was nothing less than spectacular. After I gushed to the principal about the beauty of her workplace, she walked me down to meet the four third graders with whom I’d be working that morning. The bubbly students—three girls and a boy—quickly filled me in on their familial relationships with one another. The boy and one of the girls were cousins, and the girl’s mom (the boy’s aunt) had been their first-grade teacher. A second girl said she was probably cousins with the boy, too, because they had the same last name, but they were never quite sure how their families connected—except, they told me, their grannies were both cousins with the school secretary I’d just met in the front office. The third girl explained that her three older brothers were all teenagers, so I was surprised when, later, she introduced me to one of them in the hallway—I hadn’t realized the school served students from kindergarten all the way to seventh grade.

Having spent my own years as a teacher and student in suburban and urban settings, I wasn’t used to the warm and friendly—and quiet—atmosphere of this type of rural school, which housed only 136 students across the eight grade levels. That day, I worked alongside the district’s gifted education specialist, who split her time across multiple sites and was thus making her first visit of the year to this school as well. Among rural districts, this one is somewhat unique in that it employs a full-time specialist to manage the gifted education program and to pull identified students for advanced lessons. Even so, it is still a challenge for her to meet the needs of all academically talented students in the district’s middle school, high school, and four elementary schools, all situated in a large, geographically widespread district intersected by mountains. As the only designated gifted specialist in the district, she does not have colleagues with whom to plan lessons and share ideas. In other rural districts, one teacher is often tasked with providing services to both gifted students and students in need of special education, or perhaps the media specialist is asked to carve a few hours out of her week to teach advanced learners; in either case, being responsible for two or more distinctly different teaching roles certainly complicates an educator’s day-to-day work life.

Much of our work in recent years has been focused on cultivating talent in rural schools and meeting the needs of learners that show high academic potential. While the advantages of teaching in rural places are many, there are also unique challenges, and we understand that the challenges affecting rural gifted teachers apply to rural educators across all grade levels and subjects. Primarily, we have heard again and again from teachers who feel isolated in their schools as the only person who teaches a particular subject or grade level. With smaller budgets, rural districts often cannot afford to fund attendance at professional conferences where teachers could make collegial connections, and the remote locations of some rural schools makes travel to such conferences unfeasible as well. Yet, rural teachers are committed to their work and to their students, and they long to make continuous improvements to their teaching practice that afford their students every opportunity to pursue advanced educational and career prospects after graduation. Rural teachers know their students (and their students’ families) well, and they know what it takes to reach their particular students in their particular place.

In response to the needs we’ve heard expressed again and again by rural educators, we have built this website to serve as a resource of connection and affirmation for rural teachers. We’re calling it a collaboratory—a place to share information, stories, and expertise. We invite you, as rural teachers, to lend your voice to this community by sharing lesson plans, writing blog posts, and recommending professional resources and children’s books other rural teachers can use to enhance their teaching practice. We’re launching this site with the hopes that you will become an active participant in building it from the ground up. We value your experience, your insight, and your commitment to students, and we hope we can honor your work now and for many years to come.

Rachelle Kuehl is a research scientist in the Center for Rural Education at Virginia Tech and the project manager for the Appalachian Rural Talent Initiative.