A Rural Perspective
An apology to my readers: I am not a blogger. However, the current political and public climate surrounding conversations about schools and learning prompts me to speak up in ways that are more public.
In my heart, I am a teacher. Always have been. Always will be. For 29 years, I taught in two small rural Mississippi schools. At my last school, I was the only teacher of 8th grade reading and English students. Lucky me! That is the grade level and two of the three subject areas that Mississippi posts in its newspapers to demonstrate NCLB compliance for accountability. It was not just the school's aggregated scores that appeared in the paper – it was MY students’ scores. As the lonely,only reading and English teacher for my grade in my school, I could have suffered from the geographic isolation that is so often part of a rural teacher’s professional life. Fortunately, I was part of a National Writing Project local site where I had access to a rich, professional learning community. I was not alone.
Today I am a Program Associate with the National Writing Project. As part of my work, I take what I have learned about living, teaching, and learning in a rural place and advocate for rural teachers, and students. My rural colleagues face challenges that are common to the education process everywhere, but they also face unique challenges that are often invisible in discussions about school reform and good teaching. Even with the “rural preference” that is given in some Race to the Top funding competitions, with few exceptions rural schools find themselves in the margin of educational policy. (The I3 competition is an example of how little today’s policymakers seem to understand about how innovation and reform happens in rural schools. I marvel that New York City Schools received “rural advantage points” in the I3 competition. But that is another story.)
The National Writing Project, unlike some educational agencies, does not leave rural teachers in the margins. At the heart of NWP is the notion that “every person is an accomplished writer, engaged learner, and active participant in a digital, interconnected world.” NWP intentionally promotes equitable opportunities for teachers across geographic boundaries. Rural writing project teachers have no need to compete against their urban colleagues. Rather, they are invited into a professional community that values their knowledge of the unique needs of rural students as well as the educational concerns they hold in common with their urban colleagues. Rural voices are integral to the collective national conversations about teaching and learning and the data that inform NWP research.
Many engaged in rural schooling have come to believe that rural educational innovation and reform will not come from investments in scripted programs or competition for funding. Rather it will come from investing in professional development and leadership growth opportunities for “lonely, only” teachers in small schools across America. This is what the National Writing Project does best. It is one of the few educational organizations today that understands that a rural teacher may be the one - the one who is the entire high school Science Department, the one who teaches reading and English to an entire grade level, the one with four preparations for four different subjects, the one EL specialist who serves an entire K-12 school – who may change a school by re-forming her classroom practice and understanding of student learning.
NWP matters.
NWP values the voices of teachers in the smallest most remote parts of our nation, in the largest urban centers, and places in between. Listen to their stories.
#NWP
#rural education
#writing project
