Description
Book SynopsisThis 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 justiceâwork 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 focusâfrom 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.
Trade ReviewIn my work as a teacher educator, I have observed that rural education is underrepresented in practice-focused work designed for new teachers. [This book] fills that important gap. It is that rare text that serves as a primer, as a philosophical framework and practical guide all in one.—Jesse Longhurst, Assistant Professor, Southern Oregon University, excerpt from Theory & Practice in Rural Education, 2021, Vol. 11, No. 1, Pp. 142-144.
Those first days in a classroom as a teacher are always full of both difficulty and dreams, but teachers beginning their practice in a rural community often have the addition of complex social and economic issues that are rarely discussed in their preservice texts…In Teaching in Rural Places: Thriving in Classrooms, Schools, and Communities, Amy Price Azano, Devon Brenner, Jayne Downey, Karen Eppley, and Ann K. Schulte position teaching in rural schools as an act of social justice and write the textbook that preservice and beginning teachers serving in rural schools need to take on this work.—Sky Marietta, Assistant Professor, University of the Cumberlands, excerpt from Teachers College Record, Date Published: September 27, 2021
Table of ContentsIntroduction; Section One: Rural Contexts; 1: Becoming a Rural Teacher; 2: Social Justice and Rural Communities; 3: Understanding Rural Places; 4: Why Place Matters; Section Two: Thriving in Rural Communities; 5: Rural Literacies; 6: Understanding Strengths and Assets in Rural Communities; 7: Families as Partners in Rural Communities; 8: From Here or Away: Relating to Students; Section Three: Thriving in Rural Schools; 9: Building Professional Networks in Rural Schools; 10: Policy and the Rural Teacher; 11: Responding to Trauma; 12: Multi-grade Teaching; Section Four: Thriving in Rural Classrooms; 13: Place-Conscious Instruction; 14: Technology for Learning in the Rural Classroom; 15: Diversity in the Rural Classroom; 16: Teaching Exceptional Learners in Rural Classrooms; 17: Evidence in the Rural Classroom; 18: Teaching as Inquiry: What Works in Rural Classrooms; 19: Thriving as a Rural Teacher
