Teaching in Rural Places

Amy Price Azano is a teacher educator in the School of Education at Virginia Tech. She grew up in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and focuses her scholarship on issues of equity for rural learners. Devon Brenner transplanted from Michigan to Mississippi over 20 years ago. A professor of literacy teacher education at Mississippi State University, she engages in research that focuses on rural education policy and practice.Jayne Downey is a professor at Montana State University where she directs the Center for Research on Rural Education. Born and raised on a farm on the prairies, her research and service are dedicated to working with and for rural schools and communities around the world. Karen Eppley is a former fifth grade teacher who has lived her entire life in one rural valley. Her research interest is at the intersection of literacy education and rural education. She is an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Penn State University where she teaches in the reading specialist certification program.Ann K. Schulte is a professor at California State University, Chico. She has been a teacher and teacher educator in primarily rural contexts for 30 years. Her scholarship interests focus on self-study, teacher identity, and university-community partnerships in rural contexts.

• Introduction; 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

In 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