Resource Topics

Teaching Writing - Rural Education

Rural Educators Work to Strengthen Teaching about the Holocaust

August 2008
Partnering with the Holocaust Educators Network, NWP supported teacher-consultants from the Rural Sites Network to attend the Memorial Library Summer Seminar on Holocaust Education. The seminar aims to help teachers develop a comprehensive curriculum for teaching and writing about the Holocaust and other difficult issues. More ›

Rural Leaders, Rural Places: Problem, Privilege, and Possibility

May 2008
Kathleen Budge
Kathleen Budge reveals the disconnect between educators' feelings of privilege residing in a rural community and problems they see for their students in these communities. She calls for "critical leadership of place" based on awareness of this paradox. More ›

Rural Poverty and the Importance of Place Value

May 2008
Angela Kirby
Angela Kirby, a teacher with the Crossroads Writing Project in Michigan, stresses that the education of rural disadvantaged youth needs to focus especially on guiding these students toward living well within their communities. More ›

An Annotated Bibliography of Resources on Rural Poverty

November 2007
Ann Healy-Raymond , Kathy Rowland
Pursuing their interest in the impact of poverty on rural students, Ann Healy-Raymond and Kathy Rowland compiled this bibliography during an RSN Resource Development Retreat. More ›

Celebrating the Rural Poet Laureate and Rural Poetry

July 2007
The Rural Sites Network collaborated with the Rural School and Community Trust to create the Rural Poetry of Place project. Eight sites were awarded grants to support the teaching and celebration of place-based poetry. More ›

Honoring Dialect and Culture: Pathways to Student Success on High-Stakes Writing Assessments

English Journal, March 2007
Michelle Crotteau
When a speaker of Appalachian English fails the state's writing assessment, Michelle Crotteau, a teacher-consultant with the Central Virginia Writing Project, demonstrates that appropriate strategies and respect for home language allows for both authentic writing and successful test preparation. More ›

Why Rural Matters 2007

October 2007
Jerry Johnson, Marty Strange
Why Rural Matters 2007, the fourth in a biennial research series by the Rural School and Community Trust, reveals new trends facing rural education—most notably an overall increase in enrollment in rural schools and an increase in rural minority students. More ›

A Geography of Stories: Helping Secondary Students Come to Voice Through Readings, People, and Place

The Quarterly, 2003
Phip Ross
The following excerpt from the newly released National Writing Project/Teachers College Press book articulates how students' awareness of personal identity contributes to a unique sense of voice. Here, Phip Ross elaborates on how the transcription of people's experiences and surroundings can create an immortal and meaningful expression of who we are in relation to our communities. More ›

Rural Voices Book Proves Timing Is Everything

The Voice, Fall 2003
Amy Bauman
This book, that advocates for an educational system based on a localized, teacher- and community-driven curriculum, is the result of research conducted by Nebraska Writing Project teachers in NWP's Rural Voices, Country Schools project. More ›

Satellite Sites Overcome Distance Barriers in West Virginia

The Voice, March-April 2003
Laura Tracy Baisden
To overcome the geographic obstacles of Appalachia, a satellite site of the Marshall University Writing Project was developed in Logan County, West Virginia. Baisden outlines some of the key components of building a satellite site. More ›

Talking, Oklahoman to Oklahoman

The Voice, September-October 2002
Barbara Howry
Students from an urban community in Oklahoma, stereotyped by students from Georgia during an online exchange, learn a lesson when they realize they have stereotyped another group of students. More ›

Granny's Little Girl

The Voice, May-June 2001
Jackie Wesson
This is a poem written during the 2001 NWP Rural Sites Network Retreat. More ›

Rural Sites Teachers Inspire Community Connections

The Voice, January-February 2001
Phip Ross
An overview of three different community-based projects--by Mary Beth Crovetto, Amy Hottovy, and Colleen Myers--presented at the Rural Sites meeting in Milwaukee. More ›

Rural Voices Radio Launches Three New Pieces

The Voice, March-April 2001
Laura Paradise
Teacher coordinators from Hawai`i, Maine, and Mississippi gathered on the UC Berkeley campus to produce an eight-minute CD that will be used to introduce the new Rural Voices Radio programs. The online article includes printed transcripts of "Mama's Button Box," by Suzanne Thompson, "Come with Me," by Ken Martin, and "I Have a Weakness," by Susie Jacobs. More ›

Sky's the Limit with Rural Voices Radio

The Voice, May-June 2000
Kim Stafford
More ›

Wall of Literacy Learning Exemplifies Student Writing

The Voice, January-February 2000
Lynne Alvine
Members of the Rural Voices team and the site directors from the Southcentral Pennsylvania Writing Project create a "wall of literacy" which exemplifies students' writing development across the age ranges. More ›

I Am a Teacher in a Country School

The Voice, Spring 1999
Kim Stafford
More ›

The Truth About Lightning Bugs: What Our Children Know

The Quarterly, Spring 1999
Kim Patterson
Patterson argues that students from rural and economically deprived backgrounds come to school with valuable experience to share. The teacher's job is to find ways to use this knowledge and experience. More ›

Listen to the Rural Voices

The Voice, Fall 1997
Supported by a grant from the Annenberg Rural Challenge, Rural Voices, Country Schools is capturing effective teaching and learning practices in rural schools in order to make quality rural education visible locally, regionally, and nationally. More ›

Future Faulkners of America: Writing from the Rural Sites

The Quarterly, Summer 1995
National Writing Project rural sites director Ann Dobie offers four pieces of writing by students in rural West Virginia middle schools: Mike McWhorter, Erin Kalbaugh, Leann Bennett, and Tiffany Danelle Arthur. The brief essays, which explore situations and describe settings unfamiliar to most city folk, give a vivid experience of their writers' lives and personalities. More ›

The Mother Tongue: Takin' It to the Woods

The Quarterly, Summer 1995
Patti Powell Couvillon
Patti Powell Couvillon tells of her experience teaching a multi-grade class in the remote community of Elmer, Louisiana. At first she had no idea how to work with the students. Then she realized that if students are to write well they need to reflect first on who they are and what they bring to the classroom. She came up with activities that allowed them to celebrate themselves and their community, including writing about animals and interviewing elders. She shares examples of their work. More ›

Stepping Stones

The Quarterly, Spring/Summer 1994
Phyllis J. Owens
Phyllis Owens, a high school English teacher in McDowell County, West Virginia, a region burdened with ninety percent unemployment, joins the writing project and invigorates her teaching. Turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones, she gets grants for such projects as a student Shakespeare presentation and an anthology of student writing depicting the heritage of McDowell County. She develops a host of writing projects around the simplest of resources: a stone. More ›

The View from a Rural Site

The Quarterly, Fall 1993
Ann Dobie
More ›