Sustaining a rural Pennsylvania community: Negotiating rural literacies and sustainability

Thomas Butler, Jacqueline Edmondson

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Tom Butler is a superintendent in a rural Pennsylvania school located in a mountainous region of the state where most people work in metal and plastic industries. On a blustery winter morning in January 2008, he convened a meeting with elementary and middle-school reading teachers in his district to discuss how children in his rural community were being taught to read. The meeting table had special gifts for each educator: maple syrup, goat cheese fudge, and cookies from a local farm. The pastries came from a local woman and were still warm. Tom was sharing some of the gems the local community had to offer. His message was both implicit and explicit, and his agenda for the meeting was clear: he wanted the teachers to teach the children to read in ways that connected to their rural community, and he planned to spend the rest of the morning discussing how they could move in this direction. He wanted children to engage in rural literacies that would sustain the community.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationReclaiming the Rural
Subtitle of host publicationEssays on Literacy, Rhetoric, and Pedagogy
PublisherSouthern Illinois University Press
Pages223-237
Number of pages15
ISBN (Print)0809330652, 9780809330652
StatePublished - 2011

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Social Sciences

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