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 language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | Reclaiming the Rural |
Subtitle of host publication | Essays on Literacy, Rhetoric, and Pedagogy |
Publisher | Southern Illinois University Press |
Pages | 223-237 |
Number of pages | 15 |
ISBN (Print) | 0809330652, 9780809330652 |
State | Published - 2011 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General Social Sciences