Subscribe to this blog 
Mistakes of a first-year Teacher
November 17th, 2009 by Mike Knutson
I have a confession to make. When I started my teaching career at Tripp High School in 1990, I had no idea what it meant to teach in a small rural school. Having grown up in Hartford, SD, a small town just outside of Sioux Falls, I always thought of myself as a rural kid. But in reality, my high school experience was closer to that of a suburban school than a rural school. And more importantly, nothing in my college teacher preparation courses suggested that teaching in rural schools was any different than teaching in urban settings.
Case in point: During my first year of teaching, I introduced a personal finance unit into my micro economics class. Hoping to show my students how they could be “smart shoppers,” I demonstrated how they could save money by switching from buying individual cans of pop from the school’s pop machine to buying pop in bulk. And if they were really smart, I suggested, they would drive to Sioux Falls to buy at a discounter like Sam’s Club — because that’s where the real savings could be realized.
If you’ve lived in a rural community, you recognize the stupidity of my example. But for those who don’t, let me explain:
First, I did not factor in the cost of driving the 90 miles to Sioux Falls. (Boy would my green friends today have a problem with this.)
Second, it did not consider the importance of patronizing a business in one’s community. Our local grocery story displayed good community citizenship, while Sam’s Club didn’t know (or care) that Tripp, SD even existed.
And finally, the model for saving money I shared didn’t factor in how the city council would need to ask residents to pay more in property taxes to make up for the declining sales tax revenues resulting from out-of-town purchasing.
I’ve been thinking about examples like this a lot lately as I work on the South Dakota Partnership for Teacher Quality. One of the roles the Rural Learning Center will play in the grant is to help first year teachers learn how to live and teach in rural communities. In some ways, this will involve similar concepts offered by Kyle Ezell in Get Urban. (see post for more info.)
Teaching and living in rural communities is different from teaching in urban communities. I learned that the hard way. I wonder how many teacher education programs acknowledge these differences as they prepare teachers? If they did, we might see young teachers become life-long rural educators.
Photo Credit: FXR - Flickr
Tags: education, SDPTQ, teaching
Posted in Rural, education | Comments (
2 )
November 17th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Training geared toward first-year teachers in rural towns — heck of an idea!
November 17th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
I think most everyone who moves to a rural community could probably benefit from understanding rural places better. We’d love to hear ideas on how to best make to accomplish this goal.