Posts Tagged ‘place based education Howard SD’

Youth: Renewing the Countryside

August 18th, 2009

My roots as a high school teacher draw me towards seeing young people as a big part of the answer for the future for rural communities.  All too often, however, we celebrate young people who succeed in urban areas, while neglecting those who thrive in our own rural communities.  That’s why books such as Youth: Renewing the Countryside are so important. 

Produced in a partnership between Renewing the Countryside and Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), the book highlights stories of entrepreneurial young people (under age 35) from all fifty states who are doing something special in their rural communities. 

Jan Joannides of Renewing the Countryside offers a more complete description of the book in the video below.

I picked up a copy of the book at the Midwest Rural Assembly, and quickly fell in love with it.  It’s the type of book that could inspire other young people to see a future for themselves in rural places.

That thought caused me to reflect on work in Howard High School (SD) in the mid-1990s.  Recognizing that young people know more about life in urban areas than in their own communities, we attempted to embed the study of place in our classes.  For instance, one exceptional teacher, Mary Stangohr, used the book Broken Heartland to help students understand how the changing face of agriculture was affecting their lives.  Powerful learning.

After reading Youth:  Renewing the Countryside, I’d recommend it to any innovative high school educator, seeking to inspire their students.  Just reading and discussing it in the classroom would be awesome.  But I could see teachers using it to inspire their students to produce a book of their own with stories from their community or region.  After all, as Jan highlights in the video, Youth was produced by young people.

But barriers, perceived and real, will make this unlikely.  The biggest barrier may very well be cost: where does a teacher find the money to buy books like this in times of ever tightening school budgets?

If you are a high school teacher and would like to engage your students in this type of project, I’d recommend that you make your desires known and then work to make it a reality.  My guess is that if you let enough people know about your desire to inspire young people, someone or some organization will eventually hear and agree with you that this is an important project.  It won’t be easy.  But being a part of the solution for your community will be well worth it.

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Posted in Community Development, Economic Development, Gen Y, In the News, Rural, Youth | Comments (0)