Rural Teacher Corps

Nevada is our featured state for the 50 States in 50 Weeks project! Each week, National Rural Education Association and I Am A Rural Teacher show how vast rural... America is. Check out an excerpt below from Toni Wombaker of Pahrump, NV (Rosemary Clarke Middle School), about how her school responded to the COVID-19 closures. Full transcript: https://buff.ly/2xklthM | Submit your story: http://buff.ly/3d7hWUe | Rosemary Clarke Middle School "I live and teach in Pahrump, Nevada at the only middle school in our community. Our town is home to approximately 36,000 people. We have a pre-k campus, four elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. I teach four periods of 6th grade STEM (STEAM..I love art) and one period of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Lego Simple and Powered Machines class at Rosemary Clarke Middle School. My husband is the principal of our middle school, and fortunately has two amazing assistant principals, which is the only reason I can work at his school. I am glad to be under his leadership during this time. He has supported his teachers, staff, and students so that we can do the best job possible in these uncharted waters. He has been out several days delivering Chromebooks to students at their homes that the school is loaning to them. Our school district has been amazing. They have managed to continue providing meals to students through most of the shutdown, except for a 15-day period after a school employee tested positive that was delivering food. That has passed and they will resume distributing food just in a different, more cautious manner starting next week. We have shifted to this online schooling as best we could, and I think we did so fairly quickly. What this online learning has done for me as a sixth-grade teacher is challenge me beyond what I ever thought. I have cried tears of frustration and I have cried tears of overwhelming pride. There have been moments when I am interacting with a student or reading something they wrote that I have been moved to tears and feel such a deep connection with them. There have also been moments I want to scream at the top of my lungs because what seem to be such simple directions to follow, I just can't seem to get some students to follow. I use a classroom management tool in my classroom called Classcraft. It is perfect for the STEAM classroom because it really addresses many aspects of what STEAM should be, in my opinion. I have been so very thankful for this platform for many reasons. I can send class announcements to students or parents, I can reward students with points, I can have students access lessons, and it brings some consistency as we have used this all year. I decided early on to attempt to make this online adventure as close to routine as possible. This one decision has been a source of great joy and extreme frustration. In my classroom, each day as I take attendance, I have students watch an inspirational video clip. I also have a daily precept written on the board that students can write down if they choose to each day at the beginning of class. I also do a daily challenge that is on the board. These three things all took place during the first 5 to 10 minutes of my class. As I was faced with what to do from a distance, I decided the students’ social and emotional well-being was probably most important during this time, and I really felt like students could benefit from these routines I had in place at the beginning of each class before we went online. That was, IF I could figure out a way to do these from afar. It didn't take me long utilizing the features that Classcraft has available to create two daily quests, one for the inspirational video and a response, and one for the daily precept and daily challenge with a place to guess at the challenge. I also implemented a weekly STEAM assignment along with the two other STEM teachers at my school. We provide the students with several STEM based choices for the week and they are to pick three to complete and report on by each Friday. These activities vary and range from online coding, virtual museum and national park tours, reading scientific articles, to building catapults and exploring ratios with a bag of candies. I made a goal to make sure to respond to each and every student during this process and every evening I respond to every student's inspirational video response and I also let the students that guessed on the daily challenge know if they got it correct, and if they didn't what the correct response was. Some days I feel like maybe that is a bit more than I should have attempted, but every day as I read the students responses, I am glad I am doing what I am. I am definitely working harder than I ever have and in different ways. Maybe the source of my frustration and heartbreak is also a blessing in disguise and a silver lining..." Read the rest of this story on our website: https://buff.ly/2xklthM

We are asking rural communities to share how COVID-19 is impacting them and how teachers and teacher-leaders are adapting in the face of nationwide school closu...res. Read below for a great story from Katie Mueller of Homer, NE. You can share yours here: http://buff.ly/3d7hWUe | Nebraska Rural Community Schools Association | Homer Community School "I Zoom each week with my third graders. It is a great way for us to stay connected, have some laughs, and be there for each other during this unique time. It almost feels like we are still together in our classroom, even though we are on a screen. It gives the kids something to look forward to each week and creates a small sense of normalcy. Each week, we do a different activity for fun. These are the activities I have done so far: Everyone wore their pajamas and told us about them; Show and tell - pick an item and explain it to us; Show and tell about your pet (could be farm animals); Scavenger hunt - I give students an item and they go run around their house trying to find it. The first one to bring the item back and show me on the screen wins that round. They have really loved this! A few things we have hunted for: a purple crayon, a red hat, a trophy, an apple, a rubber duck, a sibling, a remote, sunglasses, a mug, etc. I also give each child a chance to give the rest of us an object to hunt for; Drawing vocabulary words of the week- I explain a vocabulary word to the students. They draw a picture representation of that word and then hold it up for us all to see. We discuss each picture; Easter bingo. I mailed them an Easter bingo card, and we are all played it next Monday!

Continuing our Nebraska feature this week, here's another highlight from the Cornhusker State! We are asking rural communities to share how COVID-19 is impactin...g them and how teachers and teacher-leaders are adapting in the face of nationwide school closures. Read below for a submission from Kathy Urbanek of Mitchell, NE (Mitchell Public Schools). You can share yours here: http://buff.ly/3d7hWUe | Nebraska Rural Community Schools Association "Here are two of our students at Mitchell sewing masks for our essential workers at school. Jessica Splichal is a junior and her brother, Jonah, is in 7th grade. We needed masks for our cafeteria staff and paras that have been putting together meals everyday for our students, and Jessica stepped up to help!"