Teaching English in Rural Communities

Robert Petrone is associate professor of literacy education and critical youth studies at the University of Missouri. His research focuses on the intersections of learning and literacy in youth cultures, textual representations and theoretical reconceptualizations of adolescence/adolescents, and English (teacher) education. He is coauthor (with Sophia Sarigianides and Mark A. Lewis) of Re-thinking the “Adolescent” in Adolescent Literacy. Allison Wynhoff Olsen is associate professor of English education, writing, and linguistics at Montana State University, where she is also a director of the Yellowstone Writing Project. Her current research includes explorations of rural English teaching, with a focus on learning over time, teachers’ emotional strain, and pre-service teacher preparations; examining intersections between talk and writing; and a development of a particular kind of argument, a listening argument.

As an African American educator who grew up in a rural setting and whose family history is tied to the rural Midwest, I welcome a study like Teaching English in Rural Communities. Petrone and Wynhoff Olsen don’t write about rural folks; they write with them and for them in this enlightening work. Offering an approach to teaching English to rural students that helps them to “critically engage” and confront constructions of rurality that demean and devalue their own experiences and identity, this book shows us the ways that rural English teachers are already empowering their students to see themselves as vital and important thinkers, acters, and citizens. In a cultural moment when the rural/urban divide seems as profound as ever and rural spaces are dismissed as nowheres whose only value lies in what they can provide for cities, Petrone and Wynhoff Olsen emphasize a place-based pedagogy that encourages rural students to develop a critical awareness of their own identities, the places where they live, and how both are perceived culturally. Most importantly to me, Petrone and Wynhoff Olsen embrace the diversity of rural experience, highlighting decolonizing pedagogies that recognize the sovereignty of indigenous people and their land and acknowledging the existence of BIPOC folks in rural spaces. Resisting the conflation of whiteness and rurality, this study demonstrates the ways that Critical Rural English Pedagogy can provide a powerful challenge to popular conceptions of rurality through the deployment of a critically-engaged, decolonizing English curricula.

• Foreword: Valerie Kinloch, PhDAcknowledgementsPreface: Robert Petrone & Allison Wynhoff Olsen Part One: Why a Critical Rural English Pedagogy?Chapter One—Moving Toward a Critical Rural English PedagogyRobert Petrone & Allison Wynhoff OlsenPart Two: Inside Rural English ClassroomsChapter Two—We Ain’t Much to Look At: Teaching about Rurality through Literary TextsAlli Behrens, Robert Petrone, & Allison Wynhoff OlsenChapter Three—Who has a “Place” in Place-Based Pedagogy?: Indigenizing Rural English Education Melissa Horner, Robert Petrone, & Allison Wynhoff OlsenChapter Four—Linking Local Communities to Critical Rural English PedagogiesElizabeth Reierson, Catherine Dorian, Robert Petrone, & Allison Wynhoff Olsen Part Three: Moving ForwardChapter Five—Re-thinking Race/ism & Rurality in English Education Robert Petrone, Melissa Horner, & Allison Wynhoff Olsen Chapter Six—Opportunities & Challenges in Moving Toward a Critical Rural English PedagogyRobert Petrone & Allison Wynhoff OlsenAppendix A: Assignment Sheet for Textbook EntryAppendix B: Student SampleIndex