Pip Final Report

Professional Inquiry Project Report Aileen Davidson Wilson Colony, Allenby School ELA 2-9, Science 2-9 Inquiry Focus Question: To what extent has and does public academic education result in the marginalisation of rural people and lifestyles? How can we make public education work in rural areas? Considerations and Conclusions I began this inquiry project knowing I wanted to pursue something I was truly interested in, that benefitted and fit with my practicum placement, and that provided resources and perspectives for other teachers. Prior to beginning this practicum, I had already completed other inquiry projects related to vocational vs. academic education in our public schools in rural and urban settings, as well as in regards to how the public education system has led to the demise of rural communities by teaching students to leave. When I began my practicum at the colony, I realized there were many different contextual variables than in a regular rural or urban public school. I began thinking about why these students attend school, and how these years of formal public education benefit them in later life on the colony. I realized that in many ways, the curriculum does not fit with their context and that as teacher’s we simply adjust it and create ways to make the curriculum fit to their ideologies and context. I began wondering why we do not do this in all rural schools and remembered the idea of “place-based education” that I learned about in a Science Curriculum and Instruction course with Dr. Sharon Pelech. This is when I began with the question of not only how public education marginalises rural people, but how we can find a solution – how we can make education work in rural settings. I began my research by reviewing again academic sources that explore the marginalization of rural people through the education system and investigating why the education has failed students seeking to continue living a rural lifestyle. I found a decent amount of research for general rural settings, but none for Hutterite colonies specifically. I then decided to investigate specific teaching strategies,

focusing mainly on place-based and community-based education. These are strategies that develop attachment to place, community involvement, and problem solving skills, entrepreneurialism, and creativity. I began by reading about these strategies and philosophies of education and collecting research, deciding to include the research on my website as helpful tools for others who may want to implement place or community based education. In my practicum classroom, I have attempted some very simple place-based education strategies, but have largely focused on forming my philosophy of education around place and community based frameworks based on the context that I am in. I have tried to instill the value in my classroom that school time is not “my time” but the student’s time. When the students are off topic, not listening, or otherwise not doing their work, I remind them that they are wasting their own time and that we are here in school for them. This is an important value to instill in the Hutterite context, where school is a place you attend because you have to, until you can leave and begin your “real life” education at age fifteen. In English, I began by telling students how having a good grasp of writing will make them better readers and communicators - for the boys this has ramifications for learning all kinds of things, from mechanics to business deals. It is harder to make this connect to the girl’s lives, since they can realistically operate in German for the rest of their lives once they are out of school. However, I have tried to connect it to reading and learning recipes and sewing patterns that may not be available in German, as well as for personal use at farmers or garden markets and for relating to and meeting people in these places. Science is a bit easier to connect. We are studying plants, which has obvious ties to agriculture. Both the boys and girls were engaged in growing their own bean plants, learning different ways that we use plants in our day to day lives, and how to complete fair tests to learn the best methods of growing plants in certain soils or fertilizers. They can see the connections to their prior knowledge, as they all have some experience gardening or seeding crops, and they can see how this knowledge will benefit them in their future gardening and farming practices. We have also discussed and talked about

the plants and their uses for the environment around them, focusing on Alberta specifically, in hopes that they will build more environmental responsibility by being aware of the land around them that is not used for agricultural purposes. I have one lesson coming up next week where students will be learning to identify specific crops just by looking at the seeds, featuring all kinds of seeds and crops that are grown in the area. They will be required to also demonstrate knowledge of some of the differing needs of these various crops, and how they might be used in crop rotations. I anticipate that this will have quite a high level of engagement. It is hands on, involves critical thinking and previous knowledge, and provides them with a real world application of their newly acquired knowledge. The end result of this research and strategies is a website with resources and research for teachers who are entering rural schools and communities. This can be for first time teachers, or for teachers who have been in a rural school for some time and are realizing that what they have been doing is not working for their students. Coming from a rural community, this issue is very important to me, and the rural school is an important part of community building. The school is often the heart of the small community, a place for people of all walks of life to learn and to gather together. When school doesn’t work for students in these communities, it alienates them from education, or removes the best and brightest from the area and relocates them to cities and urban centers, which are painted as the only option for academic pursuits. The school system is geared toward this, and the fate of rural communities hangs in the balance of obliteration and continuation based on the sense of place or the sense of placeless-ness that is instilled in the younger generation. Even if the system can’t change to work for them on a large scale, teachers can work on individual levels to make school work for their rural students and gain important learning and experiences for themselves by engaging in and becoming part of a rural community. On this website, I aim to include the purpose behind the research and why it is important to frame our educational philosophies and classroom instruction with a sense of place and with respect and value for rurality, links and abstracts for research and further reading, easily accessible

place-based strategies and resources, as well as helpful tips and advice for building bridges between the classroom and the community outside of the school walls.