Gary Funk & Haley Richardson On Rural Teachers and Rural Schools

You’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast where we unpack what is new and innovative in education. I’m your host Jessica and today we’re bringing you an episode around rural schools and rural teachers. Gary Funk has spent 30 years serving and advocating for America’s rural schools.

For the last four years, he’s served as the director of the rural schools collaborative. He’s running a campaign called I Am a Rural Teacher. A teacher he recently highlighted is Hailey Richardson. She teaches second grade at University Charter School in Livingston, Alabama. Gary and Hailey encourage teachers to embrace the power of place to help young people appreciate

where they’re from and the opportunities that exist there. Let’s listen in as Gary and Hailey talk with Tom. Hailey Richardson and Gary Funk welcome to the Getting Smart podcast. Thanks Tom. We appreciate the chance to be here.

Hey good to have you guys on. Hailey where did you grow up? I grew up in a small town in Peacons County called Reform, Alabama. And that’s western Alabama? Yes sir.

And tell me about your family. I think you have some education roots there. Well I tell people I come from a long line of educators. My grandparents, my mom’s dad and mom were both in education. My grandma there started out being a biology teacher in Gordo, Alabama.

And she worked there for many, many years. And then my grandfather was the driver’s ed teacher at Peacons County High School and then he later became the assistant principal there. Where my brother is now the assistant principal there. And my mom was also on the school board for a couple of years for Peacons County school

systems. I heard your mom was in that first integrated class in the 60s. Is that true? Yes, she was the first one to integrate Peacons County High School when she was in first grade in 1966.

Wow. You have a lot of history there. And both you and your brother Richard Lee went into education. Why was that? It sounds like it’s in your genes.

Well I guess you can say that my brother, I’ve heard people tell stories all the time about my brother when he was in elementary school of how he would always collect things that they would give away at the end of the school. Your teachers were throwing out stuff and so he would get those things and he would come back home and play school at home.

And I did the same thing too as a little girl in elementary school. I initially started out majoring in nursing to be a nurse just like my mom. And then maybe a semester in college. I attended Shelfton State Community College for two years before transfer in West Alabama. So my second semester I thought about doing substitute teaching.

Just thought it would be something fun to do. I was always at the school volunteering anyway so I thought well I could substitute. And maybe after a semester of doing that I absolutely loved it and I decided to change my major. It sounds like there’s a genetic pull to education in your family.

Gary where did you grow up? Tom, I was a faculty brat and so my brother and my mom and I followed my dad from one to three year appointment after the other across the country, different colleges and universities but each summer I would go back to a place called Mawikwa, Illinois which was a small farming community in Central Illinois where both of my parents had come

from and it really sort of became my center of grounding. And I really think that it was almost a very mystical thing that I had there and it really influenced my work through the years. Gary don’t you still have a place in Monmouth? Yes I do.

We spend a lot of time in Monmouth, Illinois. We have a home there and that’s where the rural school’s collaborative primary office is in partnership with a small liberal arts college called Monmouth College and it’s a town of about 7 or 8,000 in the flatlands of western Illinois. That’s sort of where Illinois snakes out follows the Mississippi out west a bit right?

Yeah they call it Forgottonia and that’s a good description but it is. We’re about 30 minutes from Burlington, Iowa and it’s an interesting place where farm consolidation has sort of met the loss of rural manufacturing. So there’s some real economic challenges in that region so we think it’s a really appropriate place for us to work.

And Hayley there was a great story about you. Gary’s been running this feature called I’m a Rural Teacher and I just love the story about you Hayley. You said rural feels like a family, small warm loving home. So you teach now in Livingston which is about an hour away right from where you grew up.

Is Livingston a little bit bigger town? Just a little bit not much but just a little bit. What’s the pull to rural communities for you? Like I said just the home aspect of it and the family aspect. Really and truly I’ve always loved to live in reform and just being around and knowing

everybody. When you go to the grocery store you know everybody. If you pass by someone’s house you know everybody. And I think that’s what sold me to come to the University of West Alabama. In high school I visited a couple of colleges and I was very set on going to Mississippi

State. I was like I’m going to Mississippi State. My very first tour at UWA, me and my mom we pulled up and the first person to come out of the door was someone that I knew from back home and that just made me feel really good to see somebody a familiar face.

And then we did a tour and I told my mom I was like this is it I’m coming here. And I just like I said that aspect of just feeling at home and knowing that everyone is like your family. Gary why are rural schools so important? This has really been a focal point of your career for 20 years maybe 30 years both as

faculty member, as a plantapist, now as an activist, agitator, support provider. Why are they so important to you and to America? Well I started out I was a graduate of a place not all that different from the University of West Alabama. It used to be Southwest Missouri State Teachers College.

Now they call themselves somewhat audaciously Missouri State University. And so I was an education major and my first job was teaching at a small elementary school in a town called Bolivar, Missouri, interestingly named in the Ozarks but in Polk County which is one of the poorest counties in Missouri. And I’ve just always been impressed by how public schools and rural places to me represent

American democracy. And I think it’s really interesting that if you look at settlement histories whether they were Americans traveling to the west or folks that came over from other places, you know oftentimes the first thing pioneers did was build a school. And school boards really became the first experience that many people had in governing.

And so I’ve always felt that that is there’s something magical about that to me. I think in addition the practicality of it is that rural schools are the hubs of communities. I think Haley can talk about that eloquently. They’re the centers of communities are so important. And I think as we think about going forward and we think about the importance of revitalizing

rural places, public schools really provide us with infrastructure back into rural communities that’s lacking. We’ve consolidated healthcare. We don’t have the ag programs that we used to do because of consolidation. So it’s a chance to reengage young people and to think about how to do things differently

and really have schools sort of be an epicenter for that. Haley in that story that I was referencing you said to me school is the center of your community. Without a school you have no communities. You really feel schools are integral to the culture, the life of a community, right?

Yes sir. I really do. Because if you think about it, if you take a school away from a rural area that doesn’t have very much, you’re taking away activities that families do together such as a team. Football games, basketball games, different things that the school may offer such as plays

or things like that. You’re taking that away. So what does your community have besides your local grocery store or your local place to eat? Haley I think we’ve lost a couple thousand high schools in the last 30 years due to consolidation.

I think there is this really misguided sense that you needed a bigger school to offer more classes and more extracurriculars and as a result we’ve seen thousands of communities lose their school. And to Haley’s point you really lose a lot when your community loses the school, right? Yes I think so.

And I think you can, you know, just using West Illinois as an example where there’s been quite a bit of school consolidation, which most of that has been elected. I mean they’ve done it by choice. It’s not been mandated by the state. But if you’ve got four or five little towns, you can drive through those little main streets.

The place that ended up with the school has the best town. And I think there’s a really interesting study called the Hobbit Effect about the advantages of small schools. And I think what we need to think about in rural places is less about deficits and more how to rethink school in innovative ways and using technologies and using connectivity

to keep smaller schools alive. And you know, so those are some of the things that we try to, you know, have good conversations with folks about. It’s interesting, Gary, that in this pandemic we’re seeing a surge of micro schools of parents that aren’t sure they want to send their kid back to that big 3,000 students

high school. And they’re also not too wild about a crummy online learning program. And so we’re seeing a lot of folks investigating these co-op schools and micro schools. And I think we’re going to see a big resurgence of small schools. And it’s now possible to run a small school of 50 or 100 students and with online

learning, you can run a very good, very small high school. So I’m hoping that your leadership, among others, will see hundreds of new, new small rural schools open again over the next few years. I think there’s some great models. I know in South Dakota there were some really visionary efforts going on, but it’s really

getting people to reconceptualize what schools are and what the priorities of education are. And if we’re going to stay with a model like we have X number of students and X number of teachers in these kinds of facilities, we’re not going to be able to keep our small schools open. But if we can rethink things and think about school and community together, think about

places, a living learning laboratory, and then using hopefully broadband connectivity to put teachers and students up with one another in different places where they can build on each other’s expertise, you’ve got a really interesting working model, which probably helps communities thrive. Haley, you teach at University Charter School.

Did you have a chance to be part of the founding faculty there? Yes, I did. Tell us about your school. Well, University Charter School was established in August of 2018. And once we opened, we opened with about maybe 300 students and about 35 faculty members.

And it’s kind of like the first truly integrated school that we have here in Sumter County. You know, that first year, it was just amazing. Like, I know I graduated and that was my first teaching position. So I was nervous, but I was also excited for this community as well as to begin my teaching career here at something so great.

And, you know, it’s just amazing to see that we’re going into year three and we have over 500 students enrolled here and that we have grown our faculty and staff, you know, double almost. And it’s just a great experience and a great school. And I’m just happy to see this in Sumter County as well as I’m happy to see where it’s going to go.

So this year, you’re going to add a ninth grade. Is that right? This year, we’re actually adding 10th grade. 10th grade. Wow. And so you’ll be, or do you have early learning as well?

You’ll be P12. We’ll be pre-K, third, 10th grade this year and we’ll keep adding a year until we get to 12th grade. And do you actually sit on the campus of the University of West Alabama? Yes, we actually, our school is actually housed in the Education Department of UWA. So cool.

And so you offer student teaching opportunities there at the college? Yes, sir. We have students coming in, even students who aren’t quite ready for internship, but they’re doing what we call what they would do their junior and senior block, which would be called field experience. We have those students who come in semester by semester with their teachers.

They may have to come in and teach a lesson maybe once every few weeks or something like that. And then we just have a lot of volunteers that come in off the campus who want to get hours in or who just want to volunteer their time with the school. Haley, the college has Black Belt Teacher Corps. Tell me about that program.

Well, the Black Belt Teacher Corps, I am one of the first members of that program when it first started. It’s a program that is kind of almost like an incentive to get teachers back in the rural areas. But it’s a scholarship program that offers students money while they’re in the education program. And in turn of that scholarship, you have to teach in a rural area for three years. And not only just not only do you get scholarship money, but you also get a lot of mentoring,

a lot of professional development. And that was like the best program that I have been a part of while being at West Alabama. The coordinator over that, Ms. Susan Hester, she is awesome. She’s constantly checking in on us, making sure that we have the things that we need. And she provides us with great professional development to enhance our teaching skills here.

That’s great. It sounds like you feel really supported there. Yes, sir. Most definitely. Gary, what is the Rural Schools Collaborative that you run? Well, the Rural Schools Collaborative was established, we’re a relatively new organization. We were established in 2015 really by a group of folks who were sort of a combination of philanthropy people,

education advocates, and a rural development folks. And our belief was based on our experiences that we needed to do more than just focus on policy to strengthen rural public schools. And policy is very important and we have to do a better job on that. I mean, you know, the funding and the infrastructure that’s needed like broadband.

But we felt that there was not enough attention going from economic development and from your foundations and nonprofit sector to really focus on schools. So we endeavor to strengthen the bonds between school and community to make sure that public education is a part of the economic development discussion. And so we focus on things like place-based education because we think that’s very important.

The program that Haley was part of the Black Belt Teacher Corps was a project that we’re very proud of, that we helped start up. I smodeled that for the Ozarks Teacher Corps and Haley and those folks have done such a fabulous job with that. But it’s evidence of our belief that we have to have a keener focus, a more intentional focus on developing teacher leaders for rural places.

And so that’s whole recruitment and placement of rural teachers is a big part of what we do. And then again, the philanthropy piece that we think there’s a lot of potential to invest innovatively in public schools, in our rural regions. And in fact, it’s something that is attractive to donors who often leave rural places and you know, you try to reconnect them.

The schools are just a really interesting angle there. So we have been operating each year a little stronger, a little more effectively, and we’ll be entering our sixth year as we head into the fall. That’s great. I really appreciate the work that you’re doing at the Collaborative. And I appreciate the support for place-based education.

Haley, another thing that you said in the piece that was on Gary’s site was you have to embrace the reason behind your place. Don’t look at what you don’t have. Look at what you do have and the possibilities that you could bring. So talk about that sense of place and why it’s particularly important to cultivate in a rural school.

Well, oftentimes I know coming to UWA, you meet a lot of different people from all different places. And a lot of times they come here and say, oh, there’s nothing to do in Livingston. Oh, it’s boring. They don’t have a lot. Or they leave after a year or two and they’re thinking, well, it wasn’t big. It wasn’t enough for me or there’s nothing to do here.

Well, me personally coming from a small town or rural area, I think I feel like you just gained so much more and you have to embrace that. Oftentimes we would have to make our own fund here at West Alabama. And so you have to embrace what is here. You might not have much, but just embrace it of what you have.

And, you know, a lot of times you can see on the news where schools are having this or schools are this big and bigger towns. For example, here in Alabama, we look at schools like in Birmingham or something like that, or Vestavian say, wow, they’ve got all of this. But people there look at what we have and understand that, hey, they don’t have that. They don’t get that same opportunity that somewhere such as the rural area like Livingston has.

I mean, we’re in Livingston and it’s a college here. I mean, not many rural areas even have a college, but we embrace being with UWA and being here on that campus and being able to see the things and possibilities around us, even with our just within our community, the the businesses and things like that. And that goes to fight with our place network, you know, as we get older and at grades on to our school,

you know, kids are starting to think more on the college track or their future plans and things like that. And being able to embrace your place, we’re getting to expose those students to things that they may not see or may not think, oh, well, I could do that. Or, oh, that’s not bad. You know, we’re just letting them know that, hey, what you have here in Livingston is very valuable

and you need to embrace it because you can very well be a part of it one day. So the three of us have something in common. We all appreciate the work of the Teton Science School and the National Network of small rural schools that they’ve created called the Place Network. And Haley, your school participates in that Place Network.

Before you talk about that, just, Gary, what’s your take on why Place is so critical for rural schools and sort of how and why can they embrace where they’re from to deepen their roots and their connections to the towns that support them? Yeah, I think, you know, Tom, I think hearkening back to what Haley just said, you know, we operate from a framework that tells us often that rural places are deficit laden.

And I think that what we have to do is, yeah, if you think about institutions in places like Philadelphia or Chicago or Seattle, they don’t have that kind of, you know, institutional girth, if you will. But what you do have in rural communities is access to place and access to the outdoors and access to Main Street. And so you can sort of flip the deficit into what we talk about a rural advantage. If you can really focus on place-based learning and see the value of it, you know, you’ve got this wonderful

classroom that it’s pretty easy to get to. I mean, in most rural towns, the schools sort of right there. Now, there’s obviously examples of consolidation where you’ve got schools out in the middle of cornfield or something. But in many places, the school’s still right there. And we’ve not really taken advantage of that.

I think the other really important aspect of place-based learning for rural, though, is this notion of narrative and messaging. I mean, so much of the American narrative about rural is negative. And if you are a young person growing up in a rural town, the message is like, well, do well go far, right? I mean, how many times do you do that? And I think at least with place-based learning, you give young people a chance to learn about their communities’ histories,

to learn about people that have made a difference for others, to learn about entrepreneurial efforts that can be successful in a small town or a rural place. So I think it aids the instruction. But I think there’s a psychological element to it that’s very, very important. It’s interesting, Gary, that the world has changed a lot in the last hundred days, that we always thought about the big tech firms in big cities. And suddenly we’ve all had to learn how to operate remotely.

And my sense is that we’ve seen a step function increase in the percentage of the workforce that’s going to work remotely. And now it’s just as possible to work for Google from Western Alabama as it is from Silicon Valley. And so I think we could see a bit of an exodus from cities and more people comfortable exploring entrepreneurship and high-tech employment from anywhere. You know, it’s interesting, if you go back to the 90s, that’s a previous century, Hayley, that I spent a lot of time in. I don’t know about Tom, but maybe.

But, you know, there was this whole sort of bonanza of thinking, if you will, about the possibilities of the internet and how that was going to level the playing field for places. And, you know, the Lone Eagle was going to move to some little place and do business in New York. And there are some examples of that. But what did not happen was the infrastructure. Right.

And so really what it did is it almost had a reverse effect of driving everybody to where the infrastructure was very good. And you sort of had this creative class mentality and it actually worked against rural development. And so I do think that there’s opportunities there. But I think we’ve got it’s a national imperative that that we can match our friends in Europe and other places and get broadband, you know, into these isolated places. It’s not just about schools having digital connectivity.

It’s about the families of the students that go to the schools. And that just, I don’t know how you accomplish that without better national policy. No, we, a lot of us are patting ourselves on the back for the progress we made at wiring schools and getting close to 100% by 2019. But boy, we’ve certainly seen that there’s 20 or 30 million American families that don’t have access to good internet. We’ll come back to that in a second.

And Haley, talk a little bit more about place-based education and your relationship with the place network. What do you get as part of that network? Well, with the place network that we have partnered with the Teton Sign Schools, it’s basically just like integrating the place-based curriculum and it connects our learners to our community. And, you know, basically, Dr. Miller and Mr. Gary and Nate, you know, they kind of got together and met like through a net. Working opportunity and, you know, the university just thought that this model of the schools would just fit our community so well.

And I can just remember the first year teaching we were we were pushing was like place we’re going to get our kids to understand place we’re going to get an understanding. And, you know, just to know that the community like to have them come in and say, I love that we see the kids walking downtown. You know, that was just like the biggest thing. We were out, we were on the go. We were like, OK, we’re going to go here today.

We’re going to do this. We’re going to incorporate this with our lesson for today. We’re going to walk downtown. And the kids in this community had never done that before. And then the community members here have never seen that.

And they just love that. And I love that fact of how the community is coming back and being a part of our school. And I think with the partnership with the Teton Science Schools, you know, is very they’re there to support us, lead us. I mean, they’ve been established for several years and they know the ins and outs and they just, you know, they’re there to they would be considered the experts for us. And, you know, just helping us place may look different what they do there and what it looks like here.

But they’re just helping us and supporting us and guiding us, you know, in the right direction for our community here in Leith. Matter of fact, we have a professional development in the morning with Nate. Well, that’s great. Nate, Nate MacLennan is the co-author of this shameless plug for Power Place. We really took the Teton Science Schools design principles and just wrote a book around it.

And so like you, Haley, I really appreciate Nate and the Teton Science Schools and their expertise on the Power Place. Gary, you talked about let’s just close with a few rural challenges. There’s some really great things about teaching in a in a rural area. But what what are some of the challenges?

I think that the overcoming the stigma of getting, you know, visionary, enthusiastic young folks like Haley. And I don’t think that’s going to happen by accident. I think that we’re going to have to be more intentional and we’re going to have to incentivize it. We’re going to have to market it. You know, I think we’re scratching the surface at that with our network of rural teacher core projects,

some of which we’ve helped launch and some of which are willingly part of this good sharing community. I think that’s really, really important. I think that broadband is is is a key. And here’s why I think broadband is so important. I think broadband, it’s a triple threat if we can use the sports in our community.

It really does provide opportunity for better educational equity and opportunity for for students. And I think that the other thing that it does is it has potential to strengthen economic development for rural communities. And those two things should go hand in hand. But thirdly, and this is really important, I think, is that if we’re are serious about achieving carbon neutrality in this country, we know that we’re going to have to be more careful about the future of the rural community.

In this country, we know that we have to have broadband infrastructure. And so here you’ve got this opportunity to do something that has all these wonderful outcomes. And in the overarching thing about this is, you know, we’re silly if we pretend that we’re not living in one of the most polarized historical periods in this country. And sadly, a lot of those that a lot of that polarization seems to be or at least is reported to be between rural and urban. And the thing I like about broadband is it brings people together.

It is an issue that everybody sees value in. And it has so much great potential and an opportunity. And it’s a way to educate people about why fighting climate change is important to their communities. Because, you know, like I know, and others know that the communities are going to suffer the most are impoverished communities are many communities in rural places. So the economic opportunities that come from that for rural areas and small towns are wonderful.

But it’s hard to have those good conversations. But broadband really gives us a chance to do that. So I think, right, if I was just like a throw at dart, broadband is the deal right now. It’s a chance to build some good stuff out. So Haley, in the show notes, I’m going to include your video about being a rural teacher.

It sounds like you’re excited about being a rural teacher that you’re enthusiastic about your work. And would you encourage other people to think about becoming a rural teacher? Yes, most definitely I would encourage people to stay or to come to a rural area. I know a lot of times in the education department when I was in undergrad, a lot of students were saying that, you know, I love going to this school. They have great big schools here.

I was like, well, no, I’m not looking, you know, for a big school. I just want a small town school because I feel like you just make those connections and those relationships. And to me, those are very important, not only in the workplace, but with your students, especially being a first year teacher. You I couldn’t imagine going into something so huge. I just couldn’t imagine that.

I just I’m a big advocate for rural schools and for teachers to go out and be in the rural areas. I mean, you have so much that you could bring to the rural area and you don’t even know it. Hey, Gary and I really appreciate you. Your teaching in Livingston. Gary, thanks for the I Am a Rural Teacher campaign.

It’s really great. It’s very it’s touching. What are you trying to accomplish with that? Well, we’re just so thankful. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation actually came to us.

I never would have thought my wildest dreams they’d thrown a nickel our way. So it’s it’s it’s nice to have their support and they’ve been very not just monetarily, but that Melanie Brown at Washington DC has been a wonderful mentor for us and an advocate for this effort. And primarily what we’re wanting to do. And Haley is a fabulous example.

This is to give voice to rural teachers and then working in collaboration with the National Rural Education Association, which has state ability. It’s all over the country. We’re trying to connect these stories to policymakers and trying to lift the narrative of the teacher so that people understand, you know, when they’re, you know, thinking about cutting funding or they’re

thinking about this test or that test, you know, how that really manifests itself in the world of teachers. And I think the COVID experience, you know, thanks to some we have a very talented team of young people, Julia Levine, who wrote the beautiful piece and took the wonderful pictures to also with Haley and a young woman named Haley Lincoln, who works down in Carma, Illinois, down by the Wabash River near near Kentucky.

They’ve done a wonderful job of pivoting to share how rural teachers and their schools and communities are responding to COVID. And this has really kind of captured the attention of many people and it’s really kind of helped with the broadband discussion well. So it’s a tangible example of how teacher stories are being elevated and they need to be elevated better, but we’re doing a little bit there.

We’re getting there and how that’s beginning to have an impact on the discussions that are hopefully going to formulate better policy in the future. That’s great. Gary Funk, thanks for your advocacy through the rural schools collaborative. And Haley Richardson, what a treat to spend a little time with you. You’re doing a good thing with your life. We appreciate it. Yes, we do. Well, thank you for having me today.

Tom, thanks for all of you and getting smart due. And I know, you know, you’re a passionate supporter of small schools. You’ve proven that in the past. And we just are honored to be a part of your discussion. Thanks, Gary. A big thanks to Haley and Gary for joining us on this week’s episode. For more on place based learning, be sure to check out podcast 247 on the power of place. We’ve got it linked in the show notes and on the blog. And for all things innovations and

learning, be sure to head over to our blog at gettingsmart.com. We publish new content there daily, so there’s something for everyone. And be sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss out on any future episodes of this podcast. That’s it for today, listeners. Thanks for tuning in for the Getting Smart podcast. This is Jessica signing off.