- Year 2019
- NSF Noyce Award # 1758436
- First Name Laurie
- Last Name Cavey
- Institution Boise State University
- Role/Position Professor, Department of Mathematics
- Workshop Category Track 1: Scholarships and Stipends
- Workshop Disciplines Audience Biological
- Target Audience Project PIs / Co-PIs / Other Faculty/Staff
- Topics Mutually Beneficial Partnerships with High-Need Schools and Districts
- Session Length 45 minutes
- Additional Presenter(s)
Maddison Chinnock, madisonchinnock@u.boisestate.edu, Scholar, recent graduate
Goals
The goals of this session are to:
1. Engage participants in considering the challenges associated with a focus on recruiting STEM majors to teach in the rural communities where they grew up
2. Generate strategies for working with administrators and teachers in preparation for rural scholar placements
3. Learn from others’ experiences engaged in rural recruitment and placement efforts
Evidence
A main focus for our Noyce program is to recruit and prepare scholars for work in rural and diverse schools. To do this we have emphasized: (1) classroom practices that meet the needs of all learners (2) knowledge of the systemic barriers that limit equitable instruction for a range of students, including and particularly rural students, so that they are better positioned to advocate for the interests and needs of their increasingly diverse communities. We did not anticipate potential challenges associated with rural school community members’ familiarity with scholars as K-12 students. Upon encountering these types of challenges this year, we became aware of the need to be proactive in this area.
Proposal
In this session, we plan to actively engage participants in considering challenges associated with recruitment efforts that have a primary focus on recruiting STEM majors from rural school districts to return to their home communities to teach. The proposed session outline is as follows:
(1) Engaging participants in a short activity in which they reflect on how they were in middle and high school versus their current professional selves. Participants will be asked to think about how they are different, and what administrators or their teachers might have said about the younger versions of themselves.
(2) Provide a brief background on the motivation of our program to focus on working with rural communities to ‘grow their own’ secondary STEM teachers.
(3) Tell the story of one of our recent graduates who was placed in her hometown rural community for her student teaching placement. She will share some of the obstacles she faced by teaching in a school where she was a student that appear to be tied to significant changes in her personality since she was a middle/high school student.
(4) We will then shift back to the university and program’s perspective and share some of our initial ideas about how to collaboratively work with rural district administrators and teachers to advocate for scholars being placed in their hometown rural schools.
The session will close with a group discussion, providing participants the opportunity to share their own lessons learned with rural placements.
