"No day shall erase you from the memory of time." — Virgil's Aeneid, which adorns the 9/11 Memorial Museum |
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| President Biden's COVID Plan of Action |
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| The President’s plan to combat COVID-19 this fall has six main components, based on science and the best tools available to us now: 1. Vaccinating the Unvaccinated 2. Furthering Protection for the Vaccinated 3. Keeping Schools Safely Open 4. Increasing Testing and Requiring Masking 5. Protecting Our Economic Recovery 6. Improving Care for Those with COVID-1 |
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| After 10 weeks of growing numbers of Covid-19 infections, the weekly rate of new infections in rural counties is approaching the record rates set in January during the peak of the winter surge. New infections in rural counties grew to 209,259 last week. That’s about 10% below the number of new infections reported during the height of the winter surge eight months ago. |
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| Rural Educator Weekly Spotlight: |
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| This piece offers a systematic review of rural (P-12) education technology literature. Drawing upon a social change frame (Ogburn, 1922), current rural education technology research within the subfield is collected, examined, and synthesized. Findings explicate that methodological diversity is a strength; however, some populations (e.g., middle school teachers) have thicker coverage than others (e.g., high school students). Additionally, many studies lean on rhetorical structures about what could and should be happening in rural schools, rarely delving into the how’s and whys associated with actual technology use in rural contexts. The piece concludes with a call for the scholarship which assists in shifting power structures to support rural schools in their efforts to work with technology for the betterment of rural students and communities in place. |
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| One Saturday afternoon in late May, a few days before the end of his junior year, Harvey Ellington plopped onto his queen-size bed, held up his phone, and searched for a signal. The 17-year-old lived in a three-bedroom trailer on an acre lot surrounded by oak trees, too far into the country for broadband, but eventually, his cell found the hot spot his high school had lent him for the year. He opened his email and began to type. “Good evening! Hope all is well! Congratulations on being the new superintendent for the Holmes County Consolidated School District.” |
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| Dr. Jared Bigham offers a four-part series for Ahead of the Heard that amplifies issues facing rural school districts, students, and communities. He will highlight key challenges, explore innovative partnerships, and dispel rural myths along the way. When asked to write this series of guest blogs, I was excited to expose myths and realities that too often rigidly fix rural communities in people’s minds in stereotypical and counterproductive ways. Truth is, rural school districts — which make up one-third of all public schools in the U.S. — are hotbeds of innovation. I’m a fourth-generation Tennessean and have served in a variety of roles in rural education my whole life, from a teacher to a principal to a policy advocate and then some. Too often, I find that when people do the math on rural communities, they falsely equate rural with being behind. |
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