NREA Weekly Updates | National Rural Education Association on Glue Up

2021 National Forum to Advance Rural Education: 113 Years of Highlighting Rural Education

2021 NREA State Affiliates: 43 States & Counting...

Please pray for our troops and for those that gave the ultimate sacrifice this week.

“These fallen heroes answered the call to go into harm’s way to do the honorable work of helping others. We are proud of their service and deeply saddened by their loss.”

---Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger

California rural schools are hurting with the wildfires...we have 61 districts evacuated and another 3 will tomorrow. Was hoping you could pass this along to other state leaders. We launched a campaign to adopt a school.

When kids return to school, we want to give teachers letters, posters, artwork, or YouTube videos to let students know other teachers and students they others care for them. If the school can raise some funds for VISA gift cards all the better.

Please contact Tim Taylor tim@ssda.org

2021-22 Celia B. Godsil Grants in Place Fellows Program

The Rural Schools Collaborative’s Celia B. Godsil Grants in Place Fellows program provides grant awards to rural school teachers who engage their students in exemplary place-based learning.

Eligible applicants should propose a place-based research project that will be completed by the end of the 2021-22 school year. We understand that this year is providing abnormal learning challenges for many teachers and schools, and we will gladly consider projects that lean heavily on digital interactions and virtual work. Also, if the impacts of COVID-19 on your school community necessitate a project revision, we will be pleased to work with the grant recipient in that regard. We anticipate selecting a cohort of dynamic and committed educators with purposeful and creative ideas.

More Research Needed: How to Build an Evidence Base for Interventions to Support Postsecondary Transitions in Rural Settings

This webinar supports policymakers, researchers, and funders in understanding the need, barriers, and solutions for conducting rigorous research in rural settings. To ground the discussion, REL Appalachia describes the findings of its systematic evidence review on nonacademic interventions to improve postsecondary success in rural settings. Then, panelists highlighted the importance of conducting rigorous research; share the barriers particularly in rural settings; and discuss potential solutions to those barriers. The webinar allows researchers, policymakers, and funders to come together and discuss the gaps in rural research as well as potential solutions.

Dear Partners,

As many students are returning to in-person learning this fall, CDC is recommending that schools take several steps to help stop the spread of COVID-19. These safety measures include consistent and correct mask use, physical distancing, and promoting vaccination. Another critical step to help keep schools open is regular COVID-19 testing at school for students, teachers, and staff members.

School-based COVID-19 testing programs help keep children in school. Additionally, these programs protect the health of students, families, educators, and the community—especially those who are not fully vaccinated or are otherwise at risk of severe illness from COVID-19—and most importantly, serve as an early warning system to help stop an outbreak before it starts.

To help support schools that are implementing regular school testing programs, CDC has developed a suite of free resources. Given your organization’s work to support a safe return to in-person learning nationwide, we encourage you to share and promote the following materials.

The COVID-19 School Testing Toolkit includes the following:

Social media content that communicates the importance of COVID-19 school testing and can be shared on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Informational flyers to promote school COVID-19 testing programs and answer questions about COVID-19 school testing.
Posters that highlight the benefits of COVID-19 testing programs in schools and portray in-person learning and activities.
Customizable letters and FAQs for teachers and parents that address frequently asked questions about school COVID-19 testing programs.

We hope you can share these materials as part of your efforts to communicate recommended measures against COVID-19 for students, teachers, and staff. We look forward to continuing the conversation on school testing and identifying additional opportunities for collaboration in the future.

If you have questions or have suggestions for additional toolkit materials, please contact CDC’s School Support Section at eocevent335@cdc.gov.

Ascendium Rural Postsecondary Research Agenda

NATIONAL RURAL POSTSECONDARY RESEARCH AGENDA

This research agenda focuses on generating knowledge to help practitioners and policymakers remove systemic barriers for rural learners from low-income backgrounds. It explores four critical focus areas to help build field understanding of the many factors influencing rural learner success in postsecondary education and entry to the workforce.

Rural Educator Weekly Spotlight:

The Rural Educator: Volume 42 No. 2 is shipping out soon.

The first issues of The Rural Educator were published in 1913.

The Rural Educator is the publication of the National Rural Education Association. Other journals published by the National Rural Education Association include The Country Teacher and The Journal of Rural Education. NREA was formerly known as the Department of Rural Education of the National Education Association. The Department of Rural Education published a number of bulletins and reports in the early part of the 20th century. These historic documents are archived at HathiTrust, a partnership of academic and research institutions that shared digitized resources from libraries around the world.

To explore the archived, digitized issues of The Rural Educator and related publications, visit hathitrust.org and search for the journal or directly access the NREA collection at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis&c=1331780257

Some digital divides persist between rural, urban and suburban America

Rural Americans have made large gains in adopting digital technology over the past decade and have narrowed some digital gaps. However, rural adults remain less likely than suburban adults to have home broadband and less likely than urban adults to own a smartphone, tablet computer, or traditional computer.

NREA Foundation & Research Awards Announcements

The Rural Educator