By Annie Shaba May 14, 2024 One hot afternoon in Malawi, a small country in Southeast Africa, I vividly remember saying these words: “Aunt Esther, take the boys out somewhere. I need the house to be quiet and peaceful.” The day was very important to me. I had an interview with the Program Leader for the Foundations of Education department at Virginia Tech, Dr. Marcus Weaver-Hightower, and the Director of the Center for Rural Education, Dr. Amy Price Azano. This was a very important interview for me; I had prepared for many days and I was extremely nervous. It was part of my application to s ..read more

By Hannah H. Scherer February 26, 2024 Photo: USDA, by Preston Keres (public domain) In this blog post, our Spring 2024 Rural Scholar-in-Residence, Dr. Hannah H. Scherer, shares how she got started with her work in agricultural and STEM education and how it intersects with our mission to advance opportunities for rural schools and communities. Where Do I Come From? I do not identify as rural. I was raised in a downtown apartment in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from birth until I was 8 years old. My early adventures were jumping over sidewalk grates, riding escalators, and reaching up high to push t ..read more

By Deirdre Hand October 16, 2023 Photos provided by the author My work as the Community Engagement Specialist with the Center for Rural Education is one-half of a dual role: that is, I also spend half of my work week as the Community Engagement Specialist for the Center for Refugee, Migrant, and Displacement Studies. Luckily, the two Centers share an office space, so it’s relatively easy to switch back and forth between tasks related to each individual Center. One particular project I’m working on now actually bridges both Centers, who are partnering to provide mentorship support to immigrant ..read more

By Amy Price Azano November 2, 2023 Photos provided by the author. Cover photo: Norwich, January 1993 To say I was unprepared for my junior year abroad is an understatement. As I packed to leave the country for the first time, I borrowed my grandmother’s suitcase because it was the only one large enough for a semester’s worth of clothes and my boom box. (Yes, a boom box!) The suitcase was vintage even for its time, a powder blue oversized soft case without wheels. The first of many uninformed decisions. I flew by myself from DC to London and, with that large blue suitcase, navigated trains and ..read more

By Josh Thompson September 12, 2023 Photos taken by: Diane Deffenbaugh, VT Office of Engagement I started my PhD journey at Virginia Tech last year in August 2022. As a three-time Hokie already (BA in English; MAEd in Curriculum and Instruction, English Education; and MA in English) and longtime Blacksburg resident, I felt incredibly comfortable: I knew faculty, staff, and students across the university; I already had my favorite hangouts and places to study; and the town felt like home because it was home. At the time, I was entering my twelfth year as an educator and had a general idea of my ..read more

By Rachelle Kuehl September 27, 2023 Photo: from the National Parks Service website, nps.gov Checking my email recently, I was excited to see a message from Carrie (a pseudonym), a middle school history teacher I’d connected with through a colleague from another university in a nearby state. Carrie and I had met via Zoom over the summer, and I was so impressed with her work helping students understand a much fuller picture of US history than I’d been exposed to in my own schooling. Her school was located very near the path that thousands of Cherokee took westward when forcibly removed from the ..read more

By Charles L. Lowery, Ed.D. April 4, 2023 Where I grew up and went to school, being rural meant “being from the country.” And, for me, being from the country carried with it the meaning of education. Often people think of rural as a synonym for unrefined, rustic, redneck—all meant to denote uneducated. But in my experience, this was far from reality. Whether I was in the garden helping my grandpa pick tomatoes or in the pasture helping my father corral cattle, I was engaged in learning. This was not a specific type of learning, that is, it was not singular in nature. It was an ecological educa ..read more

By Rachelle Kuehl April 24, 2023 Photo caption: Students and counselors enjoy games on Virginia Tech’s Drillfield during SEE VT 2022. As an ice breaker at the beginning of a workshop I attended recently, the facilitator asked us to go around the room and say what, as a child, we had wanted to be when we grew up. I pictured myself in second grade, looking up at my sweet teacher at the chalkboard and imagining following in her footsteps. During all of high school and most of college, I tried to think of what else I might want to do instead of teaching, but I didn’t come up with anything that cal ..read more

By Rachelle Kuehl March 16, 2023 In recent months, I have been flying much more regularly than I have in the past. In general, I’m one of those people who prefers to smile politely at my seatmate, then proceed to ignore the fact that I’m sitting in very close proximity to a complete stranger for the duration of the flight, quietly keeping my attention on whatever book or article I brought with me to read. At times, though, it’s lovely to discover a connection with someone you happen to be traveling beside, and on rare occasions, polite conversation on a plane ride can even lead to long-lasting ..read more

By Michael Coleman March 22, 2023 Since returning to Appalachia to pursue a doctorate at Virginia Tech, I have had the opportunity to reconnect with the region that was so impactful in the formulation of my identity. One of the most invigorating ways to do so has been immersing myself in the literature from the region. As I become increasingly familiar with Appalachian literature specifically, and rural literature more broadly, there is one type of statement that always catches my attention. The statement reads something like, “I know [insert rural place] is complicated, but . . .” At this poi ..read more