The challenges faced by rural students do not respect state boundaries. Persistent poverty, historical dependence on natural resources, geographic isolation, underdeveloped infrastructure, low population, and limited economic opportunities are common. There has been a shift from the emphasis on natural resources to an emphasis on human resources. The goal of the education system is to facilitate response to this shift by focusing on its role in developing the needed human resources for economic growth and development in rural areas. Access to quality materials and facilities, community involvement and development, and leadership at the state, county, and school district levels are key to the success of improved rural education. (from the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative Project Description).

• Establish a classroom climate that encourages peer interaction in the context of the rural environment.
• Arrange field trips to museums and other outside science resources.
• Try to increase interaction with science teachers outside the rural area.
• Attend state, regional, and/or national science teacher conferences.
• Establish partnerships with businesses, volunteer organizations, and professionals, etc., that will offer a variety of services and resources, including teacher training, resource information and materials, classroom demonstrations, access to collections and exhibits, access to facilities and contributions of resources. Partners serve as vehicles to foster support from business and organizational constituencies.
• Have partners demonstrate hands-on rural learning activities with students.
• Encourage partners to sponsor field trips in the rural environment which serve to stimulate and/or reinforce classroom learning.
• Contact the computer corporations to find out about contributions or programs, such as the receipt drives for computers.
• Utilize parents as assistants on field trips or other outdoor classroom activities in the rural environment.
• Request more resources for teaching science from school administrators, use information that show the rural school science learning environment is lacking in equipment and materials, as compared to non-rural schools (within the same school system).
• Pool your resources with other teachers and partners to conduct a series of simultaneous outdoor rural learning activities for students.
• Use part of the fundraising money to subscribe to science magazines and journals such as the Science Teacher and The Scientists.
• Present science concepts, processes, and facts in a fashion that's rooted in the students' rural environment and experiences.
• Whenever students research larger issues like changing climate patterns, acid rain, AIDS, etc., they must "bring them home," in identifying attitudes about and illustrations and implications of those issues in their own rural environments.
• Introduce science based problems related to rural life, not those that are neatly formulated.
• Invite rural science role models to speak or demonstrate from the surrounding rural areas.
• Promote extra credit assignments concerning television programs such as, Discovery, Nature, Nova, and Bill Nye the Science Guy.
• Correspond with science professionals outside your state about rural science teaching.
• Assign group science experiments of a rural nature and have students demonstrate what they have learned from doing the experiments and how their rural experiences helped them.
• Emphasize to parents the importance of a good science education for their children.
• Use scientific interactions on RuralNet (which will be "running" in every rural WV school).
• Educate students about the latest science technology and new science findings (from science news?).
• Sponsor a science club in your school with a rural focus.
• Do not criticize students or downplay their interests in science.
• Have an expanded number of science field trips outside class. (Being in it is much different than just reading about it.)

• Visit a stream ecosystem (e.g., food webs, animal protective coloration, water cycle, nutrient cycle, plant growth, soil erosion, water sampling and analysis, soil sampling, etc.)
• Visit a pond ecosystem ( see stream ecosystem)
• Visit water supply and waste removal systems Comparative human, animal, and plant biological needs
• Visit a woodland forest ecosystem (e.g., plant decay, soil sampling, soil formation, food webs, animal protective coloration, nutrient cycle, bird observations, animal tracking and collection, paw print identification)
• Visit a fossil dig Geological layering, paleo-biological specimens, crystallography, erosion.
• Visit old fields (abandoned) Old field plant succession (e.g., plant diversity, plant growth, soil erosion, bird and/or butterfly migration/habitats, animal and plant food webs)
• Visit some agricultural fields Monoculture ecosystems (make comparisons to stream, pond, forest ecosystems, e.g., water cycle, nutrient cycle, soil erosion, and plant and animal diversity)
• Visit a festival/old-timer's day (soap making, blacksmithing, crafts, etc.) Applied chemistry, metallurgy, physics
• Visit a barn raising: Applied physics architecture
• Visit a general farm or dairy farm: Applied and interactive chemistry, nutrition, biology, and physics
• Visit local/rural industries, wineries, etc.: Applied and interactive chemistry, biology, physics
• Visit state and federal parks: Ecosystem preservation, human utilization and impact, and conservation
• Visit Human/Animal Hospitals/Clinics: (Home remedies, animals, healthcare) Comparative, preventative, and curative healthcare
• Visit a sawmill: Renewable resource utilization (some recycling)
• Visit an old grist mill: Mechanics and resource utilization
• Visit a mine: Environmental impact, resource recovery, health concerns
• Visit a cave: Biological adaptations, geological formations, plant and animal fossils

Last updated: April 12, 2005

Web Master Ed Keller