This professional development focuses on challenges as a result of poverty in education. It also focuses on strategies for change.

1. High Poverty in Rural Education
“Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together”

2. Teaching in Rural America
In rural areas, there exists a real challenge of
adequately educating children born into
poverty.
Research: 467 counties in the USA where at
least 20% of the working-age population lacks a
high school diploma. 80% of these counties exist
in rural areas.

3. Challenges:
• high teacher turnover
• limited resources
• the overall effects of poverty on students
in rural education

4. Barriers to Student Achievement in Rural Schools
Teacher Recruitment and Retention:
• reduced pay
• lack of opportunity for professional
development
• professional isolation

5. Barriers to Student Achievement in Rural Schools
Poverty:
• Poverty within the school setting is determined
by the number of students eligible for free or
reduced-price lunches.
• The impact of poverty on rural students can be
crippling because of situational problems at
home.
• These factors can cause rural kids to internalize a
sense of limited expectations, if not
hopelessness.

6. Barriers to Student Achievement in Rural Schools
• Limited Resources: Rural schools have limited
resources due to the small school populations
that result in limited state and federal
spending dollars.

7. Overcoming Challenges of Poverty in Rural Education
We will create a positive school culture and climate while focusing on
relationship building.
1. Establish a Leadership Team with a shared vision
2. Establish strong grade-level teams and partner with neighboring
schools to increase collaboration
3. Develop focused Professional Learning Communities
4. Partner with neighboring schools to maximize resources
5. Partner with community organizations and local universities to
support initiatives
6. Establish a Grant Writing Team to support initiates
7. Foster effective teacher-student relationship
Celebrate Success!

8. "Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together"
Piece #1
Build Strong Collaborative Teams
Piece #2
Utilize Data More Effectively
Piece #3
Provide Diverse and Varied Learning Opportunities

9. Expected Outcome
Teacher Recruitment and Retention: By creating a
collaborative culture, we aim to decrease our teacher turn over
rate and attract more high-quality teachers to our school.
For example, when Pike County School in Alabama, created
a collaborative culture, teachers actually wanted to be
placed at Pike County Elementary School. The elementary
principal shared that pre-service teachers were noticing the
positive changes within the rural, high poverty school and
requested to be positioned at her school.

10. Expected Outcome
• Limited Resources: Through effective
planning and collaboration, we want to
form rural collaborative relationships with
neighboring schools and partner with other
organizations/businesses to increase our
resources. This will help us to fund much
needed programs and purchase additional
instructional material.

11. Expected Outcome
• Poverty- Through the use of on-going
collaboration and professional development
we want to address the social and emotional
issues encountered by our students as a result
of poverty. We want to decrease our office
referrals, absentees, and increase student
achievement. We will utilize multiple data
forms of data to measure our effectiveness.

12. School-Wide Book Study
• Poor Students, Rich Teaching: Mindsets for
Change by Eric Jensen provides strategies on
building positive relationships with students
of poverty (2016).