Personalized Learning in Rural Schools
Making Education Relevant to a Local Economy
Students must be invested in curriculum content in order to learn. They have to be interested, committed, and engaged — as educators, we know this. We strive for high student engagement in every lesson. But one component of the student-content interaction is often overlooked: relevance. Students can’t just be told, “Listen up, you’ll need this later in life” — they need to feel it and believe it. For districts in rural areas, curriculum relevance can be particularly important. Some students in rural schools are heavily invested in their local community economy — and the disconnect between that economy and the contents of the presented curriculum can make school feel somewhat useless. These students are goal-oriented: they know that they will be entering their local economies as workers and leaders after high school, and they’re proud of their contribution and commitment to their communities. Educators in rural districts should use that community commitment to their advantage, by making curriculum relevant to students through connections to the community industry.
Future Ready Schools® (FRS), a planning and resource hub for personalized, digital learning that helps district leaders effectively plan and implement research-based digital learning strategies, recognized this opportunity. Deer Isle, a remote fishing village off the coast of Maine, had a significant issue with student dropout rates. Students were planning on joining the local workforce — lobstering — and were disconnected from school work. So, the district leaders personalized the students’ learning experience by incorporating lobstering into core academic learning experiences. They practice algebra and geometry, for example, through boatbuilding and maritime navigation. It’s all about making learning relevant for a community of students who already have their goals set, and are ready to start pursuing them. For Deer Isle, the results of making curriculum relevant through personalization were staggering. Read more about their story here.
The key to reaching students in rural districts through relevance is personalization. We tend to think of personalized learning as tailoring instruction to the needs and interests of a specific student on an individual level, or a small group level. But rural districts present a special, additional opportunity for personalized learning — the community level. Personalized learning has the potential to solve so many of the challenges that rural districts face. But it also has the potential to strengthen the bonds, commitment, and drive already fostered in rural communities in a way that empowers learners.
Future Ready Schools believes that personalized learning can transform any district, and that students of rural districts deserve the same innovative pedagogical and instructional tech strategies currently flowing into other schools across the country. We agree — that’s why we partner with Future Ready to create tech implementation content and events. To jumpstart your relationship with Future Ready, take the pledge. Then, download this personalized learning guide, crafted specially for rural schools:
