from VCCA Journal, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring/Summer 1989, 21-24
© Copyright 1989 VCCA Journal
Most people view the one-room schoolhouse as a thing of the past, found only in novels about the good old days. But that is not exactly the case. The one-room schoolhouse is still with us; its name has only changed. It is now called a rural community college, and those who actually teach in rural community colleges know exactly what I mean.
Each of them probably has, at least, as great a variety of student abilities, interests, backgrounds, and motivation levels in their classes as teachers in the past had in one-room schoolhouses. And like those teachers, they must serve as their own referral source for all sorts of student-related problems. They are called upon to serve as teacher, coach, cheer leader, drill sergeant, advisor, tutor, role model, friend, consultant, and general purpose facilitator of all things, while dealing with multiple audiences and even multiple subjects all at once in the same room.
How do they do this? Their urban counterparts may have more complex lives and lifestyles away from the workplace, but they would be amazed at the variety of things the rural community-college instructors must do in a typical workday, and perhaps urban instructors could even learn a few things from them. The purpose of this paper, however, is to help rural instructors learn from their own experiences and from one another.
I will make several suggestions which rural instructors may be familiar with and then will recommend some ways in which they might put my suggestions to work.
The first suggestion is that rural community college instructors cannot afford to slant their teaching toward the so-called average or typical student. The variety of clienteles and learning objectives in their classrooms will not permit this. If they try to teach the people in the middle of the bell curve, they run the risk of losing the majority of their students, because that may not be where these students are. Just as often, rural instructors will have a bimodal or even a more dispersed pattern of student abilities or performances, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Scores on ability or achievement tests are probably the least important variable they need to look at if they want to see an improvement in their students' learning. Remember that most of their classes are filled with first generation college students. The values and the expectations of these students are different from those of students for whom education is a family tradition. Among those values are likely to be individualism and self-reliance as well as a willingness to help others in time of need. The instructors can take advantage of these characteristics.
My second suggestion is a corollary of the first. If there is no such thing as the average or typical rural community college student, then there is probably no such thing as the average, typical learning style for such a student either, and there ought to be no such thing as the average, typical teaching style. Yet rural faculty, especially if they are themselves from rural backgrounds, fall all too easily into extremely traditional teaching styles. Just because some of their students still call their instructors "ma'am" or "sir," which would never happen in the big city, instructors should not automatically fall into the habit of playing with the pedagogical roles that their students most expect. That would stifle the students' freedom and initiative, which in some cases are already their strongest traits. We should build on these strengths rather than turning them into liabilities.
One way to control a motley crew is through structure enforced by authority, and sometimes that is a useful or even a necessary strategy.But the best time for that is on a short voyage to a specific destination.
What rural community college instructors are dealing with is quite the opposite. Their students are embarking on long voyages to a variety of destinations, most of which are not known in advance.
No two passengers get on at the same point; even if they get on at the same time, they would not get off at the same point, either. So the teacher as captain must be prepared to take the passengers at their own starting points and move them forward in a variety of directions and at a variety of speeds, all at once. The lecture method is probably the worst way to do that. Yet it is still the most popular method among faculty and is more popular at rural than at urban institutions. It ought to be the other way around. Some of the very same nontraditional strategies that supply enrichment for the occasional excellent student can also supply remediation and motivation for the less able or experienced students in the class, if only the teacher will leave the podium to try them out. Varying one's teaching styles usually increases one's efficiency and one's effectiveness at the same time. A number of excellent alternative strategies are listed on a teaching styles inventory at the end of this paper.
My third and final point is that rural faculty must promote collaborative learning among students. Those instructors who took education courses in preparation for previous careers in primary or secondary education may remember references to the old student monitor system that was invented about 200 years ago by Bell and Lancaster to provide some help for the overworked instructors in the one-room schoolhouses of that era. This was just the first revolution of a wheel that has been reinvented dozens of times by others during the intervening period, but it is often too quickly forgotten. Peer tutors, peer counselors, lab/study partners, etc., are all variations on this same theme. Even the latest "buzz words" such as "networking" are often based on the fundamental insight which inspired Bell and Lancaster so many generations ago.
Students in general learn just as much if not more from one another than they ever do from the instructor. And rural students with their high level of self-sufficiency and their willingness to cooperate with one another are already ideally prepared to engage in mutual self-help. Indeed, pride or embarrassment may inhibit their seeking help from teachers, or even their asking a question during a lecture. But sometimes all the instructor needs to do is just get out of the way and the students will help each other spontaneously. That makes the instructors' jobs, and even the students' jobs, much easier, and often in a rural setting students need all the help they can get. Resources of rural community colleges are often limited. But the greatest resources are the students, a fact that should never be forgotten.
The rural instructors are engaged in the most important educational task of the twentieth century, and they have a truly enviable opportunity to make a difference in the lives of their students.
Teaching Styles Inventory
What is your most frequent teaching style?
Which of the following have you ever used?
Thomas H. Cook is Associate Professor of Administration of Justice at the John H. Daniels Campus of Southside Virginia Community College.