Culturally Responsive Teacher Education for Rural and Native Communities

This article explores the marginalized contexts of rural and Native American communities that have made recruitment and retention in teacher education inequitable in remote areas. Through facilitating a Culturally Responsive Pedagogy workshop series with schools in a neighboring rural county, having a large Native population and a very low student academic achievement rate, we discovered strong resistance from local educators to the notion of “culture” influencing student achievement. Our disappointment in the outcomes of the workshops caused us to examine the services our university provided to rural and Native place-based pre-service educators. As a result, we created a Satellite program to more responsively meet rural teachers’ unique needs and circumstances. By providing greater access to higher education and teacher licensing for students in remote locations, and by embedding equity, diversity, inclusion, and culturally relevant curriculum in all Satellite coursework, we hope to produce teachers who will return to their communities committed to improving schools and promoting equity and social-emotional and academic success for their future students.