“You Were Just the Sunshine in My Life”: A Rural Teacher as a Beacon of Hope for Education in the Era of Standardization

• In Event: Contexts in Education: Illuminating Experience in Teaching

Abstract

Current research increasingly indicates how the standards-based reform with policies of standardization has many negative consequences on the curriculum and teachers’ professionalism in particular. This study is about a veteran rural teacher’s teaching experience that has endured the standards movement over the last three decades since the report of A Nation at Risk in 1983. The purpose of this study is to honor teachers and rural veteran teachers in particular. A story of a rural teacher illuminates how teachers are the beacon of hope for improving public education.

Author

• Jeong-Hee Kim, Kansas State University