Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/733
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Item Teaching english on the moon: a memoir of teaching at a rural school(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Hoffmann, Alan David; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Allison Wynhoff OlsenMontana is a primarily rural state. The majority of Montana's high schools are 'Class C' schools with enrollments under 107 students. Of these, over sixty Montana high schools have enrollments under sixty students. In these schools, high school academic departments normally consist of one person. This experience is rarely examined. Even existing literature that focuses on rural education focus on settings with higher enrollments than many of Montana's smaller schools. Drawing on the author's personal experience of teaching at high school with an enrollment of around 25 students, this memoir provides an account and guide for working in these settings. Through this, the author details the benefits of teaching in these settings, such as smaller class sizes that allow for more one-on-one interaction. It also examines the challenges of coming and teaching in rural places, including the stresses of prepping for seven different classes and difficulties of integrating into rural communities. Given the number of these schools in the state of Montana, many graduates from the Montana University System's education programs will go on to teach in these settings. This work aims to advocate for rural settings and to give teachers that may go into these areas an idea of what to expect.Item Taking creative risks in the high school writing center: how secondary writing centers foster the development of risk taking that ultimately leads to creative agency in high school student writers(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2018) Juedeman, Elaina Renée; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Michelle MileyThis thesis explores how high school writing centers foster the development of risk taking that ultimately leads to creative agency in high school students, which, I argue, works in opposition to the current neoliberal educational agenda. To explore this topic, I used a mixed-methods approach for data collection. Working with the frameworks of both teacher research and ethnography, I gathered data through observations, interviews, and surveys. The results of this research show that particular methods of writing centers grounded in sociocultural theory do foster the development of risk taking that ultimately leads to creative agency in high school students. The results also show that some of these methods transfer to other educational settings as well. This project concludes with a discussion of the value of research that explores educational environments that oppose the neoliberal agenda.Item We're not much to look at: resisting representations of rurality using a critical rural perspective(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2017) Behrens, Allison Nicole; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert PetroneAddressing the challenges and silences faced by rural schools and students is a matter of social justice, making rural issues a valid and needed topic for classroom study. This project addresses the minimal curricular presence of contemporary rural literary representations in the secondary English classroom. It investigates rural depictions in several Young Adult (YA) novels which reveal the persistent presence of stereotypical depictions of rural people and places. Because of the presence of these stereotypes, this project offers an analysis tool for engaging with rural texts called the Critical Rural Perspective. This paper also examines some possible benefits of using rural YA literature in the classroom. When contemporary rural YA novels are read in the classroom, students can transfer their understanding of the discursive construction of rurality seen in textual representations to the ways that language is used to create what it means to be rural. By becoming aware of the construction of rural identity, students can analyze, resist, and manipulate the single story of rurality which can set the stage for a more nuanced societal understanding of rural people.