Connecting the Dots to the Local

When I edited our newsletter, "Writing Transitions," I wasn't that nervous. After all, I sent it out to teachers, so I knew who was reading it! This business of writing--without knowing the whole audience--is more nerve-wracking. So I want to explore the difference.
This semester I've read new articles about similarities and differences in offline and online reading comprehension for students. Here are a couple of them: http://www.newliteracies.uconn.edu/event_files/IES_NRC2006_symposium.pdf
http://www.ucop.edu/elltech/leupaper010605.pdf

Also, I have been thinking about what got me into the high school liaison business: the concern in our local area that teacher education programs were not giving attention to the quality teaching of rural students. I had not thought much before about connections to the local community.
Professor Carl Leggo (in Journal of Educational Thought, 39:2) connects to Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Heart: "As teachers, including student-teachers, experienced teachers, retired teachers, may we always live poetically with a playful heart, in language, in love, intimate with our local locations, growing in stillness, full of trust, always hoping. May we know constantly the heart of pedagogy" (194).

There is so much scholarship now on "urban education." Gloria Ladson-Billings (in AERJ, 32:3)found that teachers who were exemplary believed that all students were educable, that their pedagogy was an art, and that they felt connected to their local community (478).
Urban teachers are not always connected to the communities in which they teach; Ladson-Billings has inspired me to think about how rural teachers also need to be connected to the community in which their students live.