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How Schools Can Take Part in Community Development "DISCONNECTED FROM LIFE IN COMMUNITIES, schools can't be public institutions serving the public good," writes Paul Nachtigal, co-director of the Rural Challenge. "We all lose when schools serve only individual purposes. Alternatively, by developing a healthy respect for community, the school can teach children to be contributing citizens, no matter where they 'end up' living their lives, earning their livings, and paying their taxes. When learning is applied in real situations, student performance, motivation, and understanding increase. Community-based approaches to school reform fuel the reform as well as the health and well-being of rural places and people." Whether this happens in rural schools or urban, it results in the "social capital" with which a community reinforces and sustains its own quality of life and the ability of its young people to learn and thrive. Students whose communities need, value, and respect them accumulate a fund of knowledge and tradition that strengthens their sense of "how we do things here. " They tend to stay actively involved in civic life, and to see and seize local opportunities to remain and succeed close to home. If they do leave, they go equipped with a sense of agency and pride along with their academic skills and motivation. "Community is how we together create a story about our places," write Nachtigal and his co-director Toni Haas in their essay "Place Value." "It is the narrative of who we are, how we will get along together, how we will make a living, how we are connected ... how we will agree to rub up against neighbors with whom we don't agree. Community is how we live well, together." From their offices in Granby, Colorado, Haas and Nachtigal make available a fund of local knowledge about how that is done, through mail (P.O. Box 1569, Granby, CO 80446), phone (970-887-1064), and the Internet (www.ruralchallenge.org); through a stimulating booklist, and through the accumulating stories of the people described briefly below.

A CURRICULUM OF PLACE: PROJECTS FROM RURAL CHALLENGE SCHOOLS

Students in Howard, South Dakota read Osha Gray Davidson's book Broken Heartlands on the farm crisis in Iowa, using it to analyze what was happening in their town. After a series of community-wide discussions, they delivered their questions and policy recommendations to their U.S. Senator and ultimately to the President. In Parrish, Alabama, students discovered high concentrations of lead in the school water supply, then found similar levels in municipal water. As a result of their two-year investigation, the town installed a new water system. Community experts are mentoring students in five rural Colorado charter schools, created by communities to keep kids from three-hour bus rides to regional schools. Students are collecting and catalog historical artifacts, creating guided nature trails, tutoring community members in computer use, and building a town library. Fourth-grade students at Wallins Creek Elementary School in Harlan County, Kentucky, researched the area's rare old growth Blanton Forest, including writing plays set in the forest, collecting money to expand its protected parts, and taking the whole school to their own Forest museum. In the Alaskan village of Kasigluk, the entire K-12 curriculum of the Akula Elitnaurviak school revolves around concepts that the Yup'ik Eskimo elders considered important. In a Dance and Cultural Festival that drew a crowd from surrounding villages, 80 students and elders performed traditional Yup'ik dances in native dress. The school and community are preparing a multimedia CD presentation of their efforts to teach "in culture," not "about culture." At a remote crossroads of two communities 15 miles from the Mexican border in South Texas, the schools responded to a dearth of medical services by training students and local residents for entry-level jobs in health occupations. In the Northern California mountains, students from Mariposa County partner with researchers at Yosemite National Park to collect data on plant growth and species distribution. Thirteen schools scattered over 1,400 square miles are cooperating to build and equip a mobile classroom laboratory for shared project work; retired scientists from the community help out in class. Elementary students in rural Alabama gathered the wisdom of community elders into a recorded CD of songs and recitations, which is distributed through the Smithsonian Folkways label and won Grammy nominations in both folk music and spoken word categories. In Rutland, South Dakota, a fire wiped out most business 40 years ago. Based on their survey of local needs, students are constructing a convenience store they will own and operate themselves. In the Appalachian Copper Basin that links Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, Ducktown Elementary School developed a 160-acre environmental education center for use by the tri-state community. Partnering with 13 area agencies, students built birdhouses, cleared trails, and helped preserve the cranberry flood plain. Students in Cedar Bluff, Alabama run a thriving computer assembly and software development business that takes orders from the public, serves a network of rural schools, and won a grant to connect the entire county's school system. Sixteen elders work with Ojibwe students at Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe School in Wisconsin, listening to readers, correcting papers, asking and answering questions, and teaching about respect, outdoor skills, traditional foods, and Ojibwe language. Students and other residents in Big Springs, Nebraska uncovered and are planning to renovate a large and abundant spring that once supplied water to travelers in this very arid section of the West.