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Context matters. Where a school is located matters: the histories and politics of a place, the geography and its weather patterns, local economies, population trends. These, and various other factors, all have an impact on schools-their policies, practices, teachers, and students. Culturally responsive work is at the heart of what we do in English education, and often that practice responds to students but not to the place where students are living and learning. Identities and cultural practices do not develop in a vacuum, and considering the role of place in the preparation of preservice English language arts teachers requires a critical stance. This themed issue focuses on how the unique contexts of rural schools can shape students, teachers, and choices in the ELA classroom and in ELA teacher preparation.
These contexts also shape perceptions about rural people and places. Our own experiences growing up in rural environments-Chea, a farm girl from Indiana, and Amy in the heart of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains- taught us early on that even the way we sounded could evoke stereotypes about who we were and where we were from. These stereotypes can influence expectations about rural students and communities. Even though approximately 20 percent of the U.S. student population attends rural schools, they have persistently struggled to recruit and retain teachers, creating a dire need to focus on preparing teachers who are ready to understand and respond to the unique experiences of rural students and communities. Yet over the last two decades, there have been very few publications in prominent literacy journals that explicitly attend to the preparation of rural teachers.
We have dedicated our scholarship to highlighting the assets and complexities of rural people, places, and teaching that are too often miss- ing from literacy and educational research. We proposed this issue with the hope that other scholars would join us in this work, and they have done so in spades. The articles in this issue raise important questions surrounding what it means to be rural and how teacher educators can best prepare ELA teachers to be and teach in rural schools and communities.
Rural America is plagued by deficit images of poverty, loss, and despair and is consistently portrayed in conservative and monolithic ways. These intransigent narratives create...