Rural school principals in Tennessee face serious challenges in leading their schools, including isolation, high turnover, and a lack of instructional leadership skills. Facilitated by a state university, the Tennessee Rural Principals Network (TRPN) was developed to provide professional learning opportunities for rural school principals. The…

Since 2015, the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) has provided schools across the state with access to highly skilled instructional coaches. Primarily working in rural settings, these coaches provide a voluntary, integrated coaching model that focuses on building sustainable systems. Coaches provide a range of services, including systems…

This article details a Title II grant funded professional development project for rural STEM teachers. For this project teachers were grouped in online professional learning communities (PLCs). Participants shared teaching videos and received feedback from their group members and university faculty. In a face-to-face workshop, participants were…

The role of principals, especially in rural schools, where educational outcomes fall below the national average, is significant in implementing changes in the school. The focus of this qualitative study was to explore factors that principals deem most crucial to establishing and maintaining Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). Moreover,…

This article describes a collaborative, distance-delivered, teacher preparation program for rural, culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) teacher candidates. Multiple institutions partnered with one university in order to diversify the teaching force in the region and meet the needs of CLD students living there. In describing the program's…