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2017). However, leaving the area for opportunities is an abandonment of place and
community. Students’ decisions about college are based upon their feelings about
leaving the community for education and their transition to residing in an area with
an improved quality of life (Wright, 2012). Although students are connected to place,
they also consider their family and their rural communities as they make the decision
to leave or stay. Alhough local transformation is valued, so is career and residence
location; however, degree attainment and pursuit of advanced degrees are viewed by
many as “leaving the community.”
A similar conflict between the local and the global confronts educators who Dr. Ronald Vaughan
attempt to expose students to a broader view of the world while their families want Morris is a professor in
the Department of History,
their progeny to stay in the community. For example, remote and rural Appalachian Ball State University,
social studies teachers teach about global citizenship education. They see their Muncie, Indiana.
community as conservative, monocultural, and isolated and believe global citizenship
contradicts the values of their communities (Moffa, 2020). Teachers in all content rvmorris@bsu.edu
areas must use their knowledge of the community as insiders to make instructional
decisions that prepare students for wherever their next steps take them. Gibbons et
al. (2019) described a career education for diverse communities in the context of
rural Appalachia that is both culturally sensitive and strong, with values that support
the educational needs of the community. Rural education can provide opportunities
for educating students about global citizenship and community development, but
Appalachia continues to wrestle with travel time and physical distance in connecting
students with educational opportunities.
Education access has been a crucial issue to Appalachian people looking for
ways to improve their children’s education and way of life. Access to educational
opportunities may be limited by distance, time, or language. The mountains and the
streams, the land, and the geography conspire to make point-to-point travel difficult.
For Appalachian people, access, equity, and opportunity to education pose a problem
(Cobb, 2020). Furthermore, specific educational services may not be available. The
distance may be too far or the road too difficult to maneuver in the time allotted for
travel. Cognard-Black and Spisak (2021) provided the limitations of educational
opportunities by looking at how socioeconomic access to honors education was
limited and recruiting and retaining pupils with diverse talents were problematic.
Spoken language can also compound the problem of recruitment and retention
as accents and inflection serve to sort both teachers and students for available
opportunities. Language serves as an educational gate keeper in assessment,
classroom interactions, and literacy (Tollefson & Tsui, 2014). A person speaking
with a mountain accent may not have equitable access to educational opportunities.
Overcoming these access issues has been a long-standing problem in Appalachia.
At one time, settlement schools were a way to ameliorate a lack of educational
access and other community needs. Part of a movement to allow middle class
individuals to share knowledge and culture with those of lower income or from
isolated areas, settlement schools provided primary and secondary education or
college experiences, scientific farming, and health care services to remote mountain
communities. Settlement schools addressed Appalachian culture honestly while
still being respectful of place (House, 2002). The long-term impact of settlement
schools was to provide educational opportunities until local government could
provide primary and secondary schools. The settlement schools also worked on a
variety of education, health, and agricultural initiatives. Reformers and teachers at
settlement schools worked in cooperation with local mothers while also attempting

Educators’ Choice 41