An Introduction to The Stories and Voices of ARSI

The reports in this section of the ARSI Evaluation Portfolio focus on the stories and voices of ARSI teacher leaders. They were the individuals who were directly charged with the challenge of improving mathematics and science education in their local milieus and in whose hands the real work happened. The hallmark of ARSI´s deliberately engineered approach to improving education in the impoverished rural Appalachian counties it served was long-term support for the development of indigenous teacher leadership. Through our study of ARSI we came to believe their approach for developing local capacity was ideally suited for to Appalachia’s small, rural communities, most of which are isolated, tightly knit and often suspicious of the rest of the world.

ARSI provided multiple and generative supports for the growth and development of local teacher leaders throughout its ten year lifespan. Supports included professional development, mentoring, networking and access to both locally and nationally developed tools and resources. The major thrust of these efforts focused on the ARSI Teacher Partners.

ARSI Teacher Partners served as indigenous leaders with access to and understanding of the local, regional, and state contexts in which they resided. As such they were sharply aware of the values and concerns of their communities and schools, which often surfaced and influenced the resolution of local education-related issues. While negotiating those community interests, teacher Partners became involved in a great range of endeavors—for example, leading their district responses to ongoing state demands, enhancing the quality of their school instructional programs, educating parents about school programs, or expanding the role of the school in the community over all. Serving in these roles, a key function of the ARSI Teacher Partners was to become cultural translators, consciously bridging the two worlds in which they simultaneously worked. They served as links between, on the one hand, a national standards-based vision of math and science education improvement promoted by the ARSI leadership they respected; and, on the other hand, local values and norms regarding what constituted “good schools” and the home communities they loved.

Because the Teacher Partners stand at the nexus of the ARSI effort, they and their stories serve as an ideal entryway for outside audiences to learn about what it took to “grow” local leadership capacity for educational improvement in poor, rural Appalachian communities. In telling the stories of these individuals and giving their voices a platform from which to speak, we inevitably must tell the story of the communities in which they worked and lived, as well as the story of the larger ARSI community of which they were an integral part.

In this section, The Story and Voices of ARSI, the three ARSI Teacher Partner portraits each focus on a particular “story” that illuminates the various ways teacher leadership grew and expressed itself in a particular local context. The first focuses on an individual teacher leader, the second on a partnership of two, and the third illuminates an expanded grouping of teacher leaders, a collaborative effort of four ARSI teacher leaders who together furthered math and science education in their local area. “Reflections from the Teacher Partners” offers direct comments and thoughts from Teacher Partners about the issues, challenges and rewards of their work as local leaders, and “ARSI Support Structures” offers a brief description of three key structures or aids that developed over time to support teacher leaders across ARSI districts. Finally we include a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation which summarizes the results of end of the project surveys administered to ARSI teacher leaders in the spring of 2006.

This section includes the following reports. You may use these links below or the links in the left column.

A Portrait of an ARSI Teacher Partner in Oneida, Tennessee
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A Portrait of Two ARSI Regional Teacher Partners in Lincoln County, Kentucky
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A Portrait of a Collaborative ARSI Team in Knott County, Kentucky
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The ARSI Teacher Partners and Their Reflections on Their Work as Leaders
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The ARSI Resource Collaborative Coordinators, District Liaisons, and Regional Teacher Partners: Support Structures for Teacher Leadership
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ARSI Teacher Partners and District Liaison Survey Data
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