I’m delighted to be a recipient of a Spencer Foundation Grant for my latest research project entitled Families without Schools: Rurality and the Promise of Schooling in Western Canada, 1920s to 1960s. The project re-visits the family letters of the Elementary Correspondence School files at the BC Archives and asks the following questions: 1) How did settler parents and children negotiate the demands of their rural settings in order to get an education? 2) How did they articulate the purpose and value of schooling and what impact did their rural location have on these articulations? 3) What can this history reflect about contemporary efforts to ensure that parents and students feel included in school communities?
At the end of March, 2016, I presented the first paper from the project at the European Social Science History Conference, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain. My powerpoint presentation for that paper, entitled “Families Without Schools: Rurality, Remoteness, and the Promise of Schooling in Western Canada, 1930 to 1960,” is linked here: