Meet Heather Potkins from the WKTEP Cohort 2024/2025, whose journey through her practicum highlighted the importance of community, relationships, and place. In this Hear From Our Grads feature, she shares what teaching rurally means to her and how place-conscious learning continues to shape her practice.
Q1. Why is teaching rurally meaningful for you?
Teaching in rural settings is meaningful to me because of the strong connections between school, community, families, culture, and place. In rural contexts, learning doesn’t have to stay inside the classroom. There’s space and freedom to take students out onto the land and into their community, where learning is rooted in real experiences. Place isn’t just something we reference—it becomes an active part of the learning and a teacher in its own right.
Q2. What role did community play in your practicum experience, and what was your big takeaway?
Community played a huge role in my practicum experience. I felt supported by a strong community of educators, both in the schools where I completed my practicum and through WKTEP, who modeled collaboration, care, and generosity in their practice. I saw how deeply teaching is shaped by the culture and values of a place, and how much freedom rural educators often have to bring who they are and what they care about into their classrooms. Just as importantly, I learned how meaningful it is to bring what students care about into the learning. My biggest takeaway was that there is no single way to be a “good” educator. Every classroom, teacher, and community I encountered was different, and effective teaching is responsive to those differences rather than following a fixed formula.
Q3. How did the place-conscious learning model at WKTEP shape your understanding of teaching in rural settings?
The place-conscious learning model at WKTEP really shaped how I understand teaching, especially in rural contexts. I appreciated how “big thinkers” and place-conscious pedagogues were consistently woven into our learning as a foundation, rather than treated as add-ons. What stood out most was how our instructors taught us about teaching by actually teaching in thoughtful, relational, and place-responsive ways themselves.
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