Mrs. Beverly Larabee

Development of Pool and First Sampling Cuts

An exciting end to two days of getting ready to conduct this study. The data base of all New England public schools that I received from the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) was very helpful in getting me started. I was able to cull out schools identified as rural using their urbanized centric coding system, then further broke down the pool by state, and enrollment size. As a lifelong New Englander that has lived in MA, CT, and NH several of the communities are puzzling as regionally they would be considered cities as opposed to rural and the residents of those places would be confused by being considered rural. Since this study is about understanding the influence of New England’s rural contexts on the practice of principals the Rural Educational Assistance Program (REAP) criteria of enrollment of no more than 600 is being added to the sampling criteria for now in an attempt to winnow in on the places considered to be rural here in New England.

As I reflect on the process of refining my sampling list I couldn’t help but think about my own experience growing up in Southampton, MA. During my youth the population of Southampton ranged from about 2000 to 4000 by the time I graduated from high school. The town was divided by telephone numbers with the area I was from having a different prefix than the rest of town that meant it was long distance to call friends or school. The town had two elementary schools divided as upper and lower elementary. My father had completed his schooling through the 8th grade at what the place that was my first and second grade school. Kindergarten was in the library basement for me, the town had grown since Dad’s schooling. They had also built the upper elementary, grades 3-6, and named it for the man that was my father’s school principal. My principal was Mrs. Beverly Larabee. A slight woman with the obligatory beehive hairdo of the time, she was always perfectly dressed in the costume expected of a school principal, we all knew who she was but yet she only occasionally came to our classrooms. She knew us all by name. She knew our parents, who our extended family was, and understood the areas of town we each came from. Although, I can’t remember her ever raising her voice or doling out any punishment; looking back on my time in the Southampton elementary schools, as students we believed that having to go to her office was not a desirable goal. We just knew that going to her office was not in our best interest, we knew because our parents had told us so. A call from her to our parents would result in consequences at home. Consequences both driven by their goal to teach us right from wrong, how to be appropriate in public, their embarrassment that we would be seen by anyone else from town in her office, and perhaps most significantly their relationship with her. The relationship between Mrs. Larabee and our parents was personal. She had many of them as students. They respected her authority and valued her place in our little town. The relationship between parents and the principal in our little town was very much personal. She was a valued and in many ways treasured part of our little town. So much so that many years later, the lower elementary school was named in Mrs. Larabee’s honor. My high school experience was a bit different.

Southampton didn’t have its own high school. When Dad went to school he had to choose between going to neighboring Northampton or Holyoke for his high school education. We, however, had a regional high school. Five towns, the “hill towns” sent children to what was then considered a state of the art high school. The towns had agreed to regionalize in order to both keep their children in their communities and ensure that they could provide the best education possible through the combining or resources. Even though our little town was the largest of the five and had the most children to send through the regional agreement the high school was located in the middle of the five towns. Our bus ride that had once been 30 minutes to the upper elementary school was now 45 minutes to an hour depending on the weather. Westhampton, like the other five towns was a small rural New England town. During my time there, I had one principal and two different assistant principals. All were men. Like Mrs. Larabee, they all dressed the part of the principal. They were rarely seen visiting classrooms, although they did monitor the halls, but somehow the principal and his assistants knew us all by name. They may have known which of the towns we were from but didn’t know our parents or families. Parents didn’t have the same relationship with these men that they had with Mrs. Larabee. They hadn’t been our parent’s teachers, and even though they lived in our towns their offices were too far from where we lived to seem like they were part of our communities. Even though the personal quality of the relationship between the principals and assistants and our parents wasn’t there we still knew their office was some where we didn’t want to be sent. After all, our parents still wanted to teach us right from wrong, how to behave appropriately, and we’d never want to embarrass our little town by being seen waiting outside one of their doors. As we had gotten older, our relationship with our little town had become personal.

The sense of being from a small rural town in Western Massachusetts became an integral part of my identity. I’ve often wondered why that was. I live in the same regional school district now and cherish the ruralness. I’ve chosen to work at a University that’s located in a rural area of New Hampshire very similar to my little rural community in Western Massachusetts. What instilled that sense of connection between school and our little town and to being rural? As I continued to think about my own experiences as a student in rural schools and worked with the pool of schools for the study I found myself asking, which might give me the best insight into the school community connection. What role does the principal play in that? How does that connection between the community and principal influence what they do and how they do it? As I considered the communities in the pool I slowly identified four that I considered the potential best opportunity to explore the connection between rural communities and the practice of principals.