Our rural friends

One thing I learned from my child advocate was that while they had never been hired up to that point by a parent in my (city) school district, they had been hired all over our state often times in rural areas.  I found that interesting.

This past weekend I spent some time with friends who live in a VERY rural area.  It didn't take long for me to ask how their (same age as my daughter) liked school and so on.  Here is the story:

There are 2 towns,  Smallville and Betterfield.  Smallville folk knows it's the underdog area.  Betterfield likes the idea that it's bigger and better than Smallville.  Smallville had it's day back in the 1950's and 60's when the middle class still had a decent hold in the rural U.S.  Nowadays Betterfield is now the "better" school district and you can even tell when the marching bands play in the parade which one is the more sought after.  One is more show offy and one is more humble.  This sort of story plays out all over the place all the time. 

Our friends are at Betterfield. After all it's supposedly better.

One might think "better" would mean that more than the marching band was better but no, same old song and dance with school districts and learning differences and teaching methods as a (cynical) parent, already knows.

Without any access at all to schools that specialize in dyslexia or much knowledge about child advocates or the IEP process guess how some rural people are coping?  Read on.

The grandmother of this little girl knew that she wasn't learning how to read at school and was falling behind, so she, the grandmother, checked out a book about teaching phonics from the local library. 

She said she had been renewing the book for the past 3 months, only returning it when she had to. She had been teaching her to read at home on her own. 
She said she had seen real improvement in her graqnddaughter's reading as a result.