April 22, 1997

$2.4 Million Grant Boosts Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network

at Middlebury College

Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English has received

a $2.4 million grant from the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund

to expand the Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network, a professional

development program designed to improve instruction in rural classrooms

in low-income communities in eight states.

Each summer for the next four years, up to 45 teachers from Alaska,

Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina,

and Vermont will be offered graduate fellowships to study literature,

the teaching of writing, creative writing, and theater arts for

six weeks at the Bread Loaf School at Middlebury College. Teachers

who participate in the summer program will be invited to apply

for a second and third summer at any Bread Loaf campus: Middlebury

College, VT; Lincoln College, University of Oxford (UK); Native

American Preparatory School, Rowe, NM. They, along with their

schools’ principals and students, will also be linked to BreadNet—a

nationally recognized telecommunications network—and receive

a stipend to support collaborative projects and research in their

schools and communities.

The new grant builds on an initial $2.7 million the Fund awarded

in 1993 to help the Bread Loaf School establish the Rural Teacher

Network, which provides rural teachers access to high-quality

professional development opportunities and helps them overcome

their isolation from each other and from educational and cultural

centers. Grant funds were also used for a national conference

to identify the best ways to improve education for children and

young people in rural schools, particularly through small-scale

networks.

Overall, the next phase of the program is expected to reach 1,500

outstanding rural teachers through the Bread Loaf summer programs,

as well as workshops, seminars, school partnerships, and links

with local and regional networks.

By making available opportunities for outstanding teachers, the

Bread Loaf School of English will continue to play a significant

role in the national goal of improving American education and

helping keep America’s best teachers in the classroom.

The mission of the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund is to foster

fundamental improvement of the quality of educational and career

development opportunities for all school-age youth, and to increase

access to these improved services for young people in low-income

communities.