Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network member Scott Christian comments via GoogleHangout during a gathering on rural teaching at the Santa Fe campus last summer.

Over the course of the 2014 summer session, Bread Loaf teachers had the opportunity to engage with the U.S. Department of Education in two “round table” events with ED’s Dennis Bega, and Tom McKenna, who was completing his year as a Teaching Ambassador Fellow for ED.  Bega and McKenna met with Bread Loaf teachers (and other teachers from around the Southwest and beyond) for two events on the Santa Fe campus in late June. Just before the close of the summer session in Vermont, Bread Loaf teachers from across rural and urban America participated in an online webinar. To close the webinar, Mr. Bega asked participants to give an unrehearsed “elevator pitch” to Secretary Arne Duncan, asking him to consider one set of needs or one set of insights. See the clip below for comments from Sheri Skelton (White Mountain, Alaska), Evelyn Begay (Window Rock, Arizona), Ceci Lewis (Sierra Vista, Arizona), Shel Sax (Middlebury College), Rich Gorham (Lawrence, Massachusetts), Marybeth Britton (Pecos, New Mexico), Nate Archambault (St. Albans, Vermont), Katie Burdett (St. Albans, Vermont), Brendan McGrath (Boston, Massachusetts), Dixie Goswami (Clemson, South Carolina).

A word cloud from the combined transcripts and reports of the conversations