Delivering Staff Development to the Small Rural School

Most staff development activities for school personnel are held in large cities or on university campuses. Small rural schools are generally geographically distant from these locations. Therefore, this type of school usually has to absorb greater expense and hardship to take advantage of staff development activities. Long distance travel and overnight stays make it very difficult for parents or community members to also benefit from training. The Iowa Intervention Initiative (III), a U.S. Department of Education Drug-Free Schools School Personnel Training Project, was designed to address these problems. The III was able to overcome many practical and logistic problems to successfully hold workshops for 79 schools throughout rural Iowa. This paper presents successful responses to many of these problems and discusses how this training model can be adapted to other rural situations.