Building the Appalachia of the Future

Speaker 1 Appalachia has a history and culture worth preserving and a future worth pursuing. The Appalachian Futurism Project's mission is to leverage educational, cultural, and economic resources to develop an ecosystem across the region where young people are part of imagining and co designing the Appalachia of the future. And joining me to talk about that are two of the people doing this work. Dustin and Hannah, thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much. Yeah. So my name is Dustin Hensley, and my role is I am a school librarian. And I've been a school librarian at my current school for the past twelve years, and I'm located here in Central Appalachia. So I've spent my entire life in the mountains, and my families all go back generations and generations here in the same little nestled area of North Northeast Tennessee.

Speaker 3 My name is Hannah Askew, and I am communication coordinator here at Elizabethton High School. I'm a recent graduate of East Tennessee State University. I graduated from there last December. I have roots in journalism and storytelling, and I'm actually a graduate of Elizabethton High School. So I'm so excited to be back here doing the work on the ground.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about that real quick, Hannah. What exactly is that journey from Elizabethton High School going away and and the return to work on this project?

Speaker 3 Yeah. It actually feels really surreal to be honest. But I'm not originally from this area. My it's the hometown of my mom. My mom born and raised here. This is a 100% her place. But I was raised in bigger cities until I was 16. And then she kind of upended my entire world and said, let's move back to my small hometown in Appalachia. So talk about a culture shock from my perspective. But I ended up spending my last two years of high school at Elizabethton High School, and I fundamentally believe it completely altered the course of my life and the path I'm on today. I still say that today, and that's before I started working here. So it really made me grow to love this region and this community. I say all the time that this community just completely embraced me as their own without a second thought, And that is something that I had never experienced before. So yeah. So we moved here when I was 16, fell in love with the area, the community. I consider myself to be Appalachian these days. First sixteen years of my life, I would not have told you that. Anyway, but then I ended up staying in the area after graduating, going to ETSU. And then last summer, I had the opportunity to thanks to mister Dustin Hensley here. He forwarded it my way as he continued to do all throughout college, might I add. But I interned with the XQ Institute in Oakland, California. So take little Appalachian girl, never I had only ever flown on like one plane before, let alone been to the West Coast and completely just uprooted, moved over there for a summer. And I absolutely fell in love with the education side of it all. So first I fell in love with Appalachia and then I fell in love with the work that's being done here in the community to forward our, like, innovative learning and stuff like that. So anyway, interned there, came back here, but I left the area and I I loved leaving. I never considered myself someone to stay here, especially not even originally being from here. But, yeah, ended up coming back, getting able to to really dive into this work, the work that I first really started over the summer before last. And it's just been it's been an incredible experience just getting to know this community and being embraced by this community and now working for this community. It's just been a full circle moment for me. And I'm proud to say that I'm Appalachian and I'm so proud of the work that we're doing. And, yeah, I just I'm so glad to be here and that this community has continued to accept me and show me love, and hopefully, I can just I can do the same. So that's kind of a little bit of my background.

Speaker 1 That's such a a great story, and I I'm so appreciative of you sharing that. Let's bounce that into, I guess, the origins of the project. What exactly are the origins of the Appalachian Futurism Project?

Speaker 2 So as a lifelong Appalachian, when I first got into education, I actually dropped teaching as my minor in college. Because when I was going through the teaching classes, I thought I can't be a teacher because I don't wanna force knowledge acquisition on students if they don't wanna learn it. I want them to be in control of their own learning journeys, in control of their own destinies. And so I dropped education, and that's when I became a school librarian instead because in the school library, students get to choose what they learn, and I get to be beside them and grow with them. And with that really because, like, changing my views on what education is or what it could be made me think about, well, how can it be towards students who are always involved in creating their own educational journeys and futures? And that's what really led me to this, the Appalachian futurism project is how do we give teachers the tools and the mindsets that they need to help students create the future? Because our young people like, we we tell you all the time that when you're in the real world, this will happen and that will happen. But our teenagers are living in the world every day. They go home. They work jobs. They have families. They have social events. Like, they're living in the community already. It's not that they don't exist until they graduate high school, and they're currently disenfranchised. They can't vote. They have very few ways for them to express their needs and desires for what they want their communities to be. So how do we tie these two things together that we want young people to be involved in civic life and co creating the future that they are the ones inheriting but also currently living in? While we already have them in the building for seven hours a day, How do we merge those things together that we understand what is the full context of this place in which we live and what it needs and not fully fully focused on these deficits that Appalachia has that everyone outside of Appalachia wants to talk about, whether it be news media or books or Hollywood, whatever it might be, Appalachia is looked at as only having problems. But what is the cultural wealth that Appalachia has that we can build upon to create this future of Appalachia that we all want together?

Speaker 1 That I think is such a great way to fold Hannah's storytelling background into this because we had talked in the intro here about changing narratives and imagining and co designing the Appalachia of the future. Hannah, what role does your background or your vision for this project and your storytelling play in all of it?

Speaker 3 I can definitely offer a unique perspective not originally being from this area. I wasn't even very, as most people are not, very educated on Appalachia in general before I moved here. I don't think I could even tell you, I mean, what the geographical region was, just that it's probably not a great thing to be Appalachian. That's about the only perception I had of the entire region. You know? And I'm coming from surrounded communities that I live very close to the region. I'm just not a part of the region. I mean, I grew up in Nashville and Charlotte. I mean, area is very, very close. So I think being able to offer that perspective of coming in and being welcomed with open arms, that just means everything to me, and I try to do that in the work I continue to do today, try to embrace that same narrative. And then as for storytelling, I just think it's incredibly important because kind of what mister Henley was saying, so many people have already told our stories, these outside forces that we're grateful for. We want the exposure. We want people to know about the region. But I do think that there's a real lack of Appalachians talking about Appalachia on a national scale, specifically within the education community as well. So we're really trying to change the narrative there. We want to work with students every day here. Actually, this morning, we were talking about why do we why haven't we incorporated students already? You know, I mean, this project only yeah. It's September. The school year only started, like, what, five weeks ago. But I'm like, why are are we not incorporating students this morning? It's kind of what it felt like. So we definitely want to do that and really get their perspectives and everybody's perspectives to kind of forward a different narrative. And I guess that's why the first part of our entire research process is talking to the community because it's their narrative, it's no one else's. And we just want to uplift it on a larger scale.

Speaker 1 When I'm reading the big idea on your site, part of it reads what started as a high school transformation as Elizabethton is now a spark of innovation that is spreading across high schools and communities in Central Appalachia. What has that work looked like so far, Dustin?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So what's it been? Twelve years ago eleven years ago, I started at this high school. It was 2015. And the first week I was here, I was like, hey. We should apply for this XQ SuperSchool competition to rethink what high school should look like and completely redesign this high school I just started at. I'm surprised that I did such a thing at 24 years old or however old I was. But we started this high school transformation journey as a traditional public comprehensive high school with all of these constraints of compliance and such. And we've been on that journey for the past decade plus of how do you take something that is preexisting with so much tradition and infrastructure that our school started in nineteen o eight. That that's a long history. That trying to change that takes a very long time. It feels a lot like being a city planner that how do we take all of this existing infrastructure and convert it into something new and applicable, but not destroying the history of what it was that could might create a cultural scar. So working inside the forces of tradition while also, like, creating something that's good for students has been a long and arduous journey, but it's been worth every bit of it because of where we are now because of that work. Because we've reached a space now to where we feel comfortable in sharing it out with our region, that we have innovative work happening across the school that we're continuing doing, and we're always iterating. That iteration is a continual process. So where we're at right now will be probably completely different where we are in four years, and that's okay. That's a good thing. So we're taking all the things we've learned over this past decade plus and reaching out to schools across the region and how can we work together. Not saying how can we teach you to do better, but how can we work together to learn together and improve our region through education. So we've got some really good partners that we've built. We've done some trainings with teachers from across the region. There is a the largest high school in the region has started classes based upon the classes that we teach here. It's, like, their first step to moving towards what they're calling change making leadership. So a lot of cool things are happening in the region because years ago, we did we applied for a grant that we thought looked really cool and then put a lot of hard work in. And that was a lot of hard student work as well because the students have bought in at so many different levels across the years of seeing our students doing these community projects that get some have gotten national recognition because of how much dedication and care they have about working, especially whenever they see that their work is meaningful and it can make a difference.

Speaker 1 Can you elaborate on that? I wanna know more about a decade of innovation.

Speaker 2 What are some things that bubble up to the surface for you? Yeah. So we've done a lot of elective work in how can we make sure that we're spending our time in again, being a traditional school with all those traditional measures and expectations and accountability and all of that. It's like, oh, there's testing and all this and all that, so we can't touch those things. It's like, okay. Then we're gonna do r and d of how can you teach these standards through a community project while we're in the elective side to demonstrate to the tested subjects, oh, you can do this. Here's how we did it. So something that my I teach a lot of the classes, and my students love the part where they design a project, then they have to attach state standards to their project. So I have to I teach them the Tennessee State Standards website, and they're like, wait. You have to do this? It's like, yes. Every lesson.

Speaker 1 They get some proficiency in understanding how the school system is built and the the work of educators and also how we can operate some autonomy and creativity within those standards and confines to say, here's what the standard says, but if we can apply it to this cool community based project over here, we'll be able to satisfy both needs. You know? Yeah. For sure. And

Speaker 2 you can see, like, the the light turn on for some students. One of my former students, she just got, like, a national, like, video spotlight put out about her a a few weeks ago. And she was a senior when she was in my class, and we did a project with our local bank that they did the community research on what is the future of brick and mortar banking institutions in small rural areas and then presented that back to the executives of the bank. And she wasn't into finance or banking or business, but this project that meant something that, like, a stakeholder came in, the president of the bank came in and said, I need you to do this for me. Like, she immediately caught on fire, and she was the one that run to the board and, like, lead the student group. Alright. Today, we're doing this. We need to work on that. We need to talk to those people. And I was like, okay. Like, now that there's actual stakes and it's meaningful and they know they're doing this for a reason,

Speaker 1 like, they care a lot about all those other things that we're supposed to teach. What frameworks or ways of organizing these projects are you guys using?

Speaker 2 So it's a lot of community input. We'll be doing town hall meetings throughout the region over the next two years where we're talking to people about what do they think it means to be Appalachian. What are the dispositions and the qualities that you look for in Appalachians? And how do we take the information and analyze it to understand, okay. These are the things we want to keep and move forward with. Because we're trying not to change Appalachia completely. We wanna embrace the traditions and history and culture that we have. So how do we take what everyone's agreeing upon is, like, the the formula, the secret sauce of being Appalachian, how do we take that and then inform our teaching with it? So how do we create these community projects based upon the understanding of place and culture that is Appalachia? So really what you all are doing is using,

Speaker 1 I don't know, a decade of innovation at Elizabethton as a model or exemplar or a lab school sort of thing to say, hey, it worked at this school in Central Tennessee. Why couldn't it work anywhere in the region of Appalachia? Is that the am I getting that right? Yeah. That is. So we really wanna be that

Speaker 2 research and development hub for Central Appalachia and working with other schools, institutes of higher learning, different types of partners on how can we make sure this is working, how do we keep iterating, like I said earlier, how are we creating the best futures possible for our young people and for this region. And it felt to us that education was, like, the easiest lever possible to do this kind of work, that we have the ability to like, being able to use place based or community engaged learning with all the other work that we're doing with researchers in the region and community partners and regional partners and some national partners to be able to help with, like, on the research end and things like that, But being that hub for the region that anyone can reach out and work with us and we can build something better together. That's really what we're trying to be.

Speaker 1 Speaking of building something better together, you all had a community of practice event that sounds like it was a success. You wanna speak to what the goals and aims and how that turned out for you? I can speak to it if she wants to add something to it because she came in, that was pretty early on in you being hired. Hired. It was incredible to witness. I probably have more of like a witness perspective of that than like behind the scenes, but it was it was great to have. Those things. Yeah. What what was was this sort of an inaugural event then, Dustin? Was this a a launch, community launch? How did yeah. Same questions over to you. What were the goals, aims, how did that turn out? And then we'll get Hannah's perspective as the observer there. So our community of practice event was kind of a launch for any interested

Speaker 2 local districts, teachers, administrators, colleges, whoever might want to be involved and just knowing what the work is. So we did some work with here's what AFP is. Here's our goals. Here's some things we're currently doing at the school that are applicable to the goals that you might want to be involved in, and then letting them come and see it in action. So had the group come and be there for my class of we call it community improvement. They got to see the banking projects in action. And then they also saw our introduction to freshman course, which is has a community engaged learning projects in inside of it as well as teaching all of our core values for the school. So that was very successful. Had, I think, six different school districts represented with several faculty members from each of the districts. And then our student leadership summit, that was an inaugural event, took place a couple months ago, and we had over 200 students attend and around 50 adults. It was for middle school, high school, college age students to focus on what does it mean to be a student leader, specifically here in Appalachia. So we cohosted it with our partner, East East Tennessee State University, the center on rural education development, who was doing really cool work and working into collaborate on a lot of projects on with them. So the students that were involved went through leadership courses based upon, like, their strand, like, middle, high school, college. And then I led a session for all the adults on how to go through empathy and empathy interviews and create whenever you're, like, really designing what you want your school to be for your students and how do you get them involved in that process. So a lot of really good feedback from that. That's where we had a teacher from the largest high school in the region come to me, say, I wanna do this. So we met over the summer, and I did some training with her. And she is currently successfully teaching a new course on change making and leadership and doing a community project. And I'm going to go visit her in two weeks to see how the class is going. And we have our next leadership summit in a few months. So the teacher that just started teaching the class and I are actually gonna lead the adult session together to talk about, like, alright. We're nervous. It's new. This is how she was able to go through and start it and get her kids really involved in the community. So really excited about that.

Speaker 1 And so Hannah, as someone who was coming into the project around that time, what did you

Speaker 3 see that excited you about what you were stepping into? Yeah. The first thing that comes to mind is I just felt so incredibly hopeful. I mean, seeing like two ballroom conference rooms of students put together, all there and willing and wanting to be active participants in their community, leaders within their communities. I mean, it really I was like, wow, this is this is what the work is about. So, yeah, it was was an event that happened. I had only been here like a couple months and it really I don't wanna say shifted my perspective, but definitely like solidified my perspective. I'm like, this is where I wanna be. This is what I wanna be doing. I love these kids. Not even just the kids here at Elizabethton High School, but within the entire region, I see myself in them. And I know that if I see myself in them and I didn't move here till I was 16, like, I there's there's just dear there's a deep connection here, and I'm sure that they see themselves within each other, if that makes sense. So it was just super helpful and inspirational also just to see the work that we're doing be elevated on that scale throughout the region because, I mean, that is our goal. What we're doing here at Elizabethton High School with the work that we've been doing, we've been doing. I have only been here a couple of months, but I it has been hard work. It has been hard work. I can tell you that just from speaking to this man for five minutes that it has been hard work over the course of a decade. But anyway, the work that we've been doing here, we want it to spread throughout Central Appalachia. So I mean, really felt like that was one of the biggest first steps on a public scale. So it was just awesome to see. And then also there were several, like, keynote speakers that were also students or former students in the region. Like I know one, he was a a a graduate a Truman scholar, which is just incredible. And he got to go up there and tell all from this area and got to tell all of these students like, you can do it too, which I think that like some kids in this region just so desperately need to hear. So, yeah, I pretty much attended the event as a student myself, it felt like. But then I also got to sit in in mister Hensley's session, I guess you would call it. And I feel like I've heard that presentation over and over again, but I love it every time. I'm serious. I do the worksheet every time. It just it really makes me so hopeful for the future of this project and education in this region. And it's incredible to see the light bulbs also go off for educators, not just for students, but for educators too and being seeing that they want to contribute to the work that's going on. Yeah. It was just incredible. And we're hosting another one in November, the second annual conference, not conference, summit event. And yeah, I'm more or I'm not I'm very excited to be more involved in this one kind of from the background perspective. But yeah, I just I loved attending the event almost as like a college student. It was beneficial for all ages and inspirational to see that like, you like, if we're doing it, you can do it too. So yeah, it was awesome. Cannot recommend it enough and come to our next one.

Speaker 1 That's incredible. It sounds like you've had so much success and momentum even just in the early stages of, I don't know, turning this work to be more public facing and integrated and networked and people are excited and you're building a community. And you mentioned this leadership summit that's in a couple months, but you have an event that might be sooner than that if people wanna show up to this community conversation happening at the end of September. Where can they join that?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So any local listeners that are tuning in, we'll be having a town hall meeting at the coffee company in Elizabethton, Tennessee. So we'll be having these events throughout the region over the next two years. Several more to happen before the end of twenty twenty six. So we'll start here in the Tri Cities in Northeast Tennessee, but we'll be moving throughout North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky as well.

Speaker 1 And if people are fired up about this, they're in the region or are outside of it and wanna help support you all, what's the best way to get in touch and make those connections?

Speaker 2 So you can find us on all socials at the handle Appalachian Futurism Project and also at appalachianfuturismproject.org.

Speaker 1 Awesome. Well, thank you both so much for joining me today.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Thank you again.

Speaker 1 Thanks again for listening. If you wanna learn more about how schools are using Polaris to put student voice front and center, visit polariseducation.ai and sign up for the newsletter to stay up to date.