When first going into Ms.Dowless’ sixth grade science class, our priority was to focus on the classroom environment. We wanted to see how the learning process worked and connected it to our own experience of middle school. When we first were able to converse and interact with the students, it seemed like they were your normal middle schoolers. It can be easy for instructors to just do their job and teach their lesson plans, but will this be meaningful? Over our years within academia, we have been able to realize the teachers who had a more personable connection seemed to get more of our effort and attention. But in order to develop this personable connection, instructors must understand who they are teaching. Rockbridge county is very different than where we are from: Richmond, VA and Aberdeen, NC.

Well, at least that’s what we thought as we observed the landscape and demographic around us. Before doing research on Rockbridge county, we had an objective view that it was just a rural agricultural area, filled with a majority Caucasian demographic. By seeing a majority of Caucasians, we assumed the county had to be decently well off. After reading data from the U.S. Census and the Virginia Department of Education, we now know there isn’t that big of a difference between where we grew up and Rockbridge. The area including Lexington, Rockbridge, and Buena Vista have a median income significantly lower than the other parts of Virginia. In the city of Lexington, around 17% of the population receives food stamps from the government. Within the school system itself, almost 70% of the students are eligible for free or reduced lunch and almost half are eligible for free or reduced breakfast. We are glad to have discovered this information because if we ever go into the classroom again in the future, there will be a different approach. We would talk to the students and ask about their lives outside of school. We would try and develop a relationship that shows we care if they’re experiencing hardships at home.  This is important to us because realistically students spend more time with teachers than their families. The connection between students and teachers is key, and it starts by teachers understanding where their students come from.