I Am A Rural Teacher

The Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools (AIRSS) is the only advocacy group in Illinois that focuses specifically on the issues of rural schools. EECS has been involved with AIRSS since 2018, helping with a complete rebrand, a new website, event planning, and more!

The Work

AIRSS Conference 2026 Outdoor Banner Portrait
Sites and Styles Thumbnail
Know Before You Go Ver2
Toon Boom Webinar Social
AIRSS at triple I 2025
We are Here Square
AIRSS at NFARE 2025
AIRSS IASA 2
AIRSS John and Hailey Wolf Lake
2025 Teacher of the Year AIRSS Dee Rose
RTOY sponsored by EECS
CTE Project 2025 Report Abridged FV_Page_01
cte portal banner jun 25
Springfield, IL
AIRSS-Sb1787-Poster-V2
AIRSS 2023 Annual Report – FV_Page_01
airss at nfare
AIRSS 2023 Annual Report – FV_Page_12

I Am A Rural Teacher

I Am A Rural Teacher is a collaborative project presented by the National Rural Education Associaton and the Rural Schools Collaborative. It was graciously funded – in the form of an advocacy and awareness campaign – by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I had the pleasure to be a Communications and Design Consultant for the entire run of this campaign in 2020, working directly with team members from NREA, RSC, and BMGF. – Hailey

Project Logos

Any time a project or IAART derivative needed a mark, I created it.

Social Media Marketing

Throughout the campaign, I designed social media graphics, produced videos, and handled scheduling through Buffer. I used these tools and several projects – including a pivot concerning COVID-19, and 50 States in 50 Weeks, which you’ll see below – to collect over 100 teacher-submitted perspectives, and I grew the Facebook page from 0 to over 1600 by the end of the year.

Web Articles

I updated the IAART website almost daily to include new stories from our submissions, which included creating the cover graphic, editing the article, and in many cases writing additional copy for clarification. I also syndicated some of the work to local news sources upon the request of applicants, which meant reformatting stories as press releases. During the IAART campaign, the RSC website also saw a huge boost in traffic.

Video Work

I worked with the RSC team to create several video projects. In some cases, I did full production; in others, I simply added motion graphics. You can view all of the videos created for the campaign on the IAART YouTube channel. I’ve included a playlist here with only the videos I had a hand in making.

50 States in 50 Weeks

The 50 States in 50 Weeks Project was created to drive social media engagement for the IAART Campaign. Each week, I created a graphic showing the location of every district containing a rural school in a given state. These states are listed below in alphabetical order. Click any state to view it full-size.

50-States-in-50-Weeks_AK
50-States-in-50-Weeks_AL
50-States-in-50-Weeks_AR
50-States-in-50-Weeks_AZ
50-States-in-50-Weeks_CA
50-States-in-50-Weeks_CO
50-States-in-50-Weeks_CT
50-States-in-50-Weeks_DE
50-States-in-50-Weeks_FL
50-States-in-50-Weeks_GA
50-States-in-50-Weeks_HI
50-States-in-50-Weeks_IA
50-States-in-50-Weeks_ID
50-States-in-50-Weeks_IL
50-States-in-50-Weeks_IN
50-States-in-50-Weeks_KS
50-States-in-50-Weeks_KY
50-States-in-50-Weeks_LA
50-States-in-50-Weeks_MA
50-States-in-50-Weeks_MD
50-States-in-50-Weeks_ME
50-States-in-50-Weeks_MI
50-States-in-50-Weeks_MN
50-States-in-50-Weeks_MO
50-States-in-50-Weeks_MS
50-States-in-50-Weeks_MT
50-States-in-50-Weeks_NC
50-States-in-50-Weeks_ND
50-States-in-50-Weeks_NE
50-States-in-50-Weeks_NH
50-States-in-50-Weeks_NJ
50-States-in-50-Weeks_NM
50-States-in-50-Weeks_NV
50-States-in-50-Weeks_NY
50-States-in-50-Weeks_OH
50-States-in-50-Weeks_OK
50-States-in-50-Weeks_OR
50-States-in-50-Weeks_PA
50-States-in-50-Weeks_RI
50-States-in-50-Weeks_SC
50-States-in-50-Weeks_SD
50-States-in-50-Weeks_TN
50-States-in-50-Weeks_TX
50-States-in-50-Weeks_UT
50-States-in-50-Weeks_VA
50-States-in-50-Weeks_VT
50-States-in-50-Weeks_WA
50-States-in-50-Weeks_WI
50-States-in-50-Weeks_WV
50-States-in-50-Weeks_WY
50-States-in-50-Weeks_US

Teacher Perspectives

On the marketing side, I assisted in facilitating a social media campaign for IAART. This included several projects meant to collect teacher perspectives so we could share them. I created the IAART Facebook page in January, and it now has over 1000 followers. I also collected over 100 perspectives, mostly through my COVID-19 Rural Community Impact Project. Finally, I created an interactive map showcasing the stories collected throughout the year, as well as a full map of the rural schools using data from the 50 States in 50 Weeks Project. This is included below.

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