“It’s not so much what you know, it’s who you know”: a look into rural teachers’ perspectives in mentoring student aspirations

The aim of this thesis is to provide analysis on the mentorship role rural high school teachers embody in geographically remote high school settings in Iowa. This study will supplement existing literature on student-teacher relationships, career and college resources at rural high schools, and the multifaceted roles of rural teachers. The thesis also provides a new sociological approach to uncover rural high school teachers’ understandings of their role in mentoring career and educational goals for the future. By assessing how rural high school teachers perceive their mentorship role, this study analyzes teachers’ positionality in supporting high school students’ aspirations and teachers’ rationale in distributing college and educational resources. Furthermore, this thesis uncovers rural high school teachers’ perceptions of students’ needs in career and educational support. Through qualitative, semi-structured interviews, this study that reveals rural high school teachers perceive their mentorship role differently depending on existing resources at local high schools; respondents overwhelming distinguished high-achieving students involved in school extracurriculars as the primary beneficiaries of their mentorship roles in providing concrete resources and validation through verbal and non-verbal cues. Additionally, respondents pointed to the need to implement more structured resources in local high schools to better support all students’ educational and career developmental needs.