ABSTRACT
Ms. Canady1 is a white woman with 14 years of teaching experience. Ms. Canady grew up in the community in which she teaches and all of her teaching experiences have been at Spartan Middle School. Spartan Middle School (SMS) is located in a rural county in a southeastern state. This rural county is geographically large with a population of about 12,200 people. Warehousing, trucking, and textile are the primary industries for employment in this county. Ms. Canady has an undergraduate degree in middle school education with an emphasis in mathematics and a master’s degree in mathematics education. At the time that observations of Ms. Canady took place, 514 students were enrolled at the school: 258 Black, 248 white, 3 Hispanic, 4 Asian, and 1 unspecified. Two hundred and eighty-nine students (56%) at SMS received free or reduced lunch.
