Tuning into Tradition: Rural Fourth Graders Explore Business and Community in Iowa

At the 2025 Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque Rural Teacher Summit, Matt Beatty was paying attention. A fourth grade teacher from Edgewood-Colesburg, he attended a session on the value of outdoor play, engagement, and experiences for students. As presenter Jared McGovern, Director of Dubuque’s Wanderwood Gardens, spoke, Matt started getting ideas about transforming an unused grassy space outside his building into an outdoor classroom. 

Still, he wondered how lessons would connect to standards, and hatched a plan to dovetail an outdoor learning space with a podcast project where his students could investigate local businesses through a lens of change and continuity over time. He reflects that “we talked about the Wanderwoods Garden, so I think that kind of got the idea going about the outdoor learning space, and then the podcasting just kind of came about as well. I just thought I could connect the two of them, because they're both focused on community.”

He applied for, and received, a 2026 Rural Schools Collaborative Grants in Place award, which provides $2,500 grants to rural teachers to conduct a project that connects classroom and community.  With the grant funds, he purchased high-quality microphones, and set about ordering rock and other landscaping materials to define a learning space just a minute walk from his classroom. The podcast series is now finished for the year, while construction is just beginning on the outdoor classroom. 

Because of the close-knit nature of the Edgewood and Colesburg communities, most students had some connection to a local business, which generated additional excitement for conducting the interviews. Matt describes that they all have “got that connection there, since we're a small community [for] a lot of them mom or dad worked there, or grandma or grandpa have a connection, or somebody has some connection.” 

While podcasting itself may have been a new medium, Matt notes that they are big fans of YouTube, where interviews and presentations about a topic are commonplace. That, alongside support from Matt and a colleague, enabled the students to thrive in the project: “They use their YouTube experience; they see people presenting, so they get that same feel for it there, but they're pretty excited about it. They did a lot of that work with the steam teacher– she made that just part of their lesson, so they worked with the microphones, and you know, practicing with them, and then they even did little planning [of their episode.]

The students worked in pairs and small groups, building skills in communication, organization, and research, in addition to the project complementing their semester theme of change and continuity. Kelly, one of the participating fourth graders, recalls that “we just asked some cool questions about, like, what was the first thing that they sold, and their organization.” Kelly also noted that the deadline of an approaching interview spurred excitement: “It was really a good kind of stress because we didn't get a lot of time, and we had to research a lot of things, and it was really fun working with our peers and working together and learning new things.” 

Kelly and her partner, Cora, interviewed Cora’s mother, who owns the local florist and gift shop, Blooms. With her personal connection, Cora learned more about her family’s business, and saw her mother through a new lens. “I would say that my mom really followed her dreams of where she went, because she really wanted to be a florist, and that's what she did!” Both students noted the positive working relationship they shared throughout the project, and took pride in sharing their interview with the wide Edge-Co community.

With both the podcast and the developing outdoor learning space, Matt sees more community connections on the horizon. “I'm just excited about the local community getting involved with it, once they see what we're talking about,” he shares. Now that the school has high-quality microphones, he hopes Edge-Co students of all grades can utilize them, be it for more podcasts or other projects. However things develop, students and adults alike found great value in deepening community connections and taking learning outside of the classroom. 

Rural Schools Collaborative is very grateful to Matt Beatty and his fellow teachers at Edge-Co for hosting our visit and for his participation in the Grants in Place Program. We would also like to extend gratitude to Josie Manternach and the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque for their support of the Grants in Place program.