I teach in rural high schools, western USA. My school is in a town of 700 and the town I live in now is 1,200. One thing to remember is that rural kids come on school buses--mostly grade schoolers but sometimes whole families of kids take the bus. Since the buses pick up from very small towns and farms, with five to ten miles of dead space in between, the kids spend a lot of time on the buses. A lot of bullying happens on the buses. And the bus groups seem to form cliques and personalities. For example there are four small towns near our school that do not have schools of their own, Belpre, Lewis, Truesdale and Radium. (If you want to see the towns google them.) Each town has a different mindset. One town sends us honor students, another supplies the gangstas. The make up of the towns' economics has something to do with the kids outlook on life--small farmer as opposed to transplanted family from southern California trying to make a go in a new, smaller place.
Sometimes the bus takes almost 40 minutes to pick up everyone and get them to school. The bus ride is not policed except by the driver and sometimes there are arguments, drama, feuds. A lot of the problems in school start on the bus ride to school. Sometimes an adult will ride along if things get bad enough. Oh, and there are cameras on the buses. Sometimes they even work!
One thing that will blow your mind about a town of the size you are creating is the family connections. Everyone is related somehow. Kids routinely go through their family tree, reciting uncles, aunts and cousins down to third cousins and steps. In the front entrance of the school there are big hanging photos of every graduating class, since 1928 in our case, sometimes even earlier. There are also championship track, baseball, football, basketball team photos. Kids and teachers can go through the pictures and point out grandparents, uncles and aunts. In my own school, in a much bigger town, i could find my grandmother's graduation picture, my great-great uncle in a band photo from 1917.
If someone bullies a third cousin it is a concern to the entire family--school kid feuds usually become family affairs. If the family is feuding within itself--divorces, snubs, bankruptcies-- it can affect the whole school. Oh, and remember, in a school your size, ten is a good sized high school elective class. The teachers are sometimes related to the students. The teacher's kids are in the same school system-- all one building, from kindergarten to senior high school in one building, one superintendent, one lunch room, one gymnasium, one tornado shelter.
Many teachers, especially, PE, Art, Music teachers, teach high school, grade school and middle school classes. When we do have a tornado warning or bad weather, the bigger kids are very good about helping the little kids, who have to come running from the other end of the building. The older kids always worry about younger relatives, their friend's sibs, the neighbor kids, when things get scary and the little ones cry. We often see a big kid coming into the shelter with a younger kid in his/her arms. It is not supposed to be done but it happens. We come together when things threaten from outside.
Be sure to include family feuds. One of our extended Hispanic families is descended from 9 brothers who came here to work on farms some twenty five years ago. There is some kind of crazy feud that they brought with them from Mexico that still colors things today. The family feuds extend even to teachers. Without mentioning names, two of our staff are still cool to each other over a land sale from the mid sixties that involved their parents and grandparents. Nuckin' Futz and very frustrating to those of us who grew up in saner, larger towns.
There is an Italian writer, Giovanni Guareschi, who wrote about rural towns and their people. He said that something about living on a treeless plain with the sun constantly beating down on their heads makes small town people go in for useless arguing. I can't remember the exact quote but I swear that small towns are prone to silly feuds.
And crazy religious fervor. There are lots and lots of different churches and the folks who belong to them don't just attend them, they LIVE them. breathe them, talk them up and then they change churches like they change socks. A lot of the bullying I have observed has had religion at the root, like the Catholic kid and the Evangelical kid who had the whole eighth grade class divided over evolution. Finally came to a fist fight--over one church teaching evolution and the other denying it.
Another thing you might not expect--high school kids in small towns drive and own cars, pickup trucks, vans. Here in Kansas our 8th graders take driver's education. A learner's permit is routinely issued between 13 & 14. A farm permit lets someone even younger drive on family land. (Last summer, my sister took my 12 year old grand daughter out to learn to drive in one of our fields. No cars, no trees, just alfalfa and a creek. Of course the kid posted a video of herself driving a car. When her father, in downtown Miami, saw the video he had a viral heart attack!) His mother, who grew up in Crapsey, Illinois, told him he was over reacting.
As soon as a kid can drive legally he/she gets some kind of vehicle and hauls sibs, friends, grandparents, neighbors, around, because it is 30-40 miles to a pharmacy, doctor, WalMart etc. Our school parking lot is full everyday. Kids routinely drive to another town for errands, sports practice, or a job after school. Parents have to work so kids drive, not always a safe solution because kids take chances. Our Spanish speaking kids often must translate for doctors' appts, legal stuff. One fifteen year old was driving her family all the way to the big city of Wichita for immigration help, during the dead of winter, over icy roads. Nobody got killed, they made it to legal status and she managed to stay on the honor roll, although she had to give up basketball.
There are lots of crashes. The kids talk about close calls all the time. Not because of traffic--there is not a single stop light in my town, less than ten stop signs. Kids often play soccer on Main street in my school town. No, the danger comes from rollovers on sand roads. I have lost 6 students over the years in traffic accidents. Only one was a highway crash--the others were rollovers on sand or gravel. One was a fifteen year old driving his two girl cousins to town to get hamburger buns for a family reunion. He let his thirteen year old cousin drive. Being thirteen, she lost control. The family never recovered.
Oh, and consider guns. These kids hunt every season: deer, pheasant, quail, pigeon, coyotes, more or less illegally. They hunt weekends, before and after school. Every family has at least one gun in the house and most houses are arsenals. Students and staff aren't supposed to have them in their cars but it happens. When a kid or teacher parks two blocks away it means that there is a gun in the car and they can't park close to school. Some kids are scarily knowledgeable about guns. Again, they take stupid chances.
Hispanics are our minority and there is a big divide between the kids who just came here and those who have been here long enough to assimilate. Racial tension is usually between "Mexican" and white (even kids who have been born here are called Mexican) and that is further divided by okay Mexicans and gangsta Mexicans.
Okay Mexicans cheerlead and play sports. Gangsta Mexicans are really kids from families who have come here from southern California in the last five years, to find a more affordable, less gangy lifetsyle. They are about as Mexican or Gangster as Bertie Wooster but they don't mind playing to the stereotype by dressing and walking like real LA gangsters. One kid used to draw his own tattoos all over his arms and neck. Had the hard assed shop teacher crapping in his pants until the tattoos melted on a hot, wet day.
The kids newly arrived from Mexico are at the bottom of the social ladder. Even the Spanish speaking kids resent having to translate for them. If the kid is a cousin or a relative it is even worse.
White is divided into "From Here" and "Not From Here" and further by who the parents and grand parents are. Yes, sad fact, but even school discipline is administered along family lines in a small school. --s6
