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34 The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators

home with them after the teacher in-service.
Teachers learned to include making judgements on public policy through the in-service.
The cost to individuals, to groups, to the community, to the economy, and to the land need
to be considered when making a decision. The unintended costs of a poor decision could
hurt a variety of other people. Thus, the issues explored in the in-service program created
a foundation of understanding that the secondary social studies teachers used to build
upon another set of understandings. The teachers commented on their abilities to make
informed decisions on public policy issues:
I have a unit over Labor Unions that includes the movie Matewan and I will now
be able to include . . . [the question from the in-service] “at what cost?” I will also
include ways in which we are trying to make coal mining not only safer, but also
balancing economic issues with the environmental issues. (Maretta, personal
correspondence, March 23, 2018)
Matewan is a coal mine located in the secondary social studies teachers’ community, and,
by telling that story, Maretta helps her students learn about both family and local history.
The participants in the program also engaged in comparison of their Appalachian
homes to the Pueblo homes. One related, “Statements regarding compromise between
employment and the environment and the cost associated with both can be poignant
with our area of the nation” (Tracy, personal correspondence, March 23, 2018). Using the
foundation of the issues, the teachers compared across cultures significant civic problems
that confronted their region as well as the Southwest. The issues of land policy, tropic
cascade, water, conservation and preservation, extraction and attraction, and economics
and the environment required the teachers to make decisions that may or may not be like
the decisions made at the Pueblo. The teachers saw many of the same problems in their
Appalachian homes as they found in the Pueblo.

Conclusions
The Appalachian teachers ultimately interpreted the immersive experience in terms
of controversial issues that prompted reflection on their own community, and they had to
exercise civic judgement to make decisions about community problems. By traveling to the
Pueblos, teachers learned to understand civic problems that affect their own Appalachian
communities. The contextualizing of problems informed secondary social studies teachers
on how to make informed decisions.
Teachers involved in cross-cultural social studies professional development experiences
will find surprises in other cultures, but they do not need to travel around the world to find
diverse groups of people. Furthermore, traveling is no guarantee that individuals will learn
or change instructional practices. Teachers need help in finding quality experiences and
meeting new people in new situations to practice democratic education and find social
justice in the public schools. In this program, teachers stepped out of their culture to
investigate another culture that reminded them of their own. They drew parallels based
on their life experiences. Like other in-service experiences, this cross-cultural program
provided a unique way to explore other communities within the nation, meet others whom
they might not encounter in their schools, and, at the same time, examine issues that might
provide insight into problems in their own back yard.