Al Wood is a doctoral candidate in the curriculum, instruction, and teacher education program at Michigan State University. Prior to joining MSU, he taught most content areas of middle and high school social studies for nine years in rural Northern Arizona, including three years on the Navajo Nation. He also is a James Madison Fellow and was a reader for the AP U.S. History exam. His research goals are driven by his rural teaching experiences and aim to increase awareness of the unique challenges faced by social studies teachers in rural communities. He is particularly interested in exploring how rural and Indigenous teachers and students experience social studies and using those findings to explore how their voices can be represented and amplified in the teaching and learning of history, politics, economics, social justice, and critical perspectives.