The covid 19 pandemic forced the education instructors to pivot their instruction online to allow teaching and learning to continue. In rural area, the practices of online teaching may bring in some challenges. This paper is written to describe the practice of online teaching and its challenges faced by English teachers in a rural area high school in Tanjung Jabung Timur Jambi province.  Interview with the English teachers was used to gather data which then were analyzed qualitatively by using thematic analysis. The practice of online teaching runs by implementing several applications such as WhatsApp, google classroom, youtube, google form, and google search engine. The challenges the teachers faced are lack of access to technology, parents’ support, students’ interest, and time management. Appropriate teaching learning strategies are needed to cope with the challenges. One of them is vary the learning activities.