“How Much of Myself Do I Want to Put Out There?”: Identities and Literacy Practices in Social Justice Teaching

Janet JohnsonRhode Island CollegeLRA Dallas 2013

“Teaching for social justice requires one to be both self-critical and self-forgiving.”

Bill Ayers

Association of Teacher Educators Conference February 2013

(Unacknowledged) Labor of Teaching

Intellectual labor (Giroux, 1988)

Emotional labor (Boler, 1999, Lasky 2005)

Actions of Social Justice Educators (Ayers, 2013)

Standing upDiscovering friends and allies

Acting for equity/social justice outside of education

Going alongSelf-protection

Theoretical Framework

New Literacy StudiesTeaching for Social Justice

Pedagogical literaciesTaxonomy of social justice literacies

Teacher Resilience

Taxonomy of Social Justice Literacies(Hines and Johnson, 2007)

Systems LiteraciesIndividual sees how complex dynamics create and perpetuate social, economic, and political inequities, and knows how to disrupt dominant narratives.

Strategic LiteraciesCoalition-buildingOppositionalTestimonial

Resilience Literacies

Professional Vulnerability

Multi-faceted/ multidimensional (Lasky, 2005)

Openness and trust are necessary for all relationships

Can also lead to a sense of powerlessness and anxiety

Teachers may feel as if they are being “forced” to act in ways that are inconsistent with their beliefs

Existing Literature on Teacher Resilience

PsychologicalPersonal attributes (tenacity, sense of moral purpose)Environmental factors (support systems)Strategies (help-seeking, depersonalization)Focus is not on social justice teaching, but teaching in difficult conditions

Resilience as a Literacy Practice

Teaching for social justice can lead to unwanted attention, including risk to livelihood. Withdrawal or isolation may occur until scrutiny and/or threat of sanctions has been withdrawn. Channeling, avoidance, self-silencing are deliberate acts in opposition to authority.Actions are based on systems literacies.

Methodology

Critical qualitative case studyPragmatic horizon analysis (Carspecken, 1996)

Research question:What does resilience look like as a literacy practice for teachers who feel threatened because of their commitments to social justice teaching?

Case Study: Daniel

White, male, late 20’s, gayWorking class background, tight-knit familyGrew up in an urban settingCame out to his family early in his college career

Themes

Professional VulnerabilityPersonal VulnerabilityContext MattersTheory MattersIntegrity and Identity

Context Matters

Moving from Urban to Suburban“…Maybe I went into Suburban High more confident about how I was teaching in terms of teaching a social justice position than I should have…when I was at Urban High perhaps it wasn’t an issue because I wasn’t revealing anything that they didn’t know.”

“I also felt that they needed to…come to realize some of those things because not all of them lived it.”

“I cranked up the social justice dial just a little bit. “

Teaching The InfernoEssential Questions: personal journey and the variables that make up identity: gender, race, class, and…sexuality.Madonna video “What It Feels Like for a Girl”“Am I Blue?” short storyGLSEN Heterosexual Questionnaire

Professional Vulnerability

Discussion with principal

Daniel: “We talked about race, why not this?...I have students who identify this way…”

Parent conference: no-show

“I just backed off critical social justice everything.”

“I don’t know if they understood my purpose…I just switched gears completely. I went…totally literal…you know, multiple choice…I just washed [critical theory] out completely.”

“Oh crap, this is a job. I’m not in college anymore. You know, I can’t just do this stuff…”

Personal Vulnerability

Social justice teacherChange in demeanor; social justice part of his identity

Gay male teacher“Even though I don’t talk outwardly…you can certainly read signs, you can certainly wonder, ‘Where is his wedding ring?’ Or, ‘Other teachers have pictures,’ or ‘Other teachers talk about things.’”

Following Years

Year Two“I toned down [the theory] and took out anything related to LGBT issues…I just feel like we are just being very superficial. And so I wasn’t into it as much.”

Year Three“I learned from the first year at Suburban, how can I negotiate being in the system but still work against it. The third year…I was a valued part of the school... I didn’t feel compelled or pressured to teach [any particular] way.”

Daniel’s Systems Literacies

“Looking back now, a smaller dose of any of what I did probably would have been better.” “I was writing my thesis on masculinity and queer theory…and so I probably wasn’t as scared because…I was a researcher and expert in that field.” “I consciously made it a goal to be more transparent in terms of [framing it as] ‘We’re doing this because of this,’ or ‘The set up for this comes from…’”

Continuum of Resilience LiteraciesWithdrawal

Pragmatism

Focus on Students

Withdrawal“cop-out”; “shut down completely”; “tell me what to do and I’ll do it”

Pragmatism (Reading Context)“still doing what I thought was good for me, but then what she wanted to see too.” And “staying low”

Focus on Students (Reading Students)“where are they willing to go, how are they going to respond to it, um in small, you know, in baby steps, bite-sized pieces of it”

Implications

Resilience literacies allow teachers to maintain their sense of integrity as social justice educators, even when they feel professionally and personally vulnerable.

There are policy implications for not just students, but teachers from marginalized populations. Teachers who feel vulnerable don’t take risks or feel valued.