Last night, I was asked to speak virtually to a group of student teachers who read my book This Is Not A Test for class (on sale at Haymarket Books, by the way). It was great speaking to this group of students after nine years of learning, leading, and troublemaking since the release of the book. The burgeoning educators had great questions, but the one that feels most germane to the moment was about getting into trouble. In particular, the person asked how administration reacted to my book and it quickly reminded me that I have things to share with you.
For years, I held onto the idea that people are complex human beings, especially in distressing systems. Society doesn’t give us enough grace, much less allow us to give it to each other. Modeling a level of humanity that isn’t afforded to us might help the world get closer to authentic healing. But it usually gets uglier before it gets better, so you can imagine what happened after I published my book.
Photo copies were made and analyzed for urgent instructional team meetings after the publication of the book. Social and professional silent treatments began. Rumors of me being targeted for sanctions spread. Informal observations turned into rebukes of my professionalism and character. Opportunities for advancement were squashed. Of course, I grinned and bore it because my responsibility to children mattered more than things I don’t dare mention here. Relationships between administrators and teachers are rarely reciprocal in grace-granting, which is also a source of tension for many of us.
Yes, I got in more trouble. No, I regret nothing.
I rarely discussed my actual admin in this blog (and if you asked me which posts precisely, I was more likely to deny it), but none of it mattered. One of my math coaches advised me to pick and choose my battles with a particular assistant principal, but the more the battles kept piling up, the less of them I wanted to fight. I was already part of multiple battles outside of school: the fight against high stakes standardized testing on the local and national level, the fight for educators of color, the fight against the specialized high school admissions test, the fight for a culturally responsive and sustaining education in NYC, the general fight for Black lives, etc. I simultaneously had the dubious distinction of being the first of the NYC education bloggers at the time to have their blog blocked by the whole NYC Department of Education. To also teach my students in a way that reflected my activism became harder when the whole climate of our schools didn’t agree with that.
I don’t wish that suppression for any teacher activist, much less ones whose very existence is treated as an anomaly in our schools.
But in this moment and time, it bears repeating what my mentor told me years ago: another reason why we exceed at protocols and procedures is because we don’t wanna give these folks a legitimate reason to get rid of us. Because they already do. They’ll find a way, but you don’t have to give it to them. Some topics are easier to activate on than others, and racial and social justice to the extent that I and others did always put a target on our backs in a way that fighting for better pay, pensions, and other “safer” topics did not.
So I stayed subversive. I gave my weekly assessments. I wrote my lesson plans in the recommended format. After I was transitioned from the math coach role, I took it in stride, thankful that I got to influence more students with my mathematical legerdemain. When the program changed at the imposition of the superintendent to give me two more classes, I think my only word was “Fine,” and mumbled something inaudible to my colleagues. I had a moment or two of self-imposed isolation in subsequent years, but eventually galvanized other educators so we could make it through the school years. My lessons were mostly good, sometimes great. I broke up a few fights, too, as larger men are prompted to do, including one where I came within an inch of a pocket knife.
The system gave me a collective shrug for most of my troubles. And then I went back to teaching because that’s what I do. Or did.
But for teachers who wish to be teacher activists, it doesn’t take much besides a community and a vision. The latter is your work, the former is ours. There are a plethora of teacher groups out there doing great work, and having a union helps with this, too. If I had to choose between you getting fired for rebellion and you staying, eight out of ten times, I’d choose for you to stay. With so few people willing to build movements towards justice and empathy in our classrooms and schools, even the specter of having just one increases the possibility that students will have exposure to what’s conceivable. That someone would plant the seed for hope and justice is promising.
But too much of our current knowledge base puts teacher activists in the past, as if we don’t have living examples among us. So activate on. You can wait the three years and a day, but tenure doesn’t protect those of us who walk with darker hues and just hearts in the same way. People have no idea how administrators who see due process will do us in that process. For what it’s worth, getting hired as a teacher explicitly means that you’re not as revolutionary as you think you are because there’s always a line to cross. Revolution assumes you’ll step on those, too.
The hope is that, because there’s a long legacy of people named and unnamed in our systems looking to normalize that which is seen as radical, we will win. And there’ll be many more books written by teacher activists who seek to get the record straight when society says they shouldn’t.
The fact that we have teachers who want to be activists means, even amongst all the wrong, some of us did something right.
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