This post was written by Patricia Benitez Hemans, CTERIN ETE Fellow & PhD Candidate, Transforming Education in a Diverse Society, in UC San Diego's Department of Education Studies
Teachers in the US are experiencing an onslaught of deprofessionalization and devaluation where we are no longer trusted to understand developmentally appropriate teaching practices, especially as it relates to issues of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and social justice. In 2021, Republican lawmakers had introduced legislation banning the teaching of concepts such as racial equity and white privilege in nearly half the U.S. states. In some states, this legislation has been passed, banning the use of critical race theory (CRT) in schools (though there is little evidence of it actually being taught), as well as the 1619 Project. Teachers in Texas are being told they must make available to students materials representing “opposing views” or “other perspectives” of the Holocaust and slavery. School districts in Indiana and Illinois face backlash against their provisional DEI training, as parents mistrust how teachers would use such training with their children.
Politicians and the public impede our agency as teachers to act on the interest of our students, especially students who come from marginalized communities that DEI efforts are supposed to serve. Guided by the simple principle that all students deserve a quality education, it is, therefore, imperative that we teachers act collectively to set the standards and curricula for our work and training, and to receive respect for our expertise and labor. Teacher education programs (TEPs) are key in preparing and supporting us not just as teachers, but as teacher activists.
Becoming a teacher activist: My story
I have always believed that education is a powerful tool, something that gives me, as an individual, agency. Being the daughter of Filipino immigrants, this emphasis on education as a device to rise up individually in the world, as well as to help my own family, was instilled in me from a very young age. My mother once told me that the only inheritance my grandfather had given her was the gift of schooling, from primary school through university, so she could create her own opportunities in life. This notion that education has the power to transform lives was a thread woven throughout my own upbringing, which has become the foundation of my philosophy of education.
It wasn’t until I started attending Education courses as an undergraduate at UCLA that I started to learn how lucky I was to have had such familial support. Previously, I thought that people who were not successful simply chose not to work hard; I had not even considered that people are born into unearned circumstances. I also believed that every person growing up experienced the same feelings I had regarding being embarrassed by constantly mispronouncing English words, being ashamed of having darker skin, and feeling confusion over what being “American” meant and what it looked like. I lived 20 years of my life before these feelings were finally validated with names: agency, structure, oppression, privilege, cultural capital, implicit bias, systemic racism, and deficit thinking. This was the turning point in my life where I started to become critically aware, to see how my beliefs and actions affect other people, and I yearned to connect with others who were also passionate about education, not only as a tool for individual transformation, but for societal transformation through collective agency.
My road to becoming a teacher started in 2005, when I entered UCLA’s Teacher Education program. I chose this program because of its strong emphasis on praxis and its commitment to forming a critical mass of social justice educators in urban schools. Though I had a burgeoning consciousness of the world and did believe in agency prior to entering this program, I don’t think I knew exactly how I would like to see the world transformed, nor was I fully convinced that I could do anything of much influence. However, after a few months learning through a foundation of critical pedagogy, I was convinced that teaching is always embedded with values and is never a neutral act (Freire, 1980) and, instead of constantly reinforcing the dominant culture, I could embrace an emancipatory form of education that frees us from oppressive social structures that entrench us all.
Since then, “empowerment” has always been central to who I am as an educator. I believe in the continuous development of my students’ (and my own) critical consciousness, which includes understanding we have choices, aspiring past what currently exists, and having conviction in our choices in order to move us forward into using our agency to act/resist (Center on Gender Health and Equity (GEH), 2020). I teach with a foundation of critical pedagogy, centering problem-posing, dialogue, and critical thinking, and valuing participation and student agency. By educating in this way I continuously experience what bell hooks describes as, “education as the practice of freedom” (hooks, 1994): facing the reality of the world while also imagining ways to push past those boundaries, striving collectively to transform society to be more equitable and just.
In my classroom, I center what students identify as individual and community strengths, and tackle social issues of interest through practicum projects. At the school/university level, I walk out for workers’ rights and unfair tuition hikes, and fight for a curriculum that is diverse and inclusive of counter narratives. In the community, I attend protests for women’s and immigrants’ rights, and donate to bail funds associated with Black Lives Matter and the Kumeyaay Defense Against the Wall. In my professional life, I engage in somatic training on racial equity and have co-found an organization committed to transformative justice. In my personal life, I commit to healing from intergenerational trauma and finding more mindful and loving ways to be a partner, mother, daughter, sister, and friend.
May 1, 2006: Me (center) and folks from my TEP cohort during immigrants-rights protest in downtown Los Angeles
Wanted: Teacher activists
While the political landscape may suggest otherwise, our field wants and needs more teacher activists! As a former high school teacher and a developing leader in the area of teacher education, I proudly identify as a teacher activist as defined by Haywood-Bird & Kamei. A teacher activist is a professional teacher who:
Stands up for both individual rights as well as profession’s rights
Advocates for the needs of children, and overall developmentally appropriate practices in teaching
Advocates in their individual community in a public way, not leaving advocacy to the bigger union groups or rely on the school administration to act on their behalf
Understands, acknowledges, and accepts the risks that come with being a teacher activist.
As I scroll through current job postings in teacher education, it is clear that many programs are interested in hiring teacher educators who have a pedagogy of activism, and who may be able to prepare future teacher activists. I see many posts wanting teacher educators who have a background in anti-racist pedagogy, multicultural education, healing pedagogy, ethnic studies, and/or evidence of supporting students of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds; there is almost always a required diversity statement.
This is promising!
Teaching is a difficult profession. The overall yearly teacher attrition rate is 8%, with nearly 50% of new teachers leaving the profession within the first five years. Teachers of color leave the profession sooner and at a higher rate, in part due to the fact that their work (often with marginalized students) is often closely aligned with fighting injustices in their own lives (Kohli, 2021). It is especially difficult teaching when you are underpaid and feel underappreciated and unsupported, and feel like there are just too many obstacles to make a difference for your students. It is also difficult when efforts to limit your agency are continuous, whether it be through mandated scripted curriculum, or legislation and pressure to limit talking about anything related to diversity and equity.
How can future teachers be prepared to battle against (and sustain their work in) a social context that is constantly trying to deprofessionalize and disempower them? Perhaps TEPs should be asking not only how they can embrace a transformative paradigm, but also how they can develop teacher agency and sustain their professional agency over time to keep the teacher activist in education for the long haul.
Desperately seeking: TEPs made for teacher activists
TEPs seem to understand that future teachers need to be prepared for the social context in which they will be entering the workforce, and the particular challenges of providing a quality education to a diverse student population. Some even have an explicit transformative, emancipatory, or equity-driven mission/vision (I see you, San José State University!).
These efforts are important, but they will not create teacher activists. Here are a few humble suggestions for TEPs on how to develop and sustain teacher agency and activism:
Working with pre-service teachers: Individual empowerment
Develop pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) critical consciousness and support their empowerment: Not only should PSTs understand institutional structures and power dynamics as organizing principles of society, they should engage in critical inquiry about making choices beyond upholding the status quo, visualize what transformation or equity is to them, and create plans towards meeting these goals. The more this can be woven into course assignments, expectations, and the teaching of pedagogy and subject methods, the easier PSTs will find integrating consciousness-building and empowerment into who they are as teachers and how they teach.
Develop self-efficacy to prepare PSTs to act and resist during student teaching and beyond: PSTs should have the space to develop efficacy with regards to their transformative or equity-driven goals. This includes learning about the present social context of teaching and providing support to sustain working within this context. For example, learning about and practicing racial literacy or social problems literacy within the context of TEP courses and student teaching would provide PSTs a supportive experience to build their self-efficacy. This could serve as a foundation for them to use their agency once they are teachers, where they will face a range of positive and negative responses from students, administration, parents, and community.
Provide support with intersectionality in mind: TEPs need to understand how embodied experiences affect agency. Teachers of color face racialization and can be placed in racially hostile work climates that affect them differently than white colleagues. Female/female-presenting teachers face challenges that keep them from ascending into leadership roles at the same rate as their male/male-presenting counterparts. By having an understanding of this, TEPs should provide more specific support, such as connecting teachers of color with organizations like the Institute for Teachers of Color at UC Riverside.
Working with community: Collective empowerment
Working in community helps sustain change by preventing people from feeling isolated. Communities also bring people together to build upon collective agency towards reaching mutual goals. There are several ways TEPs can think of community formation:
Using a cohort model: Having PSTs develop close relationships with their peers during coursework and supervision can help with developing collective aspirations and boost confidence in professional goal-setting and choice-making.
Forming school-university partnerships: Fostering authentic relationships with schools and communities to ensure they are meeting the self-determined needs of the communities in which their PSTs are placed can help determine whether PSTs will be met with social support.
Building a strong alumni community: Providing ongoing professional development opportunities for alumni and supporting them as they become mentor teachers to PSTs can help in forming a critical mass of educators who are aligned with teacher activism.
Expanding offerings: Extending education program offerings to include principal leadership (like the Principal Leadership Institute at UCLA) in alignment with TEP values expands the opportunity for supporting teacher activists and their agency at a different level.
Moving forward: What teacher activists deserve
Being an educator in the current political climate demands much of us teachers, well past simply knowing grade-level content and clocking in during school hours. It demands a level of activism in order to fight for our professionalization, as well as to continue to meet the needs of our diverse student population in an equitable manner. To prepare and sustain teacher activists, TEPs must develop self-efficacy and individual agency, as well as support our organizing and collective action to withstand the current climate. It is a lot to ask of us teachers to activate in this climate, and TEPs have an important role in supporting us to do this. My hope is that TEPs respond to this need and provide the (continued) support that all teacher activists deserve as we continue to pursue justice for our students and communities.
References
Center on Gender Health and Equity (GEH). (2020). A Conceptual Framework for Measuring Women’s Empowerment.
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