New Teacher-Scholars Examine Race and Power: A Reader's Theater Performance of Collective Memory Work

• In Event: 34.060 - There's No Neutrality in Teaching: Politics and the Profession

Abstract

This reader’s theatre performance resists the narrative of the apolitical classroom; instead, centering the ways power circulates through the raced and gendered bodies of teachers and their students. Collective memory work was used to analyze stories of expected or attempted neutrality in the classroom, focusing on issues of power and identity, particularly considering the effects of gender and whiteness in interactions with students and administrators. Reader’s theatre is used to retell and revoice four memories of teachers and teacher educators, exploring the theoretical possibilities of grounding research in stories, while leveraging lived experiences to examine the empirical and experiential realities of classrooms and resisting dominant narratives of teaching circulated in public discourse as well as the academy.

Authors

• Abby Boehm-Turner, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Lee C Fisher, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Sara K. Sterner, University of Minnesota

• Amanda Christine Shopa, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities