Silence as Unpaid Currency: Teacher-Student Interactions in an Alternative School

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Education: Where Have We Already Been? Where Do We Go From Here?

Abstract

In this paper, we position our work with alternative school students in Alabama as a Project in Humanization (Kinloch & San Pedro, 2014; 2017). We draw on data generated over the course of one semester with students in an agriscience elective class to construct vignettes about the transactional nature of silence at the school. These vignettes are used to examine the varying ways in which educators at the school expected and responded to student silence and voice, using silence as both a currency and a punishment that ranged from the false promise of re-entry at the main high school to further exclusion from the setting.

Authors

• Amy J. Anderson, DePaul University

• Hannah Carson Baggett, Auburn University