"It's Not Our Responsibility": Educator and Union Resistance Against the Unsafe Reopening of Schools

• In Event: Teacher Retention and Response to School Reopening

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the frames and strategies that educators use to resist the unsafe reopening of schools. Building on the social movement and social justice unionism literatures as well as the theory of “responsibilization,” I discuss the ways that educators have challenged the expectation that they must risk their lives during the pandemic. Using the methodologies of autoethnography, militant ethnography, document analysis, and social media analysis, I explore how educators have resisted unsafe school reopenings since the beginning of the crisis. In particular, I analyze the discourse of educators in op-eds, petitions, and digital webinars, highlighting the ways that educators resist and reframe narratives around their responsibilities to students.

Author

• Lauren Stark, University of Maine at Augusta