The Cruel Optimism of #teacherquittok

• In Event: From Early Childhood to Educational Researchers: Foucault and Contemporary Theory in Education

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the entanglements in which we find ourselves. Teachers’ voices, especially those of women and teachers of color, have long gone un(der)heard. We have observed that feelings of fatigue, listlessness, and frustration have proliferated across social media in recent months. The conditions of the COVID landscape of teaching have left many teachers answering a difficult question: “Should I just quit?” The purpose of this research is to explore more closely the affective realities teachers find themselves connected to/with/in and how those realities are expressed. To theorize such affects, we entangle in post qualitative “readings” of videos of teachers chronicling their resignations from teaching on TikTok, a video-sharing social media application, under popular hashtags like #teacherquittok.

Authors

• Ben Ray, University of Alabama
  Presenting Author

• Shelby Morris, University of Alabama
  Presenting Author

• Kelly Woodall Guyotte, University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author