Traversing the Capitol, the Corner, and the Classroom: West Virginia Teachers Staking Their Claim

• In Event: Walkout! Teacher Militancy, Activism, and School Reform: Bridging the Research-Practice Divide

Abstract

In 2018 and again in 2019, West Virginia (WV) education personnel engaged in multi-day work stoppages, forming picket lines along neighborhood streets and filling the state capitol. In 2018, they supported legislative bills to pay for the public employee health insurance fund, salaries, and student services. In 2019, they returned to fight retributive bills designed to undermine public education through legalizing charter schools, creating “education savings accounts,” and permitting districts to fire striking employees. In taking their fight to the street corners and the Capitol, school personnel had to make their case to the public, defending their right to hold the walk-outs against a backdrop of right-to-work legislation court battles and a recent history of public unease over teachers’ work stoppages. In this chapter, the authors focus their inquiry on the aftermath of the stoppages. Once school personnel left the empowering, collective spaces where they effected change at the Capitol, what remained of those experiences in their day-to-day teaching practices and identities? How did articulating their worth to West Virginia’s citizens and government agencies promote professional self-reflection and transformation? To this end, the chapters present cases of teachers whose professional lives were reshaped through their labor action.

Authors

• Malayna Bernstein, University of Toronto
  Presenting Author

• Audra Slocum, Oakland University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emily Tanzey
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jacob Staggers
  Non-Presenting Author