Bad Cyborg: Teacher Navigations of Neoliberal Mechanization at No-Excuse Charter Schools

• In Event: Bad Teachers, Riotous Pedagogies: Possibilities and Consequences of Refusing the System

Abstract

“Good teachers” at no-excuse charter schools are often expected to enforce and follow policies and practices that are anti-Black and dehumanizing, typically in the name of high academic achievement (Dishon & Goodman, 2017; Sondel, Kretchmar & Dunn, 2019; Golann, 2021). Yet, there is little research into how these teachers experience those policies and practices, and if and how they practice resistance. This paper focuses on how two teachers from a six-participant multiple case study negotiate “good teacher” expectations, specifically asking, How do teachers at no-excuse charter schools navigate neoliberal policies and practices?
This study emerges from the perspective that teachers in neoliberal learning spaces undergo a process of mechanization (Author, in process), the aim of which is to create obedient teacher “machines”. Mechanized teachers face threats to salary, social standing, and career; spiritual and emotional colonization of neoliberal narratives through narrative induction (Linde, 2000); and bodily controls. In examining how educators as arbiters of systemic oppression (Althusser, 2006) encounter mechanization, we can broaden conversations around dismantling those systems.
I explore teacher experiences through critical storying methodology (Author, in process), which extends from practices in testimonio (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, & Carmona 2012), testifying to trauma (Felman & Laub, 1992), and restorying (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016) and counternarrating (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) dominant narratives. My methods include interviews, observations, and memo-writing. Through critical narrative analysis (Souto-Manning, 2018), I looked for how participants’ “rebel becomings” (MacLure, Jones, Holmes, & MacRae, 2012) reject, recycle, react, and/or resist to neoliberal narratives. I then wrote emergent themes into speculative fiction narratives for each participant, which I shared with them. Stories position teachers as cyborgs in order to explore their tensions between humanity and machination, and imagine learning unbound by systemic oppression (Toliver, 2020).
Motivated by desires to safeguard their own material, mental, and social survival, yet also to prioritize their and their students’ humanity, teachers shifted between being a “good teacher” machine, and being a “bad” teacher human. For example, one teacher continued to host LGBTQ club for students and decorate her classroom with rainbow flags after an administrator told her to hide her LGBTQ identity, and implied that she not support students’. However, this teacher also expressed support for an administrator whose reputation for dehumanizing children includes forcing them to read aloud to the point of tears. Cross case emergent themes included “covert resistance”, “IDGAF, they can fire me”, “Learning > Rules”, and “You have to speak machine”. While teachers were not immediately cognizant of their contradictions, ongoing conversations led to thoughtful reflections.
While exploring these teachers’ experiences cannot undo the very real material harm students of intersecting minoritized identities experience as a result of White Supremacy and Neoliberalism, they can offer one more perspective on how these ideologies operate within no-excuse charter spaces to perpetuate anti-Black and other harms. Reflecting on teachers’ tensions through critical storying and specifically speculative fiction can contribute to 1) naming the specific ways teachers may be dehumanized into perpetuating violence, and 2) creating imaginative spaces for educators to critically reflect and co-conspire toward change and resistance.

Author

• Bianca Licata, San Francisco State University