The Changing Needs of Teacher Activism and Organizing

• In Event: Activists, Advocates, and Agitators: Teacher Unions and Grassroots Organizations as Remedies and Repair

Abstract

Once individuals began to better understand the possibilities of how groups could form and utilize social media for various actions, campaigns, and general organizing, several groups developed online and found that space to be an important home for their organizations. Tarlau (2018) found movements utilized social media helped to “reinvigorate the labor movements” and increased members’ participation in union infrastructure (p. 837). Members of the Badass Teachers’ Association found social media to be a democratizing factor, allowing people to participate in activism without living in a specific area or having to leave their home (Kramer, 2017; Kramer, 2023). Many of the group’s successful campaigns were situated in the online space, despite some leaders not initially seeing possibilities that existed for organizing online (Kramer, 2023). Teacher activism developed out of the need to challenge horrific neoliberal reforms that have plagued education since the 1980s. Giroux (2013) defined neoliberalism as:
not merely an economic doctrine that prioritizes buying and selling, makes the supermarket and mall the temples of public life, and defines the obligations of citizenship in strictly consumerist terms. It is also a mode of pedagogy and a set of social arrangements that uses education to win consent, produce consumer-based notions of agency, and militarize reason in the service of war, profits, power, and violence while simultaneously instrumentalizing all forms of knowledge” (p. 459).
While teacher activism is not solely a 21st Century phenomenon, there are many things that have changed in the way teachers are activating, organizing, and protesting. Furthermore, increasing legislative attacks and issues stemming from the pandemic have necessitated the type of organizing we continue to witness.
This presentation focuses on a case study of the Badass Teachers’ Association where interviews with members of leadership provided insight into the group’s work. Framing these results within the current climate, teachers were able to participate in conversations online that assisted safety efforts in individual districts during the pandemic. The group also currently serves as a connector of members to other groups nationally or locally in order to push back against the most recent legislative attacks nationwide.
The BATs Quality of Worklife Team emerged recently as a central focus of the organization, and partnered with AFT on two studies highlighting the issues teachers faced in their daily work life (American Federation of Teachers, 2015; 2017). They also partnered with researchers at the University of Alabama to release a report focusing on teachers’ well-being during the pandemic (Matthews et al., 2020). A webinar series “Educators Facing Your Fears” began in 2020, which focused on providing teachers support when they face challenges like bullying or administrative retaliation.
In today’s climate, teachers face consistent challenges to their work, outright attacks on their profession, and low morale post-pandemic. Organizations like the Badass Teachers Association provide current teachers with a space to discuss many of these challenges while also celebrating the successes that happen in our day-to-day work with students and the work that teachers are engaged in their communities.

Author

• Brianne Kramer, Southern Utah University