Vigilante Teachers: On “Doing What You Gotta Do”

• In Event: Racial Justice in Multilingual Education: What Is It and How Do We Realize It?

Abstract

Objectives/purposes
The objective of this paper begins considering what kinds of long-term effects and consequences might emerge from what I am calling a “vigilante ethos,” or a teacher’s willingness to break school rules on behalf of racialized students and on behalf of the “greater good.” I analyze testimonios from bilingual educators in New York City, which uncovered the painful stories that led to both their educational activism and to their willingness to “fight fire with fire” to protect (i.e. advocate for) their students. This paper will critique (but, not criticize) this approach as more and more energized vigilante teachers join the ranks as educational activists. I ask whether or not such an approach will help get us any closer to realizing the goal of racial justice in multilingual education.

Theoretical Framework:
This paper draws from CRT, LatCrit, a raciolinguistic ideological approach (Flores & Rosa 2015), and Superhero Studies. The lenses used to analyze the testimonios of linguistic trauma is Anzaldua’s “linguistic terrorism” theory (1987) and Mena’s “soft linguistic terrorism” theory (2023). These lenses will help understand the nuances of trauma Latinxs have experienced at the intersection of language and race in American education.

Methods:
This is a longitudinal study based on my experience teaching graduate student, bilingual educators in New York City. All participating in this study were previously (or currently) enrolled in my graduate seminar, “Bilingualism: Theory and Practice,” which I have taught every semester for the last two years. In my role as professor—and therefore participant-observer—I heard countless stories of trauma and of activism. These stories were then systematically collected as testimonios (Huber 2009; Delgado Bernal 1998) and analyzed using what Wortham and Reyes (2015) call “discourse analysis beyond the speech event,” which considers the political context around the words as important as the words of the interview itself.

Data Sources:
Data sources include testimonios collected in two primary ways: via written class assessments or interviews. Following IRB protocol, all students are asked for consent to quote them in any way, be it verbal or textual.

Conclusions:
I argue that many bilingual educators are forced into breaking rules to advocate for their racialized students. Often, these activist methods undertaken by individual teachers are framed as “fighting fire with fire,” and ultimately necessary for the “greater good” of racialized populations. It will be argued, however, that the activism of individual vigilante teachers may work as a double edged sword, as an effective way to advocate at the hyper-localized individual level, but may bring forth new institutional techniques to better control teachers.

Scholarly Significance:
This presentation centers the following questions: 1) What constitutes effective activism at the scale of the individual?; 2) What constitutes “racial justice” and what are the most effective means to achieve it? Furthermore, following Valdés’ (1997) “cautionary note,” my research predicts difficulties may emerge if we depend too heavily on individual activists working in isolation—particularly on the vigilante teachers who have opted to “fight fire with fire.”

Author

• Mike Mena, Brooklyn College - CUNY