“Bread-earning Saturated with Humiliation”: Palestinian English Teachers Navigating Love, Language, and Resistance in Jewish schools

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Language, Decoloniality And Social Justice

Abstract

This paper explores how Palestinian English teachers (PETs) navigate the emotional, political, and professional tensions of working in Jewish Israeli secondary schools, particularly in the aftermath of October 2023. Drawing on the frameworks of linguistic citizenship and sumud pedagogy, the study examines how teachers respond to trauma, surveillance, and marginalization through acts of relational care, political presence, and decolonial love. Centering teacher subjectivity within trauma-informed education, the paper challenges learner-focused models and highlights the ethical and affective labor educators perform in securitized spaces. Preliminary findings show how PETs resist erasure while reimagining classrooms as sites of dignity and decolonial possibility, offering essential insights for TESOL and education fields committed to justice, memory, and imagining more humane futures.

Author

• Muzna Awayed-Bishara, Tel Aviv University