Educators in revolt: global lessons from the recent wave of U.S. teachers’ strikes

Group Submission Type: Pre-conference Workshop

Proposal

Workshop Purpose: 2018 has proven to be a watershed year for the struggle against austerity in U.S. schools. Beginning with the February 22 walkout of West Virginia educators, an unprecedented wave of teachers’ strikes swept through West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, and North Carolina. Following the “red state” strikes, labor struggles continued on the West Coast, with a series of strikes in Washington state and a developing struggle in the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union: United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). In this pre-conference workshop session, scholars, labor leaders, and educator activists will share stories and lessons from this recent wave of teachers’ strikes. Placing these strikes in global and historical context, they will explore the significance of this particular moment for educators across the U.S. and world. Likewise, they will discuss how educators are working to sustain this movement through local, national, and global organizations and networks.

Learning Objectives: This workshop is a unique opportunity for a dialogue between teachers, union leaders, and comparative and international education researchers. We will have around a dozen educators from the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and across the United States participating in the workshop. We have also identified many CIES researcher participants who are studying diverse global contexts, from South Africa to India to Colombia, and are interested in talking to the U.S. teachers about these recent strikes. During CIES 2018, many of these CIES researchers participated in a pre-conference workshop with leaders form the Mexican Democratic Teachers Movement (la CNTE). The goal of this 2019 CIES pre-conference workshop is to continue this conversation about what researches can learn from global teachers’ struggles. The implications for sustainability are clear: improved teaching conditions are a central component of building a sustainable school system, and often the only method to achieve these improved conditions is through teacher organizing and strikes. Currently, global education reform efforts are attempting to reduce teachers’ professional autonomy and participation in school governance. Teachers’ unions are among the only organizations fighting for educators’ right to engage in education policy discussions. The learning objectives are the following: 1) Explain how the biggest teachers’ strikes in U.S. history emerged in 2018; 2) Draw out the global lessons that we can take from the recent and unexpected struggles of U.S. teachers; 3) Analyze the strategies that teachers used in the U.S. context and how they might differ or be similar in other global contexts; 4) Reflect on the current global education reform efforts and how teachers can expand their struggles to address issues of education quality beyond the typical bread and butter issues.

Delivery Plan: The workshop will be divided into four parts, facilitated by the conference organizers: 1) Stories of the recent “red state” strikes. This focus will be on educators’ stories and how they were able to organize these statewide walkouts in the context of conservative labor legislation and anti-labor state governments; 2) Small group discussions about how the conditions leading to these strikes (austerity, health care costs) and the opportunities for mobilizing resistance are similar and different globally; 3) Whole-group discussion about educator organizing in other U.S. and global contexts. 4) Brainstorming about the future of this movement, including: a) how educators can center pedagogical and social issues beyond wages and benefits in their organizing efforts, b) how educators can sustain their organizing beyond large mobilizations, and c) how educators can learn from and adapt the strategies that other educators have used in different global contexts to connect to broader social justice struggles.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Workshop Organizers

• Rebecca Tarlau, Penn State University

• Carol Anne Spreen, New York University

• Sangeeta Kamat, University of Massachusetts Amherst

• Lauren Elizabeth Ware Stark, University of Virginia