Read Online More Than a Score by Jesse Hagopian - Free Book Online
Authors: Jesse Hagopian
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experienced a sense of shared purpose and connection upon which to build their resistance to Pearson.
The Personal Readiness Path
My experience at the high school had left me shaken and uncertain. On the one hand, I understood that my ideas about education practices were more radical than the norm. On the other hand, I preserved some faith that doing my job well would allow me freedom beyond the strictures of the growing neoliberal regime in education. I was not prepared to lose my job. Neither was I prepared to accept the support offered me. I was not prepared for the vulnerability of how public the attack was. And when I got to the university, this unsettled feeling stayed with me. I retreated to good work in the classroom but caution in the public space of my work. As contract faculty and someone who came to the university on a nontraditional path, I was insecure in my knowledge and status. These first years at the university were painful. I could not live with myself without speaking my voice, but I had been seriously burned by speaking out.
My partner and I spent many a long walk talking through my confusion and pain. These conversations became more emphatic as the accountability regime hit teacher education. I was walking two paths at once. On the one hand, the fear of job loss left me anxious to try to work within the rules of the academy, even as that meant actively participating in the refining of the accountability system. On the other hand, I was working on my courses and with my students to name the accountability system for what it was and to consider ways to resist, what resistance would look like and what risks we were willing to take. In the privacy of conversations with my partner and in my own mind, I feared and loathed each act of compliance and complicity. I felt the soul of my work slipping away. Fortunately for me, these talks led to a deepening commitment between my partner and me that we could not live lives of silent compliance. Over time, the conversations shifted to preparing ourselves for when we would stand up and one of us would lose our job or get arrested. We talked about the privileges we had and how to use them. We talked about working our way through the fear and about being strategic in preparing to live a smaller material life in order to live a more honest work life. That we did not have children made this decision easier and was a part of our conscious choice: we could do this at little risk to others beside ourselves.
The Paths Join
I was teaching the Secondary English methods class in the fall of 2011 when Occupy Wall Street blossomed. I went to Liberty Plaza a number of times, interviewed people, came back, told the students stories, had them listen to my interview with the critical pedagogue Ira Shor that Iâd recorded at Liberty Plaza, asked them to imagine the work of teaching as a political act. I went to local Occupy sites and continued to participate with local activists within the peace and justice movement. Some of the students in the methods class struggled to understand what this activism meant to their classrooms. We considered what we asked our students to read, talk about, and write; how we listened to them; what we knew of their lives; and how all of this fit or not with education for democracy and liberation. And in that struggle and within the conflicts, affection and courage grew.
At the same time, I found my voice and courage in department meetings. The Occupy movement was a part of this courage. Speaking with people in Liberty Plaza, marching to the Brooklyn Bridge, standing out in an early fall snowstorm in Springfield, Massachusetts, watching the police brutality when citizens across the country demanded their voices be heard: these added fuel to a soul already inspired by local activists. When my colleagues and I decided that our students should not have to participate in a field test unless they chose to, I willingly accepted the leadership role in
The Personal Readiness Path
My experience at the high school had left me shaken and uncertain. On the one hand, I understood that my ideas about education practices were more radical than the norm. On the other hand, I preserved some faith that doing my job well would allow me freedom beyond the strictures of the growing neoliberal regime in education. I was not prepared to lose my job. Neither was I prepared to accept the support offered me. I was not prepared for the vulnerability of how public the attack was. And when I got to the university, this unsettled feeling stayed with me. I retreated to good work in the classroom but caution in the public space of my work. As contract faculty and someone who came to the university on a nontraditional path, I was insecure in my knowledge and status. These first years at the university were painful. I could not live with myself without speaking my voice, but I had been seriously burned by speaking out.
My partner and I spent many a long walk talking through my confusion and pain. These conversations became more emphatic as the accountability regime hit teacher education. I was walking two paths at once. On the one hand, the fear of job loss left me anxious to try to work within the rules of the academy, even as that meant actively participating in the refining of the accountability system. On the other hand, I was working on my courses and with my students to name the accountability system for what it was and to consider ways to resist, what resistance would look like and what risks we were willing to take. In the privacy of conversations with my partner and in my own mind, I feared and loathed each act of compliance and complicity. I felt the soul of my work slipping away. Fortunately for me, these talks led to a deepening commitment between my partner and me that we could not live lives of silent compliance. Over time, the conversations shifted to preparing ourselves for when we would stand up and one of us would lose our job or get arrested. We talked about the privileges we had and how to use them. We talked about working our way through the fear and about being strategic in preparing to live a smaller material life in order to live a more honest work life. That we did not have children made this decision easier and was a part of our conscious choice: we could do this at little risk to others beside ourselves.
The Paths Join
I was teaching the Secondary English methods class in the fall of 2011 when Occupy Wall Street blossomed. I went to Liberty Plaza a number of times, interviewed people, came back, told the students stories, had them listen to my interview with the critical pedagogue Ira Shor that Iâd recorded at Liberty Plaza, asked them to imagine the work of teaching as a political act. I went to local Occupy sites and continued to participate with local activists within the peace and justice movement. Some of the students in the methods class struggled to understand what this activism meant to their classrooms. We considered what we asked our students to read, talk about, and write; how we listened to them; what we knew of their lives; and how all of this fit or not with education for democracy and liberation. And in that struggle and within the conflicts, affection and courage grew.
At the same time, I found my voice and courage in department meetings. The Occupy movement was a part of this courage. Speaking with people in Liberty Plaza, marching to the Brooklyn Bridge, standing out in an early fall snowstorm in Springfield, Massachusetts, watching the police brutality when citizens across the country demanded their voices be heard: these added fuel to a soul already inspired by local activists. When my colleagues and I decided that our students should not have to participate in a field test unless they chose to, I willingly accepted the leadership role in
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