Teacher Organizing

In the face of this current national trend toward inequitable access to education along racial lines, and the encroaching values of standardization, privatization and corporatization within the daily lives of students, teachers and schools (Apple, 2006; Fabricant & Fine, 2012;

Ravitch, 2010, 2013), there is a growing trend toward public resistance. Across the U.S., grassroots groups are rising up and forming organizations to resist market-driven public schooling and to demand that all students have access to a fair and equitable public education (Anyon, 2009; Blanc & Simon, 2007; Gold, Simon & Brown, 2005; Quinn & Carl, 2013; Mediratta, Shaw & McAlister, 2009; Suess & Lewis, 2007; Warren & Mapp, 2011).

Many teachers engaged in social justice concerns and causes recognize the inequities inherent in dominant systems of power, and strive to centralize critical analyses of systems and structures within their curriculum and pedagogy (Giroux, 1983; Janks, 2010; Morrell, 2002; Simon & Campano, 2013), and within their activism (Picower, 2012; Sachs, 2000, 2003), which often extends beyond the school walls. Teachers and other education worker activists are organizing into local and national grassroots groups and networks, and are working within diverse platforms like professional associations, unions, grassroots activist groups and teacher research groups to assert voice and to produce changes in policy and the education system (Quinn & Carl, 2015; Stern, Brown & Hussain, 2016). In this sub-section, I briefly highlight scholarship on teachers as activists, and the ways that teachers use their unions and grassroots organizations to promote the strength and longevity of public education.

Teachers as Activists

One powerful lens through which to examine the work of educators who are organizing to take a stand within and beyond unions and grassroots organizations is to see them as activists. Marshall and Anderson (2009) define an activist as “an individual who is known for taking stands and engaging in action aimed at producing social change, possibly in conflict with institutional opponents [sic]” (p. 116). Specifically addressing teachers, Picower (2012) defines activism as “educators who work for social justice both inside and outside of their classrooms (p. 562). Together, these scholars build a definition of education worker

activists as those who hold and work in accordance with their social justice ideals, with the intention of triggering social change both within and beyond classrooms and schools.

Teachers engaging in such activist-oriented grassroots work have been shown to hold strong political convictions that guide their sense of justice and contribute to a personal belief that there is an imperative to act (Picower, 2012). They take up a transformative politic and apply it to disrupting dominant codes, norms and identities that they perceive as structuring the daily life of schools (Sachs, 2003). And, they take action through constructing or altering curriculum and pedagogy (see Ayers et al, 2008), designing alternative or new structures for students and schools (see Beattie, 2002; Lund, 2006), advocating or agitating for system change (see Grossman, 2010), and even protesting or refusing to participate in systems or circumstances that they deem unjust. Taken together, these activist activities, which are intended to shift the daily life of schools, constitute a social movement where teachers collaborate with like-minded others to effect broader social change (Anyon, 2009). Teachers’ Grassroots Organizations

Many American teachers are currently rising up and organizing for change in the context of inequitable education for racialized and poor youth, and the privatization, corporatization and marketization of education. Activist teachers are partnering with

communities, and working together to make changes within their curricular and pedagogical work in classrooms and schools (Giroux, 1983; Janks, 2010; Morrell, 2002), within their unions (Maton, 2016; Uetricht, 2014; Weiner, 2012), and increasingly in policy circles governing implementation of technocratic policies such as standardized testing or the

structures of schooling (Grossman, 2010; Bascia & Maton, 2015; Mediratta et al, 2009; Ozga, 2000).

Activist teachers are also increasingly employing grassroots organizations as platforms from which to make their political voices heard. Quinn and Carl (2015) describe how activist teacher organizations in Philadelphia support the shared belief in the collective power of teachers, create opportunities for teachers to challenge and strive to alter educational systems and structures, and support teachers’ efforts to alter classroom curriculum and pedagogy. They argue that grassroots teacher organizations pose a framework through which teachers can exert agency within broader systems of power. Grossman (2010) similarly highlights that grassroots teacher activist organizations support teachers in mobilizing resources to successfully agitate for change in state structures, including education policy and governance. Bascia (2009) shows that teachers agentively engage with policy at multiple levels and in multiple directions within the system, and that teacher-led struggles to alter state-controlled policy processes tend to be most visible when teachers employ formalized organizational approaches to change-making. Social Justice Unions

Unions and teachers’ social justice union caucuses are one example of how teachers employ organizations to support their activist work. Education workers have a long history of using unions as platforms from which to organize for broader social change (Taylor, 2011). Social movement unionism (SMU) is a recently identified movement within the long history of labor organizing, and offers a theorized and principled approach advocating for a philosophical shift in the typically bureaucratic ways unions tend to strategize and act. Social justice

unionism (SJU) may be considered interchangeable with SMU, and is the preferred term amongst educators.

SMU and SJU emphasize democratic decision-making, a greater focus on militancy, and a widened understanding of who should benefit from the work of the unions (Fletcher, 2011; Weiner, 2012). Fletcher (2011) defines SMU as:

a practice that is oriented towards broad movement-building; membership control of the union; clear societal objectives focused upon social justice; the conscious effort to build strategic relationships with other progressive social movements; and a clear sense of class politics (p. 276).

SMU/ SJU frames unions as having a moral imperative to act on behalf of the working class broadly defined, rather than just card-carrying union members. Fletcher and Gapasin (2008) assert: “Union transformation must begin with the notion that the union has to build a broader labor movement as part of the process of introducing progressive change” (p. 200). When applied to education, SMU/SJU implies that education workers should form “deep coalitions” (Fletcher, 2011) with students, local families and communities. Here, educators act as social justice allies and advocates who work to ensure the public school system is meeting the needs of all constituents, and especially those who have experienced the negative effects of historic legacies of structural racism and classism.

Nationally, teacher union members are increasingly organizing in SJU caucuses within and beyond their local union chapters. These teachers see themselves as allied with local communities in striving to protect public education against the onslaught of neoliberal market- based policies, and strive to work in partnership with local communities of color in protecting public education systems (Maton, 2016; Stark, 2016; Weiner, 2012; Uetricht, 2014).

Educators and local caucuses frequently come to this work inspired by the work of Chicago’s Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE), which is credited with transforming the formerly conservative Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) into a “fighting union” that sought to establish deep alliances with the Chicago public and educated its members “about school reform and its place in a broader neoliberal project to dismantle public education” (Uetricht, 2014, p. 48). Nationally, union members are currently taking up SMU/SJU caucuses as a model and platform for change, seeking to trigger their unions to take a more radical stance on political issues and to respond in ways that resist, protest and otherwise counter corporate

influences and the trend toward privatization (Brogan, 2014; Konkol, 2015; Maton, 2016; Nunez, Michie & Uetricht, 2014; Stark, 2016; Weiner, 2012).