Teaching Philosophy...Or How I Got Here

My favorite teachers in high school were not nice people. They were predominantly men, whose brutal honesty I admired without understanding the meanness and misogyny behind it. I had male teachers who called women airheads, who put them down, ones who told my classes you couldn't make silk purses from sow's ears. Ones who to my teenage brain seemed strong, smart, admirable. And this misunderstanding, my mimicking them, meant that I was not a great teacher when I first started.
In high school I was a misfit, a dork, with glasses, and braces. Fringe friends. And not many at that. President of the Science Club. Frequently the butt of jokes. Daughter of a single mom who worked two jobs. I worked from fourteen on. I liked to read. Do my homework.
My geeky need for teachers who were smart ignored the misogyny. I latched onto the wrong things.

Beginning teachers are often told to mimic teachers they admired, and "fake it til you make it" and I did. Without truly understanding all the baggage that went with these assumptions.
I always cared about my students. I always went out of my way to help them make up work, retake tests, redo essays, but the default were these imitations. And it wasn't until far too late into  my teaching career, I am ashamed to admit, that I realized the harm these performances had.

Last summer, I went home to NC for a friend's birthday, and his daughter was there, who I had taught as a freshman in high school. She and her friend, who I had also taught, made more than one reference to me being mean. And I cringed every single time. It was six plus years after I'd taught them, and me being mean was all they took away. It hurt to hear.
It's certainly not how I want students to think of me. And it got me thinking about how much I had changed, not just from those six years, but from three years ago, or even last year.

I started teaching through Teach for NY, which was later folded into Teach for America (which I now have real issues with, but that's another post). I had been working as a Master Electrician for the Joseph Papp Public Theatre, but was looking for something new. I'd originally intended to be a history teacher/professor in undergrad, but theatre sucked me in. At this turning point, I wanted to go back to teaching.
So I applied, made it to the interview where I presented a mini-lesson on the Lost Colony, fully intending to be a history teacher, and then was placed in English, because that's where the need was. I was put in summer school teaching in the morning, not as an aide, but actually teaching, while attending graduate classes towards my M.S. Ed. in the afternoons and evenings. That fall the school I've done my summer teaching in hired me, and my first official week of school we watched the Twin Towers fall from our corner classroom which was our English department office.
Over the next three years, I taught English 9-11, prepped students for the NY Regents, and tried to bring things like Homecoming dances, and clubs to my school. The majority of teachers were Teach for NY teachers, and we worked collaboratively on lessons, broke up the work, hung out after work. But by the end of that third year, there weren't many of us left. The program had an awful attrition rate, and the philosophy seemed to be throw people at the wall and see what stuck. Every teacher that stuck was one more teacher than you had before.

These were hard but good years in a lot of ways. It was totally a throw you into the deep end of the pool. Each year, we were expected to take two graduate courses at our assigned colleges. Mine was the City University of New York, the College of Staten Island. I lived and taught in Brooklyn. My commute was two subway trains, a ferry, a bus, and a 15 minute walk. It was 3 hours one way. Classes were 6-9p. I was tired a lot. But with some false steps (not understanding what a withdrawal grade did to you, not understanding how to navigate observations from the college, etc.) I earned my Master of Science in Education (Adolescence Education-English). Funny enough- it'd be four years before I remembered to contact them for my hood, having missed graduation because I was in NC for the summer.

My mom had been having health problems since I graduated from undergrad in 1998, and they just seemed to get worse. She and my step-dad were having a hard time with bills, so during the summer of 2004, I drove down to NC with my three cats for the summer. While there, a job at the local high school, where I had graduated from, opened up. It was theatre, not English-- they were building a new high school for the rich kids on the beach, and the current theatre teacher was moving. I interviewed, and a couple of weeks later, got it.
I immediately went to K-Mart to shop for clothes, because I'd only brought shorts and bathing suits. The first weekend after school I flew home to Brooklyn, packed, hired movers, got swindled on the price, and flew home.

I taught theatre the first couple of years. It didn't go great. I had worked in theatre professionally, and tried to teach with all that in mind. This bumped up against the "let's do improv" the students, and families, were used to. It was uneven, although I grew to love my students. But it meant too, that my growth as a teacher was odd. I was teaching theatre, but not really growing as a teacher. It was just enough afield from other content, that I didn't make much forward movement.

After a couple of years, when I asked for help, the answer instead was to move me into English, and get someone else to teach theatre. I continued to help with tech, but had a different focus now.

I taught mostly freshmen, and loved it. I loved the idea that I could give them good skills, organization, a foundation, that would serve them well the rest of their high school career.

I tried to be a reflective practitioner. I volunteered to help with accreditation, implemented AVID, implemented Read 180. I was an assistant coach for cheerleading. I sponsored a film club. I sponsored an ROV Club, and traveled out to Monterey Peninsula College a couple of summers to get extra training in that.
I tried very hard to be a worker bee, and contribute to my community.
It was not a great fit.
In many ways, the misfit feelings I had when I attended the school still existed as a teacher. I had issues with the casual racism of the mascot, the confederate flags on trucks in the parking lot, the way guidance counselors whispered the n-word when referring to students. And I seemed to constantly butt heads with administration for the above reasons and more.
But I also didn't have a whole lot of choices. Mom was sick, and I wasn't going anywhere.

So I tried to make the best life I could. I organized community service with my students, like an annual walk against hunger.
I started Saturday school as a way to provide extra help for students.
I tried to share materials with my department, helped create common assessments, and scope and sequences.

I am a worker bee by nature, and I tried to focus on that. I never felt like I fit, and still felt out of place, and in many ways I think the work became my way of avoiding. I checked a lot of the boxes of a good teacher, but I don't know if I was. I cared. I worked hard. But I was still entangled in the models I continued to think were good ones, and all the problems that went with that.

In 2006 I began working on my MA from the Bread Load School of English. It was a program during the summer, geared towards teachers, to help them earn their Masters degree. I loved the idea of advanced courses, I continued to feel like a misfit because of the privileged, elite population. These were teachers who had attended places like Phillips Exeter, went onto Ivy Leagues, and now taught at Phillips Exeter. In 2008 I tried, and failed to receive my National Boards certification. I earned it in 2009.

In 2010, I got certified to teach online, to teach for an online high school. I taught for them for three years- in addition to my full time high school teaching job during the year, and over summers. I helped redesign courses for them, designed courses from scratch. I learned a lot about engagement, regular contact, praise. I enjoyed a lot of it.
But there were issues. It was a pay per student system, so while the money was good for teachers, it was a bit wag the dog. And it was for contract work, so not always renewed. I think there are issues with this type of for profit model, and I ended up suffering because of this, but I did learn a lot I still use today.

Mom died in 2011, and I started looking for something different. I spent a year applying to community colleges in the region. I got a job adjuncting at the local community college- developmental English, and working in the writing lab, and really liked it, so was trying to turn that into a full time job. But two Masters were not enough for anyone, so the following year, I applied to PhD programs.

In 2013, I moved to Albuquerque to attend the University of New Mexico, and began work on my PhD. I taught two courses a semester for them, mostly first year composition, but also a paired freshman learning community which paired English with Acting, a couple of topic-based sophomore expository classes (Milton in popular culture and one on fairy tales and folklore), eventually moving onto an Early English survey course, early Shakespeare, late Shakespeare, Shakespeare and film adaptation. I taught face to face, I taught online, I designed course shells. One year I acted as Core Writing Coordinator, providing professional development and resources for new teachers. I really enjoyed teaching, and even though at this point I'd been teaching twelve years, and every year saw growth, I still had stumbling blocks I couldn't let go of. Some went away because of the difference between teaching high school and college. Some because of the different demographics of UNM. I always reflected on how I taught, but graduate school exposed me to things like regularly checking in with students in surveys, accessibility, equity in the classroom, gender issues, race issues. I began to modify my classes, and attitudes, with all this in mind.

In February 2016, in anticipation of graduating, I transferred my teaching certification to New Mexico, and started looking at teaching jobs. I got one, and in March 2016 went back to teaching high school.

Graduation did not happen that summer, so I spent the next two years rewriting my dissertation while teaching high school full time.

In a lot of ways, it was not until I was finishing graduate school, and teaching in Albuquerque, that I realized the errors I'd had in my teaching. I stopped policing behavior, letting go of being a gatekeeper, and instead focused on how I could support my students, and engaging them over content. I was still a worker bee, dedicated to contributing to the community, but identifying the misogyny, the wrongness, of policies I'd had- that focused on compliance, not learning, these were the things that allowed me to become a better teacher.

Nowadays, my students those first years of teaching, or even five or six years ago, would not recognize the teacher I am now. And I'm intensely proud of that fact. I'm not proud of all I did as an early teacher. I made mistakes that make me cringe. There's a sharp learning curve in teaching, too few of us are prepared properly, and the stakes are high.
I am immensely proud of what I've learned and how I've grown. Now when I teach, I consider accessibility. Equity. Poverty. The affect of ACES on my students and how they learn. Because of what I've learned I've rewritten course policies to be kind. To provide resources. I change what I can based on student surveys, and am transparent about what I can't and why. Graduate school allowed me to identify just how problematic the attitudes of teachers I based my teaching "persona" on were, and then school, and the large social network I gathered during this time, gave me the tools to erase, undo, and redefine, what I believed as a teacher, and who I wanted to be.

So here's what I believe.
I always want students to know I care about them, and feel that my classroom is a safe space.
I believe that policing behavior is a judgment of culture and socio-economic class. I also believe that these judgments are barriers to teaching and learning.
I believe that you need to do what is best for your students, not what is easy for you.
I believe that homework is classist and shouldn't be given. Long term projects? Sure, as long as you provide space to do them. Reading? Sure, if it's within reason.
I believe you have to be yourself. Be authentic. Do not put on a persona. Students can tell when you're acting. Instead, be transparent. Share your own experiences, your own tools, how you dealt with things. Then offer supports. Tell them why you do things.
I believe that you cannot teach students you do not understand. You must understand them, their home life, their culture, their day to day lives. Then you have to support them. Make accommodations for them. Choose texts that engage them. That they can see themselves in.
I believe that what students learn, how they grow, is more important than grades.
I believe that you should call home. All the time. Introduce yourself. Then make good calls as much as you make problem calls.
I believe that technology is a great way to bridge issues of access, but it's not a cure all. In fact a lot of families do not have access to technology, or the infrastructure to use it, so survey your students and adapt accordingly.
I believe students can be rockstars at things that are not part of my classroom or content. Be sure to give them choices in how they demonstrate knowledge, and give them chances to shine.
I believe it is important to tell students you love them, even when, especially when, they frustrate you.
I believe in disrupting systems, preconceived notions, the canon, and decolonizing texts.
I believe that I can teach skills my students need by teaching texts my students can engage with and relate to.
I believe education would be better off if more people shared stories, anecdotes, resources, ideas.
I believe that having a good teacher, a safe space, someone who cares, can have life altering consequences.
I believe okay teachers can be taught strategies to better serve their students, but that great teachers see teaching as a calling, a constant reflection and progression of improvement.

It is these beliefs that are the foundation of my teaching, my approach. And what I hope will become the foundation of this blog. I intend to blog about strategies that I use, what those look like. I intend to blog about lessons, and issues.
Some things I hope to cover in the coming months:

• Diversity vs. representation
• Planning for the year
• Summer reading
• Accessibility and Universal Design
• The monster outside the classroom (poverty, ACEs, trauma)
• Decolonizing texts
• Specific skills

I hope you find this helpful. I hope it helps.

Ending the 2017-2018 School Year

Tomorrow begins the last week of school for me.
Two days of exams, then a day of make up exams and that's it. Another school year in the books, my seventeenth as a teacher, and the beginning of summer.

This year was hard for lots of reasons. I spent the fall finishing final revisions on the dissertation from hell, defended in October, and graduated in December. I went on the job market again, and balanced all of this with teaching high school full time, starting a Saturday school program, chairing the instructional council, and creating and serving on my school's school improvement plan. I wrote a book chapter. Presented at three conferences. Edited a book for Material Collective.

Until someone posted it online this past week, it had not occurred to me that maybe part of my exhaustion this semester, particularly these last couple of weeks, was due to all this. The fact that I had not taken a single break, and was just totally run down.
But I am. I am exhausted.

I applied for 40+ jobs in higher ed this year. I got a phone interview that I never heard back from. A phone interview that turned into a campus visit and a phone interview that set a new landspeed record for invite to campus interview.
As of today, I hold no illusions about any of these bearing fruit.
Initial good feelings, that turned into nothing, have made me feel that I have no barometer for how all this turns out. I am obviously no judge of any of this.

I am exhausted just contemplating revising job market documents, my website, in two months. I wonder what the point is. Nothing will be different except I've graduated. My references will begin to be stale. I will not have new college classes to teach, in fact, it will be over a year since I taught a college class. I will have no new publications. People keeping telling me that just being graduated will make a difference. That there's no telling what new "fits" the new job market ads will bring.

I am finding it harder and harder to care.

This year I mostly just applied to jobs I thought would be a good fit. Mostly in the south, where I knew cost of living was reasonable. A couple of California community colleges I was really excited about but am ultimately glad I didn't get because I couldn't afford to live there. Most were SLACs and community colleges because I want to focus on teaching. Some I was excited about- but nothing came of my excitement. My enthusiasm.
Nobody wanted me.

And as Kelly Baker writes in Grace Period, grief, mourning for the academic life not lived, comes in stages.

By March I thought I had resigned myself to living a life as a high school teacher, which to be clear, I love, even if I'm not super happy at the moment.
But then there were late job postings, a couple that I got really excited about. Only to be disappointed all over again when I didn't make the cut.
And as most people have talked about ad nauseum, there's never any clue as to why.

Now, as the year comes to a close, rather than having a clear idea of what my life will be like, I find myself not knowing. I almost think any answer is better than none. At this point, even if it's rejection, which I am sure it is, I rather just know. Be done. Have it over

In the movie G.I Jane, when false accusations get made against her, they tell her that her training has been suspended, and she can always try again next year. And her answer is, "I can't go through this shit again." And man, do I feel that.
Maybe it's because I'm exhausted.
Maybe I will feel better after a summer of Nehi, and working on my own schedule. And resting.
Maybe not.
In fact, I'm leaning towards not.

Because it's been months since defense, and graduation. And I have three or four articles in various stages in notebooks and on my computer, in various stages of work, and I just can't seem to care about any of it. I just do not see the point.

And platitudes from people to keep going seem hollow. Out of touch.
And still, I cannot seem to care.

I have a job at my high school for next year, and I've pulled out of most responsibilities mostly because I am exhausted and because I'd like a year to focus on my classroom. I've volunteered for a program that's independent study for at-risk students, and will probably be a part of our freshman academy, as well as continuing my Saturday school program. All come with small stipends, which I'm hoping will help with student loan payments which frankly, make me really nervous. I can't seem to play catch up with my finances, and I'm worried about drowning. My take home is half of my gross, and it's one of the reasons why I'm considering moving to another state to teach high school. Even if I made the same salary I'd be taking home more.

Other than all this, my students had a good year. I designed my English 10 and 11 classes around the idea of "hidden figures," trying to teach stories and histories that the students rarely learned in school, and based on their end of year reflections, this really resonated with them. They liked the routines and designs of class, what we read, and the assignments we did. In my AP Language classes, I built on this idea and designed our readings and assignments around race and class issues. We read Evicted, The Jungle, 1984, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. When we read shorter pieces like excerpts from Ta-Nehisi Coates' We Were Eight Years in Power, Federalist #42, the Constitution, specifically the 13th amendment, we looked at each of these through those lenses, which students really liked, and related to. I'm moving some things around next year, but I'm keeping and reinforcing these themes.
Most of my students said my class was a safe space and I was there to help, so I'm happy about that.

This year I introduced these ideas, and the ideas of daybooks/bullet journals to my class, and I want to build on that.
Next year too, I've plans for expanding Saturday school, which was my school's most successful intervention, and I'm proud of that.

Working through all this limbo this year, I have split time, especially this semester, by both preparing for the best situation I can be in at my current high school and imagining what it would be like to have a higher ed job.

At this point, I'd just like to know what I was doing. I'm done with being in limbo. I'm done with not living the life I want.
As I often do when I feel like this, I Googled high school teaching jobs in the Pacific Northwest. The tribal school I have long wanted to teach at has an opening.
For over a decade I have had a map of the Pacific Northwest on the wall as inspiration. Images of the coast, the forest, have been screensavers, in notebooks, served as centers, dreams.

Is this a sign? Should I just stop waiting for other people to decide my life and go? Apply and screw the rest?
I have to admit, I'm soured on Albuquerque. It has not ended up being good to me, and as much as I liked it here at first, I think I'm ready for a new start.

Certainly the prospect of a new life looks good.
I mean, this is one of the views.

Lots of green. Nice cost of living. Small, community school.
It's a life that has no scholarly obligations. No conferences. No out of pocket expenses. A quiet life, being part of a community, and living my life. Nothing else. Pretty much a life that encourages checking out.

And how much money would I save with no conferences to attend? No scholarly books to keep up with?

I have one scholarly obligation- to revise the dissertation into a book, but that's it. Once that's done, it's done. My life is my own. Just me, Nehi, and miles of Pacific Ocean to explore.

And I think this may be what I want.

My scholarship is important. It's new. It's different. I think it could contribute to new directions. But I see other people getting notice, getting traction, and not me. So I'm not really sure why I keep doing it. It's nice to see friends at conferences, but I return home with nothing except more credit card debt. A series of ideas I write down, but know I will not follow through on because I have no reason to. There is literally no incentive to.
My participation in online academic networks just doesn't seem worth it. On days where I don't, weeks I check out, miss conversations, no one notices. Nothing happens. My world keeps rolling.

But because this HAS been my dream job for ten years, it's not one to trifle with. It's not a job I could apply to and change my mind.

The past couple of weeks, hell, months, I've felt like I'm just stumbling from one thing to another. SAA, DePaul pop culture conference, Kzoo, phone interviews, campus interviews, National Board renewal. And the looming deadlines of reemployment at my high school, renewing my lease, trying to make plans where there are so many variables.
Like standing at a crossroads. And boy am I tired of using this image.

For now, I just have three more days to get through.
The next week or month may bring big decisions, life altering decisions.
But for now, it's a quiet Sunday, with nothing to do, the first in months I've had.
Then it's finishing the school year, saying goodbye to this year's students.

Time enough to think about what I want my life to be.
I think it may be green and by the ocean though.
Nehi says I did promise her a yard with grass.

Politics and the High School Teacher

This past week, there was yet another story of a teacher being suspended just for being themselves.

These stories upset me, because they are loud klaxons of how bigoted places and people still are.

They also highlight just how fraught being a teacher can be. First, the idea that a teacher posting a picture of their wife/husband/partner, or saying something like, my wife and I went to the movies this weekend, is somehow an agenda when straight teachers discussing and sharing the same things is not, is just absolute rubbish.

Yet this is reality.

While this story is getting a lot of attention now, the event was from last year, and I have several thoughts. One, that an angry parent,ONE, complaining can get someone suspended with no actual evidence of misconduct is horrifying. Two, this family has been in punishment limbo for a year. And I can only imagine the toll of attention, loss of job and the salary that goes with it, has meant.

But this is reality.

This past year, I had a younger teacher ask me after yet another school shooting what the best way to talk to their students was. It was not even close to their subject matter, and was such a touchy subject among the staff and students. My answer was that with these types of topics you cannot proselytize, but I always try to frame both sides IF THERE ARE ACTUALLY BOTH SIDES- issues of racism and bigotry DO NOT have both sides, and I will not entertain that they do. So I try to frame things like  "well, some people believe X but others argue Y and here are their reasons why." When my students ask my direct questions though, as they did after some of the shootings, I will not lie to them. So when students ask me what I think about teachers carrying guns, I tell them that I do not think that's what schools should be. I tell them that I believe schools should focus on learning, and children being safe, and taken care of, and to me that is not an environment created by guns. I tell them there are larger issues with civilians not being trained, and racial bias to consider. I tell them that traumatic situations do not make for ideal judgement calls. And I try to point them to specific data and studies. But I don't attack other opinions, or people who hold them.

It is a tight rope to walk.

In the last several years, college professors have frequently made the news for things they've said on social media, some taken out of context, some just in poor taste, or in the heat of the moment, and some totally common sense statements I still don't get were blown up, that have had serious consequences- death threats, rape threats, SWATing, doxxing, as well as loss of jobs or salaries, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. I feel both that the political speech should be protected, that their institutions should stand up for them (or at the least NOT enable their attackers), AND that to think in this political climate those things don't have consequences is naive. I think if these news stories have highlighted any lesson it is that the Internet is a fraught place to be public about social justice ideals, and that if you are a woman or woman/person of color, or LGBTQ+, or any other vulnerable or marginalized group, the situations you find yourself in, and the consequences, have higher stakes. News, which a friend recently reminded me, is NOT news to those of us who have experienced these things for years, decades even, through our associations with fandom.

Higher ed doesn't seem to be learning from these lessons much. Many academic conferences still do not have clear anti-harassment, anti-racist policies, as many fan cons now do. Many universities are still stumbling and/or throwing gasoline on the fire when their faculty come under attack. And in many cases, faculty who hold positions of privilege are NOT actively speaking out if these events do not affect them directly. They should be pushing all their institutions through faculty senates and other formats to have a set in place response if hate groups attack their faculty. IT should have clear policies that can immediately be enacted when faculty are threatened and absolutely, the jobs of these faculty members should be protected.

For high school teachers, all of these issues are amplified and without most of the thin protections higher ed faculty have. While many schools do grant tenure, it is not tenure as it exists in higher ed. It's more, if you teach for three years you keep your job indefinitely as long as you don't do something ridiculous, it's not a protection of free speech. Mostly, I think, because most k-12 teachers don't conduct research or scholarship to be "protected" so tenure is not framed as a safety protection for that work.
If a teacher teaches in a non-union state, there is often no protection for them at all.The ACLU and other groups has been doing great work in defending teachers, but I always wonder about the end result, which almost never receives the news attention of the original story. And what about the in-between? How does this teacher, or any teacher, feel knowing that their school, their colleagues, their admin threw them under the bus? How does this teacher support themselves in the interim? How does this teacher, their family, continue to live in this community? What is it like to have this drag out? What is the ideal solution? Giving them their job back? Would YOU want to go back to that? A settlement? How do you pick up and start over, whatever that looks like after? In the age of the internet, these stories follow you forever.

Most teachers are in precarious positions, politically, economically, socially. So politics are a minefield.

But outside of rubbish stories like above, how do we as teachers, NOT take a stand? How can I look at my students and not be sure to tell them that in my classroom they are safe, that ICE cannot come in? That I will always be there for them, to help them? That my LGBTQ+ students deserve safe spaces in all classrooms not just mine? That my class and my curriculum isn't just not racist, but is actively anti-racist, that I consciously and explicitly create a classroom to give them the tools to help bridge the gaps of poverty, gender, race? And explicitly acknowledge how all of these barriers to success affect them in my classroom and what we'll do about that?

I'm not sure when arguing that everyone deserves a good education, fair treatment, equitable access, and a life without hunger and poverty became radically subversive political ideas, but that certainly seems to be where we are.

Social justice warrior gets tossed around like an insult, but I don't know how you can be a teacher and NOT be aware, concerned, and involved in these issues.

But I do know the stakes.

• In a school improvement team meeting, someone was reading a paper, that featured a story about the school board debating teacher raises. The quote shared was that the board cared about their teachers. I made the comment that if they cared about us they'd pay us. A member of the team complained to a board member, who then complained to the superintendent, and I was forced to write a letter of apology to keep my job.
• I have frequently taught The Scarlet Letter as part of my English 11, American Literature curriculum. A parent complained that this made me a devil worshipper and this complaint went to my principal AND the superintendent. 
• Another time, I worked in a department that required community service. Students had to pick a social issue, research it, then perform their community service in that field, and write up the research, and how their community service helped. A student wrote that their community service was tutoring at their church, but they identified their social issue as helping people not go to hell. I told them they had to revise it, and even commented that refocusing on the helping students, mentoring younger students was the way to go. The parents complained to my principal and superintendent that I was anti-God, sent an email to their entire Church population to pray for them as they dealt with this heathen teacher. I defended myself by volunteering my parish priest, who knew me as a trainer of alter servers, liturgical reader, and Church decorator, to come down and speak to them. 
• I have had parents complain about my Twitter handle. My blogs. My scholarly research.
• I have had parents complain that I teach climate change as part of my social issues unit.

With seventeen years of teaching experience, these are just the more horrific cases. But there are more.

In not a single case was I defended. In not one case did the administration defend me by telling the parent it was nonsense, although I had one tell me he got complaints about me all the time and didn't tell me.

In each of these cases, either implicitly or explicitly, my job was threatened. In most cases, I was presented with the choice of losing my job, or acting like I had done something wrong and apologize in order to keep my job.

I should never have had to do that.

I know, even now, with so much evidence to the contrary, that there are academics who can't BELIEVE this stuff happens. Because it shouldn't. Because it's not fair. Because...reasons. But it does. It happens all the time. And not all these stories make the news. I'm sure a lot of teachers are forced to do ridiculous things as a mea culpa to keep their jobs. I'm just as sure, just as many, aren't given that chance and lose their jobs. And no one cares.

But that is reality.

A few weeks ago, I asked some advice on Twitter about an education job. I got a snide comment from someone that they'd answer me, but I have a locked account, and who on academic Twitter has a locked account. My first reaction was- you're a woman on the internet, where have you been and how can you ask that? My second reaction was one of disappointment. The comment seemed mean, and judgey, and out of touch. I explained that as a high school teacher whose scholarly focus included the devil, and whose politics tended towards liberal, it was just common sense to have a locked account.

I've been on Twitter eight years at this point, I have a good "academic" following. I've done a damn good job of branding me and my work- people recognize me as Dr. Devil- and each conference, people find me, follow me, become part of my network. 

I still manage to do plenty of public work on teaching, pedagogy, technology, and specific scholarship through my blogs and sharing of Google Doc resources. 

The only thing my locked account does is protect me from unfair people and circumstances. From trolls. And death threats. And rape threats. And SWATing. And doxxing-in fact when my account was unlocked I got dragged by a misogynist because he didn't agree with my spelling of doxxing.

I wish we lived in a world where people, particularly women, could speak the truth, discuss big ideas, and advocate for themselves and others, without having to consider the consequences. I know there are many who fight these battles online every day, despite all the crap that goes with it. And I admire them. Seeing the abuse they get, I honestly do not know how they do it day in and day out. I amoften saddened, depressed, and exhausted just following along. Some of them have some positions of privilege they do this from, but not all. Some do it just because it is important. And there are no limits to the admiration and respect I have for these advocates.

But, at least these days, that cannot be me.

I do not have job security. I do not have economic security. I do not have a support system or back up plan if something goes horribly wrong. I cannot afford to protest, get arrested, lose my job. This does not mean I do not advocate for myself, the causes I care about or my students. It just means that the ways in which I have to do these things is more careful, more thought out, more fraught.

So, in part I write this so people realize. Realize the stakes for high school teachers, realize that if they are in a position of privilege it is their responsibility to advocate for those who can't, and to realize that just because YOU don't have these problems and YOU have not seen this, it doesn't mean these things do not exist and don't have very real, and often severe consequences.

The International Congress of Medieval Studies Presentation: The Dangers of Teaching the Black Devil

Throughout this job market season, I have thought a lot about how I market what it is I do. Throughout my graduate school experience I have consistently been told to downplay my folklore interests, the folkloric foundation of my work. Yet the last year I have realized that the fact that I use my extensive medieval and early modern background to trace these trends, and tropes, of folkloric figures, how they are the vehicle for historical and cultural moments, from the medieval period up through modern pop culture is the strength of my work. Yet, it's the aspect I've been told to suppress. I understand why, it's interdisciplinary work, it crosses period and genre boundaries, and this is still work that people don't know what to do with. But I also strongly believe this is the direction that many fields are headed in.

So, even though this year's job market still has me in its clutches, I have already decided that if/when I'm on the market again in just three short months (Oy!) I will forge my own path, and revise my materials so it highlights MY work, what I do, and abandon any attempt to fit into any square pegs.

All of this is to say that as I've realized the academy doesn't want me, or seemingly, my work, I see less and less reason to conform to their arbitrary nonsense. So, I wear jeans and t-shirts to conferences now, and never been happier. I have decided to publish, or not, work that I want.

So this is the headspace I wrote my presentation for this year's Kzoo.

When I submitted the abstract, I wanted to focus on the dangers, in present day, of teaching the figure of the black devil without interrogating, or problematizing, misreadings and misunderstandings of "black is bad, white is good," especially with Nazis looking to medieval writings for justifications for their actions.
I was also interested in looking at how these lessons could be applied to Candyman and the television shows, The Exorcist, which I'd been writing about for my presentation at De Paul University's Popular Culture conference, and which I hope to expand into an article.

So, here is the presentation. And here is the paper.



I hope, that this will help people who teach surveys, or teach some of these materials, to be able to teach these texts and ideas in a way that is clearer, more situated in a complete context. I hope too that it encourages more people to think about the history of these popular culture representations, and talk about how they are problematic, not just accept them, and discuss the issues surrounding them.