The contemporary landscape of dread in living and teaching demands a creative and experimental form of investigation that can trace the affective contours of the present and uncover the obscure openings for an oppositional imagination. In a series of interlinked excurses, this essay articulates a poetic probing of the nexus of slow fascism and…

The author's statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions on the challenges faced by America's classroom teachers focuses on a few of the factors that lead to teacher frustration and burnout that higher pay, however well-intended, does not change. They include, but are not limited to, poor teacher preparation,…

When the pandemic brought life to a screeching halt and forcefully shuttered schools across the country, few were aware that a crisis in public education was already well underway. COVID-19 may have been an unexpected and devastating shock to the system, but a virus had already taken hold, leaving Canada's public-school systems vulnerable at the…

In an attempt to control the spread of COVID-19 in Australia in 2020 state and territory governments mandated the closing of schools for all but vulnerable children and the children of frontline workers in various parts of Australia for various lengths of time. In what follows, five English teachers from across Australia reflect on the everyday…

Peggy McIntosh published "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" in 1989. Thirty years later, I revisit McIntosh's seminal work on White privilege to reframe her discussion to one involving heterosexual privilege, most notably as that privilege affects LGBTQ teachers. I rewrite several of McIntosh's first-person statements to…

Maintaining an active research agenda while teaching full-time at a community college can be daunting, but with institutional support for scholarly research by way of course release it is possible. This personal reflection offers up evidence of institutional support from a variety of sources within the public university system of New York City,…

Since 2015, several high-profile surveys have painted a grim portrait of teacher stress and job satisfaction. Although some educators have attributed those trends to educational accountability and reform, little evidence exists connecting education policies to teacher working conditions or -- more distally -- to the mental and physical health of…

This article is in direct response to Garwood's call to action about burnout and the special education teacher workforce. While Garwood's call to action is critically needed, we contend that the call is incomplete as it lacks emphasis on factors linking sociocultural identity and burnout. Therefore, in this article, we discuss the significance of…

In this interview, Sonia Nieto shares what she has learned from her long career in teaching, teacher education, and research about what motivates teachers to continue coming to the classroom each day. She shares the story of her early years as a teacher and how professional relationships helped her to thrive. And she describes the varied ways that…

Burnout is a significant problem that continues to plague the teaching profession. In this essay, I argue that the burnout of early-career teachers is not solely a function of personal factors (e.g., their knowledge, their beliefs, their pedagogical skills, their commitment to the teaching profession) but also a function of the organizational…

While collective teacher efficacy has potential to improve teacher practice and student learning, there's a risk this concept will be used to further burden teachers through assuming a positive, confident attitude can overcome all barriers to learning--even without good conditions for teaching in place. France argues that collective efficacy must…

Limitations come in many forms for educators of color: access, opportunities, networks, but perhaps most crucially, through forms of invalidation. Toward healing, some educators of color have written about the isolation and trauma they have experienced on college campuses. Other have written in the spirit of resistance, boasting about the skills,…

Special education teachers have one of the most challenging and stressful jobs in public education, which often leads to increased burnout. High levels of burnout have, in turn, been related to lower levels of fidelity of implementation in delivery of evidence-based behavior interventions. The purpose of this position paper is to (a) propose…

Kappan's editor-in-chief talks with renowned scholar Susan Moore Johnson about her extensive research into the professional lives of public school teachers. For decades, studies have shown that teaching tends to be isolating work, with few opportunities for teachers to collaborate with and learn from each other or to play meaningful roles in…

As the non-tenure-track (NTT) cohort of writing faculty grows, departments and programs need to provide equitable working conditions for all faculty, including reasonable workloads and protections against unnecessary changes; access to shared governance and curricular decisions; transparent and fair hiring, evaluation, and renewal processes;…