Intersectionality Narratives in the Classroom

“Outsider Teachers” and Teaching Others

Sara Makris

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319674469
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319674476
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Bildungstheorie & -praxis

Examines an array of teacher identities from the perspective of intersectionality

Explores the experiences of "outsider teachers" to create a more layered narrative encompassing many facets of identity that interact to create the intricate experience of an individual human being

Addresses the gap in literature about the experiences of teachers with disabilities 

© The Author(s) 2018

Sara MakrisIntersectionality Narratives in the Classroomhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67447-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: “Outsider Teachers” and the Case for Intersectionality

Sara Makris¹

(1)

Independent Scholar, University Park, MD, USA

Abstract

Makris explains how studying the growing group of “outsider” educators can inform our understanding of the complexities of identity and its pedagogical implications. Race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and social class can all contribute to the definition of “outsider teacher,” but the roles these designators play are contextually dependent and fluid. In some instances, they even become “insider” characteristics. Traditional research into this area has focused on the effects of one of these compartmentalized identity qualifiers, creating an opportunity and a need for application of intersectionality theory—an accommodation of the complexity of interacting, shifting, and overlapping characteristics and the ways they morph according to circumstance. To highlight this opportunity, the term “outsider teacher” is further explained according to its connotation and historical use.

Keywords

IntersectionalityOutsider teacherTeacher identity

End Abstract

Many of us are familiar with certain representations of the “outsider teacher” in film and literature. Consider Sidney Poitier’s portrayal of Mark Thackeray , a Guyanese engineer-turned-teacher in the 1967 film To Sir, with Love . In Thackeray’s experience at a working-class school in the East End of London, class-related conflicts rise to the surface (though race hardly bears any mention). Thackeray is initially at odds with his students, ineffectually attempting to control the group of unruly adolescents on whom one teacher after another has given up. His frustration grows as he tries, unsuccessfully, to run a traditional classroom in which students inherently respect him and follow his rules. Eventually, Thackeray wins over the students and is invited back to the school to teach again the following year.

The archetype undergirds many similar media depictions of the outsider teacher: A white /black/middle-class/educated stranger from far away, unaware of the customs that govern a village/island/city neighborhood, enters the urban/rural/impoverished/chaotic classroom, and brings knowledge/intellectual curiosity/civilization to the needy/ignorant/coarse young people who dwell there. In films, television shows, and books, from Dangerous Minds to Freedom Writers, the outsider protagonist/savior delivers order and bestows meaning and purpose.

While these overly simple narratives trivialize the classroom experience, the concept of the “outsider teacher” is very real, albeit far more complex. Study of this growing group of educators can inform our understanding of the complexities of identity and our pedagogy.

The Outsider Teacher

Outsider teachers are those who possess identifying characteristics that differentiate them from their student populations. Race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and social class all constitute potential areas of difference. Teachers may diverge from their students at the intersection of a number of these characteristics to be considered outsiders.

The term “outsider teacher,” however, can mean different things in different circumstances. It may refer to teachers who come from a dominant culture—a predominantly white, middle-class population, for example—to teach students of color in low-income settings. “Outsider teacher” may refer to other border crossers: teachers who work internationally, leaving their home countries to teach elsewhere. Outsider teachers may include those who encounter marginalization regardless of their setting, for example, teachers of color, teachers with disabilities, and transgender , gay, or lesbian teachers.

For centuries, outsider teachers have facilitated the spread of languages, religions, worldviews, and political doctrine of dominant cultures. Some have been missionaries and “do-gooders.”

In the late nineteenth century, British missionary teachers traveled to India, where they unsuccessfully attempted to instill Christian beliefs and British behaviors among “pure heathens” (Forbes, 2, 1986). White teachers traveled from the post-war North of the USA to educate newly freed black southerners, and expressed disbelief when they encountered a population satisfied with its own pedagogy, expressing a desire to continue without their help (Anderson et al. 1998). Outsider teachers of the colonizing variety may, according to Lisa Delpit (2006), “hold on to their worldview with great tenacity, insisting that all of the others are wrong, peculiar, undeveloped, heathen, or uncivilized” (p. 74).

And now, greater mobility through globalization has enabled the migration of even more teachers throughout the world.

Similarly, individuals from marginalized groups are also now teaching in wider settings. Educators from low-income backgrounds teach children of the upper middle class . Teachers with disabilities overcome the institutional discrimination of colleges of education in order to enter the profession. A body of literature has begun to document experiences of these emerging groups of outsider teachers.

This book contributes to that collection as it describes the experiences of a group of outsider teachers, and it generates conclusions about their experiences that shed light on classroom interaction, communication, and pedagogical decision-making.

Outsider: A Troublesome Term

Before further exploration of outsider teachers and their experiences, it should be noted that the term “outsider” is not free of problematic baggage, bringing with it connotations of exclusion, judgment, and separation from the norm. It is used throughout this text with full awareness of its potential for negative implications.

The participants who joined me in this study had different reactions to the term “outsider.” Three of the five participants embraced it from the outset. One participant initially rejected the term, finding it outright offensive. Through the course of our work together, though, she came to believe that it applied to her and fit her circumstances. She learned to embrace it as a strength. One of the participants ultimately chose not to be defined by the term, preferring to use “other” instead. She had worked her entire life to keep an outsider characteristic, in her case, blindness, from defining her. Her words to that effect appear in the chapter dedicated to her story.

The term “outsider” is certainly flawed, but it is compromised in the same way that almost any reductive label is. Similarly, it is useful in the way that names and labels can be. It enables us to begin a conversation with shared language and develop understanding.

“Outsider” is clearly an oversimplification of identity, but addressing this oversimplification is another issue at the core of this study and something that using the term and studying the experiences of outsiders can help us understand. When we interact with a classroom full of students from a neighborhood—all from apparently similar backgrounds—we may think of them as sharing a collective identity. We can also easily allow ourselves to be characterized by a one-dimensional persona: white, black, gay, straight, disabled. This is not all that we are, but these characteristics contribute to defining us in our roles. And these characteristics—when they are distinct from the groups we teach—even if they don’t reflect the entirety of ourselves, can still define us as others, outsiders from the communities we serve.

Ultimately, the role of the teacher is inherently one of an outsider—the only adult in a room full of young people, isolated among coworkers and peers in other fields. Teachers exist near a segment of the population with whom few other adults regularly sustain lengthy exchanges of ideas. Thus, this study—with its focus on teachers who feel defined in part by the qualities that render them outsiders—may have theoretical and practical implications affecting all teachers. Whether implicit or explicit, outsider status plays an inherent role in what it means to teach. Outsider teachers possess relevant wisdom to share.

The Importance of Studying Outsider Teachers

Studying the stories of outsider teachers and listening to their voices can help us develop an understanding of them as complex and unique individuals, and the ability to see people this way lends depth to our teaching. Just as we tend to see the outsider teacher in simplistic terms, so, too, do we see the classroom as a single entity instead of a collection of individuals. This is an area where the outsider teacher excels. And they have more to teach us. Toward that end, this book explores the following questions:

1. 1.
   How do self-identified “outsider teachers” discuss the influence of this identity on their professional practice and interactions with students?
2. 2.
   What characterizes the experience of “outsider teachers?”
3. 3.
   How can the knowledge gained about “outsider teacher” identities inform pedagogy?

Here are some high-level answers:

1. 1.
   The teachers who contributed to this book agree that their “outsider” or “other” status has influenced their work in the classroom to varying degrees, in a variety of ways.
2. 2.
   The “outsider teacher” experience can be characterized in myriad ways, based on multifaceted identities and diverse settings.
3. 3.
   The teachers profiled in this book demonstrate the following approaches to pedagogy: practicing proactive inclusiveness, leveraging insider characteristics, relating through past experiences, and observing insider and outsider dynamics.

These questions and their answers contribute to the growing research into the role identity plays in teaching, but it is hopefully just a beginning. More research needs to be done.

The more a group is studied; the more opportunity exists for individual stories and voices to emerge. These voices break through the categorizations and compartmentalization of the traditional academic research and provide true insight into the complex nature of identity, teaching, and being an outsider in a community.

The experiences of outsider teachers have received some attention in the scholarly literature, but often only according to isolated identity characteristics. In other words, researchers have looked at outsider teachers based upon individual categories; gay teachers, foreign teachers, black teachers in white schools, and transgender teachers have participated in research. Less commonly have teachers participated in research that examines their identity in its more complex forms: teachers, for example, who are outsiders along several lines and whose identities complicate their perception and experience in ways not accommodated in studies that compartmentalize their characteristics. Also lacking is a robust holistic study of the outsider teacher concept, something that could potentially enhance awareness of the subtler and complex roles of identity in classroom dynamics and potentially enrich the profession.

Throughout the scholarly writing in this area, studies have examined the factors that set one group or another of teachers apart from their student population. The studies often highlight cri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction: “Outsider Teachers” and the Case for Intersectionality
• 2. The Role of Narrative
• 3. Teacher Narrative: Jamie
• 4. Teacher Narrative: Maria
• 5. Teacher Narrative: Lisa
• 6. Teacher Narrative: Winnie
• 7. Teacher Narrative: Kyong
• 8. Conclusion: Lessons Learned and Implications for Future Scholarship
• Backmatter