Blog: teaching

You Can't Reform Things Built to Harm

2022-01-30 by nerd teacher

Like a fool, I entered my career as a teacher believing that you could work within the system to change it. As a person with a range of undiagnosed disabilities who had been harassed and verbally abused by a range of teachers who claimed they were “ensuring I was ready for the real world” or “needed to learn discipline and respect in order to succeed,” I wanted to ensure that other children didn’t go through that. As someone who repeatedly had to fight with school systems because of misogynist teachers who tried to fail girls who took their classes, because of teachers who refused to accommodate documented disabilities, because of teachers who’d outed me as bisexual way before I was even ready or prepared? I wanted to be someone who could enter schools and change that and make sure the environment was safe for students.

I learned very quickly that you can’t do that. It’s all bullshit. Read more…

Tales from the Schoolhouse, Part 1: “It’s the Jeans but Not the Jeans.”

2021-05-23 by nerd teacher

A lot of people often ask me how I arrived at the position of ‘school abolition’ while still being a teacher, and I often point directly at the institutions that have employed me. The abuses that I have suffered as a teacher, combined with those I already experienced as a student, have led me to question the purpose of schools and to research their histories. As a queer and disabled anarchist, my experiences and research have constantly shown me that school isn’t the answer.

But I don’t often write about those experiences because they’re frustrating to think about. Yet, every time I have to interview for a new school and am asked to explain what I found most difficult about my previous positions, these memories are dredged back up. Of course, the people interviewing me never get the full answer (because the chances I’d get a job if I explained all of the things I hated would be close to nil).  Read more…