Your silence will not protect you

I’ve talked before on this blog about being a teacher and how passionate I am about my work; the time I spend with my students — which should be paramount and where all my energy goes — comes naturally. I often remark that I feel like I’m doing a stand-up comedy routine¹ while teaching because my goal is not only to instruct but to develop joy in learning, in reading, in writing.

Where my job suddenly becomes complicated is the external work, that is, everything that is not teaching my students or directly related to them (i.e. grading, preparing lessons, selecting materials, and so on). Unfortunately, teaching is an incredibly political job, as we teachers must manage our relationships with our colleagues and administrators just as much as we do with our students. It’s this part of the work that I have the least enthusiasm for and which is particularly treacherous for new teachers, as the prevailing philosophy is to keep one’s head down until tenured. That’s largely what I tried to do for my first year or two. It helped that I started in 2020, when I really couldn’t interact with my colleagues much, as many of us were working from home (and those of us working from the building were isolating within our classrooms). This was a tremendously lonely way to start in a new workplace, and certainly many of my colleagues were not as fastidious as I was about following COVID regulations in those first years, but they had the pre-existing relationships that made it more acceptable to step into someone’s space for idle conversation.

Now, in my tenure year, I’ve developed some close professional relationships (mostly with newer, like-minded teachers around my age). I don’t feel as isolated, and I’m much more comfortable with passing conversation in the faculty room and hallways. My willingness to keep my mouth shut and not make waves, however, has waned. In a committee meeting a few weeks ago, conversation spiraled away from our ostensible focus — district-wide professional development needs — and into the workplace practices of some employees that prevent schools from being welcoming and affirming environments. The conversation involved folks mostly of the same dispositions as me² at various stages of their careers: early career (me), middle career, old-dog veterans, and administrators. The conversation was cathartic, and the ruling message that bubbled to the surface was that it was beyond time to tolerate those teachers who do not treat their students with respect and who are not committed to social justice.

I believe in that message, and that meeting was a bright spot in a low moment for me; I often feel bogged down by managing the politics of my job as an untenured teacher, by the constant negotiation of pushing back on toxic practices but not making a name for myself as an agitator lest it jeopardize my job. I’ve found myself in many situations — years ago and recently — where I’ve had to make the choice between standing up for what I believed in (at the risk of upsetting coworkers and administrators) and what would keep me safe. The wisdom many have given me was that the best thing I can do for my students is to stay employed, and so I’ve swallowed a lot of bitter pills and allowed behavior to continue that I find at best disrespectful and at worst disgusting as it perpetuates systems of exclusion and oppression.

Almost four years in and on the verge of receiving tenure, my patience for this has evaporated. In some ways, that feeling is invigorating; I’m looking forward to no longer biting my tongue, and of course I must consider how the victims of my silence are my students. At last I feel I can do right by them and speak up. However, I must also prepare myself for the difficulty in being that agitator. I believe in the power of two in the room, but it’s incredibly difficult to be the first person to speak up — and to face the personal and professional consequences of doing so.

The fight is worth fighting, however. I open and close on the immortal words of Audre Lorde in “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”:

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my own morality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light, and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quicky, now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else’s words. And I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into perspective gave me great strength.

I was going to die, if not sooner than later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you… Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.