“There Isn’t an Easy Way for Me to Talk About This:” A Historical and Contemporary Examination of Emotional Rules for Teachers by Alyssa Hadley Dunn, Ashley E. Moore & Mary L. Neville Background/Context: As grounding for our work, we consider the creation and development of the teaching profession as a particularly “feminine” role. We then briefly describe the contemporary context of schooling, particularly related to neoliberal accountability and its impact on teachers’ experiences. This comparison shows that the historical claims pertaining to women in the teaching workforce have modern-day equivalents, suggesting that the workforce and emotions pertaining to it are still heavily regulated and monitored. Purpose of Study: The purpose of this study is to explore how teachers’ emotions are or are not supported and nurtured in an urban high school, contextualized by an exploration of what it means to work in a “feminized” profession that is increasingly subject to regulations that limit teachers’ autonomy and agency. Research Design: Drawing on portraiture methodology and using interview and field note data from a case study on teacher morale in an urban high school, we advance a theory about the emotional rules of teaching in a neoliberal era. Findings: We argue that teachers have been socialized into the emotional rules of the profession in ways that inhibit their expressions of so-called outlaw emotions, or negative emotions that certain groups have been taught not to exhibit. For some teachers, these emotions may manifest as vulnerability, shame, or burnout. Conclusions/Recommendations: We conclude that emotional rules are embodied and that there are material consequences to the ways teachers are required to regulate their emotions. Teachers’ expressions of outlaw emotions should be viewed as courageous. Teachers’ vulnerability should be nurtured at both individual and institutional levels in order to build teacher community, reduce feelings of burnout and isolation, and ultimately (hopefully) reduce teacher attrition. Valuing the humanity and emotions of teachers is a critical step in ensuring humanity for all of our children. "Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness." —B. Brown “Emotion is the least investigated aspect of research on teaching, yet it is probably the aspect most mentioned as being important and deserving more attention.” —M. Zembylas INTRODUCTION On a series of Time magazine covers (2018), three women teachers look just beyond the frame of the photograph. They are surrounded by school paraphernalia: lockers, calendars, whiteboards, desks, student work posters. Their testimonies overlay their portraits, providing a stark picture¾both literally and metaphorically —of what it is like to be a “teacher in America” today. “My child and I share a bed in a small apartment. I spend $1,000 on supplies and I’ve been laid off three times due to budget cuts,” one cover proclaims. Another tells the story of a teacher who has “a master’s degree, 16 years of experience, work[s] two extra jobs, and donate[s] blood plasma to pay the bills.” A third educator’s words explain her reality: “I have 20 years of experience, but I can’t afford to fix my car, see a doctor for headaches, or save for my child’s future.” These stories were released to much praise (from fellow teachers) and critique (from those who malign the teaching profession), in the news and on social media. What made this coverage so different from that of years past, including Time’s own coverage of teachers as “bad apples” in the era of Michelle Rhee as the secretary of education, was that teachers’ stories were being told in their own words. And those stories were not designed to be inspirational, to paint teachers as, on one hand, solely superheroes or martyrs and, on the other hand, as incompetent or unskilled. Additionally, these portrayals were unique because they revealed to the masses the often unspoken side of teachers’ daily lives: their struggles, personally and professionally, and their related emotions. This is in stark contrast to recent years, when public rhetoric about teachers “could provoke whiplash. Even as we were obsessed with the very worst teachers, we were worshipping an ideal, superhuman few” (Goldstein, 2014, p. 4); teachers were “attacked and admired in equal proportion” (p. 5). Even in an era when more teachers are speaking up and speaking out, teachers’ emotional struggles are still under-researched (M. Dunn, 2019). In Spring 2017, the United States saw a wave of teacher protests and strikes, some extending to entire states like in West Virginia. In 2019 there was another massive strike by the United Teachers of Los Angeles, which saw 50,000 people marching in protest on its first day. Yet teachers faced severe criticism for these actions, even as they explained in painful detail how they struggled with low salaries, cuts to benefits, the deskilling of their profession, and outdated and dilapidated resources and facilities. Policymakers, news media, and even some of their colleagues criticized their overt discussions of these negative aspects of teaching. Teachers were painted as complainers, as too entitled-feeling or greedy, as unfit for the profession if they couldn’t “handle” it. It is no wonder, then, that teachers stay silent about their own struggles even as they fight for their students. Such silence is an example of one of several emotional rules that teachers have learned govern their profession. In this paper, we explore the historical and contemporary contexts of education and how these contexts intersect with emotions and emotional rules, particularly in relation to what it means to work in a “feminized” profession that is increasingly subject to regulations that limit teachers’ autonomy and agency. We argue that teachers have been socialized into the emotional rules of the profession in ways that inhibit their expressions of so-called outlaw emotions, or negative emotions that certain groups have been taught not to exhibit. As the title indicates, in the words of a practicing teacher, “There isn’t an easy way to talk about” the emotional challenges of teaching. For some teachers, these emotions may manifest as vulnerability, shame, or burnout. Ultimately, we conclude that teachers’ willingness to be vulnerable (e.g., speaking about their emotional challenges) is an act of courage with the potential to challenge and subvert harmful silencing of “outlaw” emotions. Below, we use data from a larger case study on teacher morale in an urban high school to advance a theory about the emotional rules of teaching in a neoliberal era. That is, using empirical data as a jumping off point —and linking this to historical knowledge of teaching as women’s work and the intersections of gender norms and emotions —we explore how teachers’ supposedly negative emotions are frequently silenced. We also examine what missed opportunities occur when this silencing happens and what possibilities —for both teachers and their students —should they be liberated from such stifling emotional rules. HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTS OF U.S. EDUCATION As grounding for our work, we consider the creation and development of the profession of teaching as a particularly “feminine” role. 1 We then briefly describe the contemporary context of schooling, primarily related to neoliberal accountability and its impact on teachers’ experiences. This historical context is important for underscoring how teachers’ emotions have been regulated and monitored across the history of the profession. TEACHING AS “SELF-DENYING BENEVOLENCE”: HISTORICAL CONTEXTS OF A FEMINIZED PROFESSION School —and the teaching of it—was never designed for everyone. At its roots, education was a means to advance those already in power —those privileged enough to attend based on their race, sex, and socioeconomic status. In nearly all ways, it still retains this “sorting” function. Thus, when we talk about the feminization of the profession, it is important to note that we are not talking about all women having access to this career at first; we are talking about White middle-class, primarily Christian, cisgender women. Further, when scholars discuss the “feminization” of the profession, “there are different and competing understandings . . . either referring to the (absolute or proportional) numbers of women in teaching or to a culture associated with women” (Griffiths, 2006, p. 387). Griffiths also pointed out the difficulty of discussing this professional shift within a man/woman gender binary. Recognizing these limitations, we allude to both numerical and cultural shifts. The feminization of the profession was a worldwide change at the beginning of the 19th century, propelled by various localized differences, including “economic conditions, law, religion, cultural traditions, gender ideologies, length of schooling, urbanization and wars, [that] militate against any simple explanations” (Albisetti, 1993, p. 263). In the United States, teaching moved from being the profession of wealthy, White men to being “redefined . . . as low-paid (or even volunteer) missionary work for women, a reality we have lived with for two centuries” (Goldstein, 2014, pp. 11−12). This shift was spearheaded by Catharine Beecher, the daughter of a Connecticut preacher (and sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin) who helped to “define public education as America’s new, more gentle church, and female teachers as the ministers of American morality” (p. 13). Women as teachers was a revolutionary concept in White communities at the time, and Catharine Beecher became a public speaker on the topic, aiming to convince large swaths of educated, White male elite in New England that teaching was the ideal profession for women to have “influence, respectability, and independence” while still maintaining “the prescribed boundaries of feminine modesty” (quoted in Goldstein, 2014, p. 18). Through her speeches and essays, Beecher carefully crafted arguments for why women were the best teachers, all of which had an indelible impact on the way teaching is still thought of today. Beecher’s ideas and plans were taken up by other school reformers in the common schools movement, including Horace Mann, who concurred that it was quite convenient that female teachers were not only cost-effective but also “angelic public servants motivated by Christian faith; wholly unselfish, self-abnegating, and morally pure” (Goldstein, 2014, p. 26). This angelic imagery reinforces understandings of teaching as a spiritual vocation and of teachers as saviors. In particular, it compounds the racist and classist ideologies that White teachers sent to frontier schools should be “a new source of moral power” (Beecher, as quoted in Goldstein, 2014, p. 29). As an example of the widespread feminization, by 1870, two-thirds of all teachers in the United States were White women. The proportion has continued to rise so that current statistics demonstrate that around 80% of teachers are now White women (Carter Andrews et al., 2019; McFarland et al., 2018). Historical scholarship on the feminized profession points to several categories of teacher representations, which we have included in a table in the appendix. The categories that emphasized, for example, teachers as mothers and teachers as selfless saviors, show the historic assumptions that teachers should not be in the profession to further their own goals but to support the achievement of their pupils (even to their own detriment) (M. Dunn, 2019). Teachers were encouraged to regulate their minds and emotions in order to better meet the needs of their students. Teachers were structured as (White) saviors, and students were seen as othered and less than. Teachers were seen as fulfilling a patriotic duty to their country, sacrificing themselves for the greater cause of educating children. In the table alongside these categories, we include quotations from primary and secondary sources that explain each particular role category. We turn back to these categories later, in our Findings and Discussion, to illustrate how these categories live on in today’s expectations for teachers and inform the way teachers’ emotions are regulated. The current and historical images of the White teacher gloss over the foundational work of Black educators. Black teachers, and Black women teachers in particular, exhibited a strong sense of duty in responding to the schooling needs of Black children before, during, and after the Civil War (Anderson, 1988; Goldstein, 2014; Tozer et al., 2013). Within this context, Black women educators upheld a fierce commitment to the overarching goal of educating Black youth. Mary McLeod Bethune, Anna Julia Cooper, and Charlotte Forten, for example, became teachers and school leaders, exemplifying the historically high, intellectually focused academic standards to which Black teachers held their students (Berry, 1982; Goldstein, 2014; Siddle Walker, 1996, 2018). Black women educators like Charlotte Forten also sought to replace “memories of slavery” for emancipated children with concepts of “racial pride” (p. 51). Finally, Black women educators constructed literary societies for men, women, and children that focused on reading, writing, identity sense-making, and social justice in the years before and after Emancipation (Muhammad, 2015). These high standards combined with a warm and supportive demeanor stand in stark contrast to the views of White women educators at the same time period. Yet Black women educators taught in the midst of untenable working conditions, including enormous class sizes, dilapidated buildings, and inequitable school funding models between schools serving Black children and those serving White children; teachers in urban settings still confront these machinations of racism (p. 50). Because the rules of emotion are necessarily raced as well as gendered, (Diaz-Strong et al., 2014; Lorde, 1983) Black women educators also confronted emotional strictures that differed from those of their White women counterparts. All of these educational endeavors highlight the historic force of Black women educators, a force that one might argue stands parallel to the White women missionaries who moved westward for teaching opportunities (Goldstein, 2014). While many White missionary teachers sought educational careers in order to “promulgate Protestantism” or find a socially accepted alternative to marriage (Goldstein, 2014, p. 51), Black teachers often taught in schools for Black children out of a moral imperative to work toward what W. E. B. DuBois called “the strife for another and juster world” (quoted in Goldstein, 2014, p. 52). While these historic roots and narratives of Black women teachers distinguish them from White women teachers, ongoing racism and White supremacy mean that such narratives remain under-valued or ignored (Hoffman, 2003; Kelly, 2010). It is for this reason that we choose to include the historical context. Propelled by patriarchy and sexism, we argue that the overarching conceptualizations of the teaching profession remain those that Beecher promulgated for and about White women. The renderings of the emotional rules of teaching that we note in this article, then, are both gendered and racialized. These emotional rules are historically contingent (Zembylas, 2002) on past conceptualizations of who is fit to be a teacher, including the 19th century efforts of Beecher in forming the racialized and gendered nature of the current teacher workforce. TEACHING “LIKE ATLAS—THIS HUGE WEIGHT ON OUR SHOULDERS”: CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTS OF A REGULATED PROFESSION The sexism of the profession, as outlined above, is still rampant in modern schools. As teacher Nathan Bowling revealed in the Time magazine story referenced above, “There’s an element of sexism in the way we talk about teachers. People talk about teachers in a way they don’t talk about firefighters and police officers, and they’re all public servants. There’s an animosity with respect to teachers that’s a function of sexism that, as I watch it happen more and more, bothers me to my core.” Teacher Sarah Pedersen argued that “We take these burdens on and sometimes kind of feel like Atlas—this huge weight on our shoulders. But it’s not our students’ fault, and we’re there because I love them” (Time magazine, 2018). Many of these burdens are a function of the current sociopolitical climate in public education, largely dominated by neoliberalism. This move toward accountability, regulation, deskilling of teachers, and an emphasis on competition and individualism versus community and collaboration has become a mainstay of teaching and learning in present-day schools. According to Dunn (2018), “neoliberalism is, at once, theoretical, ideological, political, and practical.” Neoliberal education policies emphasize market-based reforms and rhetoric, calling for private takeover of public institutions and programs, including school operations, curriculum, and testing (e.g. Apple, 2001; Harvey, 2005). Neoliberalism is not directly akin to present-day liberal or conservative movements; rather, as a political ideology, it transcends contemporary party politics, and Democrats and Republicans alike can perpetuare neoliberal policies and practices. Teachers would be hard-pressed to identify any school initiative that has not been shaped by neoliberalism, in fact, because it has emerged as the dominant force in public policy, extending from both Republican and Democratic administrations, that “transmogrifies every human domain and endeavor, along with humans themselves, according to a specific image of the economic” (Brown, 2015, pp. 9−10). Picower and Mayorga (2015) argued that neoliberal policies are a multi-headed “hydra” that infiltrates all aspects of teaching and learning, contributing to additional inequity and maintaining a dangerous status quo for teachers and students. Reforms include, but are not limited to, school choice, voucher programs, alternative recruitment programs like Teach For America, high-stakes testing and accountability policies, standardization of curriculum and pedagogy, attacks on teachers’ unions, and increased regulation of schools through state-takeover policies (Bullough, 2016; Mungal, 2016; Saltman, 2007). There is little doubt that neoliberal policies negatively impact teachers’ working conditions and students’ learning conditions, both anecdotally and discerned from two decades of research. Fullan (2016) astutely argued that neoliberal reforms “exacerbated the plight of teachers without furnishing the conditions for more fundamental, sustained reform in those situations.” Scholars underscore that teachers may experience low morale, burnout, attrition (Dunn, 2016, 2018a, 2018b), or “professional depression” (Stern & Brown, 2016), because neoliberal reforms “contradict what is seen by most teachers as the main purpose of teaching, namely, the caring and relational aspect” (p. 23). GUIDING FRAMEWORKS To ground our argument, we first explore the broad work on emotion. We focus on work that examines the possibilities and limits of teachers’ and students’ emotional expressions. We then turn to research on emotions that are often deemed to be negative and that we argue are so-called outlaw emotions for teachers today. Specifically, we focus on vulnerability and shame and the need to reframe these emotions as courageous rather than detrimental to others and ourselves. EMOTIONAL RULES Emotion is a phenomenon that has been contested across historical and contemporary scholarship. Historically, emotion has been viewed as contradictory to reason and something experienced on an individual level (Boler, 1999; Thein et al., 2015). Emotion has largely been seen as both gendered and raced (Boler, 1999), often deemed as feminine while rationality is masculine (Ahmed, 2004). We follow other scholars in their reorientation toward emotion, seeing it as “part and parcel of our intellectual work” (Stenberg, 2011, p. 360) rather than antithetical to rationality. In particular, we align with Hochschild’s (1983) term “emotional labor” as it pertains to service professions, including teaching. Drawing on Marx to examine the management of emotion in the realm of economics, these kinds of jobs require direct contact with the public, the worker needing to produce an emotional state (e.g., fear or obedience), and the employer’s exercise of control over the emotional activities of their employees. Hargreaves (1998) agreed, recognizing that the teacher-student relationship requires exceptional emotional labor; specifically, the requirement of embodying certain feelings and avoiding others. M. Dunn (2019), in taking up Hochschild’s work, argued that one salient aspect of the labor of teaching includes the suppression, management, and control of a teacher’s emotions, particularly in the face-to-face interactions teachers have with their students. We conceptualize emotion, then, as socially and historically constructed and as particularly salient across multiple schooling contexts; while emotion has a physiological component, it is also based on social contexts and influenced by others “outside” ourselves (Boler, 1999). Thein (2018) further offered that emotion “may be personally felt, but it is learned through social interactions and cultural values” (p. 169). This begs the question, then: how and where do we learn emotion? We understand emotional rules as the source of how one learns emotion in a particular context. Zembylas (2002) wrote that emotional rules “delineate a zone within which certain emotions are permitted and others are not permitted” (p. 200). These rules, he continued, “can be obeyed or broken, at varying costs” (p. 200). Moreover, emotional rules are themselves constructed by the relations of power at work in any given context, and these rules allow for the construction of emotion as, for example, weak and feminine (M. Dunn, 2019; Zembylas, 2002). Emotional rules teach children the “right and proper” (Lewis & Tierney, 2011) emotions to express in particular contexts, and these rules follow us into adulthood. Humans learn emotional rules across many contexts, including the environment in which a person is raised and in school (Boler, 1999). Zembylas (2002, 2005) asserted that, in teaching, 2 emotional rules: ● Are historically contingent ● Help to constitute a teacher’s identity ● Police a teacher’s “structures of feeling” and are a very “specific presence” in the daily life of a teacher (2005, p. 196) ● Are “often disguised as ethical codes, professional techniques, and specialized pedagogical knowledge” (2005, p. 201) ● Dictate an “emotional labor” of teaching, which sometimes results in teacher burnout (2005, p. 202) While much of the research focuses on the negative ramifications of emotional rules, teachers also are able to resist these strictures and respond productively. For example, Thein and Schmidt (2017) found that teachers can learn to be “critical witnesses” (Dutro & Bien, 2014) through the development of critical emotional knowledge. Critical emotional knowledge can help teachers examine their own emotional responses to their students. Such examinations can help teachers reflect on their pedagogical practices and shift their orientations toward their students in ways that are humanizing (Thein & Schmidt, 2017). In addition to informing a teacher’s pedagogy, emotion also offers a form of resistance to the daily emotional rules that confront them in teaching. This resistance has been conceptualized as a type of “outlaw emotion.” OUTLAW EMOTIONS Outlaw emotions are those deemed inappropriate or even dangerous by dominant society, or are those emotions which, when expressed, “disobey” the emotional rules of a particular context (Jaggar, 1989; Winans, 2012; Zembylas, 2002). The most commonly cited outlaw emotion is anger. Audre Lorde, in her 1984 text Sister Outsider, first noted the ways that Black women are barred from expressing anger or rage. Diaz-Strong et al. (2014) argued that expressions of outlaw emotion will in fact be “used against” groups who have been marginalized to further marginalize them. The authors wrote, “Outlaw emotions can be defined as feelings like anger and resentment that are considered wrong and denied to marginalized groups precisely because these emotions challenge cultural hegemony and open avenues for social change” (p. 9). Outlaw emotions, and the emotional rules dictating them, are often used against members of marginalized groups in order to further control. Emotions are especially outlawed for “members of subordinate groups” (Jagger, 1989, p. 264), and here, we consider teachers to be in many ways marginalized in today’s context, including through the “right” and “appropriate” (Lewis & Tierney, 2011) expression of particular emotions and in the construction of particular emotions as “outlawed.” Still, outlaw emotions can be sites of both control and resistance. Outlaw emotions may also allow individuals within a group to feel a sense of belonging with one another, as the expression of these emotions can build understanding between members of that group (Stenberg, 2011; Neville, 2018). As Jaggar (1989) noted, outlaw emotions are instructive, for these emotions can be the first key to uncovering systems of injustice in the world. She wrote: Outlaw emotions may also enable us to perceive the world differently from its portrayal in conventional descriptions. They may provide the first indications that something is wrong with the way alleged facts have been constructed, with accepted understandings of how things are. (p. 161) As noted by the teachers in this study, the outlaw emotions that they express offer a mode for them to consider “that something is wrong” with the ways they are expected to teach (p. x). For these teachers, expressions of outlaw emotions are intricately connected to the frustration, vulnerability, and shame that they confront in their daily teaching lives. VULNERABILITY AND SHAME One way we argue these emotional rules can be broken is through the act of vulnerability. First, though, we address a related emotion that is commonly avoided: shame. Brown (2006) defined shame as “an intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging” (p. 45). Every human with the capacity for human emotion carries shame; it is the “master emotion of everyday life” (Scheff, 2003) and the “preeminent cause of emotional distress in our time” (Trout, 2000). The fact that shame is so prevalent a feeling in U.S. society is no accident. Just as emotional rules are socially and historically constructed, so, too, is shame perpetuated by cultural and societal expectations. We live in a culture of scarcity, as Brown (2013) described, that constantly triggers shame by reminding us of the expectations we fall short of on a daily basis, or the ways we are not enough. As we outlined above, teaching as a profession is loaded with cultural expectations that are historically grounded. For teachers, this can take the form of sentiments such as: You can’t leave because the kids need you. You’re giving up. You aren’t enough to give them what they need and take care of your family and yourself. M. Dunn (2019) wrote that teaching is laden with expectations that limit the schooling experience, arguing that teachers and students are often “not fully able to be themselves within the walls of school.” For teachers, Dunn continued, this work can be particularly damaging, as “discourses about who teachers should be affect their well-being as professionals and as people” (p. 9). A. Dunn’s (2015) work on the courage to leave teaching detailed the factors that teachers weigh in their decision to stay or leave the profession. Among these factors is that teachers who decide to leave are painted as “dropouts” or “leavers.” This perceived “failure” perpetuates the narrative that teachers should be benevolent and self-denying figures. These culturally perpetuated narratives, combined with the struggles teachers experience on a daily basis at both personal and structural/policy levels, make for a combination that is emotionally exhausting. This seemingly bleak picture contains a silver lining. Vulnerability, Brown (2013) argued, is the antidote to shame. Her 2018 work defined vulnerability as “the emotion we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure” (p. 19). Derived from the Latin word vulnerare, meaning to wound, the word vulnerable elicits a feeling of being open to attack or wounding. Struggling teachers who admit to struggling open themselves to attack both personally and professionally. Thus, people often choose to avoid vulnerability because it is associated with other negative emotions like fear and shame. Teachers who admit they are struggling or even considering leaving the profession may feel not good enough, triggering feelings of shame and guilt. Vulnerability in action can mean simply talking about the struggle, something that can inherently alleviate the burden of shame. Work on vulnerability in the field is limited, and is primarily discussed in two ways: the kind that builds trust and the kind that produces anxiety and uncertainty. Alsup’s (2018) work, for example, found that the upcoming generation of teachers is engaged in a significant amount of identity work, leading to deeper engagement in professional considerations of authority and vulnerability. Though this work centers on pre-service teachers, we feel that the findings extend to in-service teachers as well. Vulnerability impacts and shapes practice (Cutri & Whiting, 2015), and thus is at the heart of this identity work through narrative discourse. Moreover, Brown’s (2013) work asserted that “vulnerability isn’t good or bad: It’s not what we call a dark emotion, nor is it always a light, positive experience. Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable” (n.p.). Thus, we do not understand vulnerability as a single emotion but rather one that exists at the center of a constellation of all other emotions. Figure 1 shows a visual representation of how we understand the functionality of vulnerability based on this definition, with vulnerability at the center of other emotions such as joy, anger, fear, and grief. Ultimately, Brown (2013) concluded that vulnerability is the single most accurate measurement of courage because it requires us to be honest¾to let ourselves be seen. Figure 1. Graphic representation of vulnerability in relation to other emotions METHODS This study draws on data from a larger year-long case study of teachers in one urban high school in the southeastern United States. This exploration included interviews, focus groups, document analysis, and questionnaire responses with eight focal teachers who were selected for their commitment to teaching and their overall “effectiveness.” Here, teacher effectiveness is defined by traditionally neoliberal metrics like students’ test scores and other ways that are more grounded in the literature on effective teaching, including the use of student-centered, culturally relevant pedagogy; a commitment to teaching for justice and equity; engagement in both in-school and out-of-school community organizations and leadership in school initiatives; and winning awards for their teaching after being nominated by students, administration, and/or colleagues. As Dunn (2019) wrote in another manuscript from these same data, “These educators are the type of teachers we want teaching our children, especially children in urban schools” (n.p.). For the purposes of this paper, we use portraiture methodologies to present the stories of four select participants whose experiences highlighted the importance and relevance of emotions as part of their work in a neoliberal space. Drawing on foundational work of Lawrence-Lightfoot (2014), we seek to center the voices of our participants in a way that clarifies for the reader the unique lived experiences of each person, while simultaneously drawing connections to existing literature and theories. In describing portraiture as a method, Lawrence-Lightfoot (2014) explained: As a portraitist, I am witness, archeologist, spider woman, storyteller, and mirror . . . probing —through art and science, empathy and discernment —the layers and subtexts of human experience; listening for the voices and silences, documenting the good, and honoring the chaos and contradictions, the ironies and ambiguities threaded through our lives. (n.p.) Our overarching argument focuses on how to push the boundaries of the emotional rules that dictate the teachers’ lives, and we similarly use a methodology that reflects that pushing of boundaries. Further, because portraiture “hopes to . . . appeal to intellect and emotion” (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2005, p. 7), we find it especially salient for a paper on emotion. The portraits below attempt to “capture the richness, complexity, and dimensionality” (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2014, n.p.) of the human experience of teaching, since so often the emotional rules of teachers’ contexts seek to take the human out of the work of teaching and learning. By including lengthy quotations from participant interviews and subsequent author field notes, our “portraits are designed to capture the richness, complexity, and dimensionality of human experience in social and cultural context, conveying the perspectives of the people who are negotiating those experiences” (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis 1997, p. 3). Finally, in keeping with Lawrence-Lightfoot’s call, we converge narrative and analysis following data from each participant, drawing on her key elements of context, voice, relationship, emergent themes, and aesthetic whole. CONTEXT AND PARTICIPANTS This study was conducted with four teachers from Wilson High School, a secondary school in a major metropolitan district in the southeastern United States. Wilson was located in a right-to-work state with no active unions or collective bargaining and a district, Glendale, that was one of the largest in the region, supporting nearly 100,000 students across 136 schools. Wilson itself was home to approximately 100 teachers and 1,600 students, with 70% Students of Color and just over 50% on free or reduced lunch. At the time of the study, the school and district had recently faced all of the following policy-related mandates and shifts: massive budget cuts for resources and personnel, furloughs, decreased benefits, no raises or cost of living increases, increased class size, lack of materials, failure to meet Adequate Yearly Progress, and implementation of value-added measures tied to student test scores. As Dunn (2018) explained in another manuscript about this school, the teachers witnessed up to four different systems of state standards for their content areas, most recently with a switch from a state-developed system to the CCSS. They were evaluated under three different sets of professional requirements and rubrics, based on the current standards and policies at the time. The changes, as one participant noted, “either come at a rapid pace or appear out of nowhere, so just as we get used to something, there is something new in its place and we have to be trained all over again.” Another participant confirmed, “The only thing we can be sure of in this district is that the plans will change, not what they ever actually will be.” (n.p.) There were a surprising number of veteran teachers at Wilson, given the statistics about the high percentage of teachers who leave urban schools within five years (Ingersoll, Merrill, & May, 2014). The teachers recruited for this study had more than five years of experience and, as noted above, were deemed exceptional by colleagues, administrators, and students. Caroline, Miranda, Allison, and Vicky represent four content areas (English, social studies, world languages, and special education), years of experience, levels taught (general, advanced, or AP/IB), and age. Mirroring the national trends, all participants identify as White women. Additional details of the lives and stories of the participants are included in their portraits below. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Portraiture, in practice, looks like listening for a story rather than to a story, according to Lawrence-Lightfoot, as she draws on the insights of author Eudora Welty. Davis (2011) wrote that “through careful observation and documentation, on the one hand, and thoughtful, active interpretation, on the other, the portraitist attempts to capture the essence of the participant’s experience” (p. 1963). Alyssa (author 1) collected multiple sources of data across one school year. Data collected include interviews, focus groups, document analysis, and questionnaire responses. Relevant to portraiture methodology, data collection was rooted in relationship-building and understanding the participants’ authentic experiences. We quote from Dryden-Peterson (2010) at length to illustrate the importance of relationships during the data collection phase of this project: Listening for a story means entering the participants’ perspective to understand descriptions of events and interpretations from the inside. The portraitist’s empathy and openness are critical to connecting with participants in this way. Further, this relationship . . . allows the portraitist to “pursue the silences” (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2005, p. 12) in conversations and in narratives. (p. 2331) As evidence of relationships, we include interview dialogue that shows the trust and rapport between the participants, as well as the silences that we were later able to probe in more depth. Data from the original study were pulled out based on which teachers emphasized emotions in their interviews. Four of the eight teachers explicitly spoke about the emotions they were feeling and their feelings about feeling those emotions. From the longer interview transcripts, we selected vignettes from each participant that related to if and how teachers felt about their emotions and how this related to the profession. We then matched each vignette with an excerpt from author Dunn’s field notes taken immediately after the interview. These vignettes are included below as quotations, combined with field notes, as a way “in” to the findings about different types of emotional rules that teachers are socialized to follow. For our analysis, we read through individually and then collectively each of the vignettes and corresponding field notes. We analyzed the excerpts using both open and closed coding, moving from open coding based on interesting ideas and patterns to closed coding by determining if and how these ideas aligned (or not) with existing literature and theory. We completed our coding using a collaborative Google Doc, taking notes in the margins and building upon each other’s ideas and questions. This analysis is embodied in our writing up of the following portraits, as it became clear that our analysis and narrative needed to be interwoven —much as our commentary and virtual dialogue was —in order to tell the most complete story of participants’ lives at the moment of the study. AUTHORS’ POSITIONALITY In framing this work, we acknowledge how researchers’ various positionalities necessarily influence the rendering of any research study (Peshkin, 1988). Perhaps most salient to consider in this study and in all of our research is that we each identify as White, cisgender women who are also teacher educators in a large, public university in the U.S. Midwest. The various modes of privilege and power that are afforded through these identity markers make themselves known in a multitude of ways. Our personal and professional work centers on our commitment to anti-racist social justice pedagogies with students and pre-service and practicing teachers. Still, despite our commitment to the work of racial justice, we note the ways that Whiteness is present and pervasive in all systemic societal structures, including and especially education broadly and teacher education, in particular (Sleeter, 2016, 2017). In approaching this work, then, we understand these collective identities to both strengthen and limit our inroads into understanding the emotion work of the teacher participants portrayed here. PORTRAITS: BREAKING THE (EMOTIONAL) RULES Echoes of the historic feminization of teaching continue in today’s schools, and teachers are socialized to learn what they should and should not feel and say, or what emotional rules govern their work. Findings from this study illustrate that teachers working within a neoliberal environment often experience so-called outlaw emotions, or those they have been socialized not to express, and their reluctant expressions of these emotions reflect their understanding of the emotional rules of the profession. In particular, we find teachers experiencing fear, shame, guilt, anger, vulnerability, and burnout. While teachers themselves and society writ large may see these as negative or defeating, taken from an understanding of outlaw emotions as a form of resistance, expression of such emotions is, in fact, courageous and indicative of the ways that teachers can fight back against the emotional rules and strictures that dictate their identities and lives. Drawing on the portraits below, we argue that teachers who teach toward vulnerability in a teacher-shaming world, and thus break the (emotional) rules, are actually exhibiting courage. CAROLINE’S STORY Caroline: It’s a lot of negative emotions that I feel a lot of the time. I don’t think that my students know though. I’d be even sadder if they did cause it’s not their fault. It’s like, they’re really the only thing holding me together. Alyssa (Dunn, author A): What negative emotions are those, most of the time? Caroline: It’s sadness, ya know, because it’s not like I want it to be like it was. Or maybe like I tell myself that it was. And disappointment. Anger. Definitely anger at [district administrators] who put us in this situation where we feel like we’re drowning. Alyssa: So it’s negative emotions about others then? Caroline: Well yeah, often it’s other people. But I suppose it’s also myself. [pause] I’m angry at myself for letting myself become absorbed by this . . . this chaos and destruction that is so rampant in [Glendale] right now. Alyssa: That sounds hard. Caroline: It is hard. It’s a lot of shame, too, because I don’t think I should feel this way. I don’t want to and I wish I didn’t, and I wish . . . [long pause], I just wish I knew how to NOT feel this way all the time. Alyssa: And what is this way again? Caroline: Burned out, exhausted, like I’m a crappy teacher in a crappy situation. Like there’s no getting out and no staying in. Like I’m trapped. She didn’t expect to cry, she tells me later in the interview, apologizing. I tell her she doesn’t need to apologize, but of course she has been conditioned to do this. (Haven’t we all?) We had started the interview in the coffee shop, but we moved outside once it was clear she was going to have a hard time talking today. She had started to get emotional and then asked if we could find a quieter place. We sat on a rehabbed metal swing¾‘shabby chic decor’ I think it’s called¾on the sidewalk, as cars buzzed by and some people walked by in pairs or with their dogs. One tied up his dog at the edge of the bench, so we both reached down to pet it as we were talking. It seemed to soothe her, as she started talking slower and her breathing became more regulated. “Thanks,” she said to the person when he came back out and unleashed the dog, “I think I needed that.” She swears a lot during the interview, apologizing for this, too, and then says, “I know, I know, I don’t need to apologize. So fuck it, it’s all so messed up and I don’t know who I am anymore.” ¾Author A, field notes, interview with Caroline Hidden in Caroline’s story is how much time and effort she had recently given to a new school organizational plan designed to give teachers more autonomy in their teaching, an effort aimed at pushing back against the stricter and more oppressive accountability measures of the district. As a fifth year social studies teacher, Caroline had been witness to multiple versions of standards, all manner of standardized testing reforms, and a cascading array of curricular mandates parading as benchmarks assessment and pacing guides. These particular reforms were characteristic of neoliberal dominance in urban schools. She felt deeply the lived effects of policies that administrators and politicians purport help students and teachers, yet that both scholars and teachers alike attest actually harm students and educators (Picower & Mayorga, 2016; Dunn, 2016, 2018b). She was also mother to a young child and partner to an artist. She wanted to have another child but was afraid to, given how she felt about her career. The coffee shop where Alyssa sat with her was walking distance from her house, which she was considering selling because of a spate of recent break-ins in the area. It was a lot to manage for anyone but especially for someone who was accustomed to giving her entire self to her career as a teacher. In this interview excerpt and accompanying field notes, we see a variety of emotional rules on display. For example, Caroline describes certain emotions that she is feeling as “negative,” including anger, frustration, disappointment and, later, shame. She tries to regulate these emotions, both by saying she wishes she did not feel them and by apologizing for them. She is ashamed of her shame and angry about her anger. But this is not “really” Caroline. In most ways, Caroline is the picture of someone who pushes boundaries; with a spiked, colorful mohawk and an abundance of tattoos and piercings, she seems to defy society’s expectations for what teachers should be with every step. Her students love this about her; they can sense a similar radical spirit who speaks to their desire to challenge the status quo. Caroline’s regulation of emotions provides further insights into the embodiment of the emotional rules of teaching within and outside of the boundaries of a physical school (Zembylas, 2005). She confronts these structures (Zembylas, 2002, 2005) in her daily school life, creating boundaries around both what she thinks is appropriate to feel and also to whom she feels she can safely express emotions of discouragement, frustration, and anger. Emotional rules for teaching require that she “keep sadness” away from her students in particular; after all, historical context of teaching shows that teachers should be self-denying and benevolent public servants (Goldstein, 2014). Caroline provides two frames to consider regarding the emotional rules of teaching. First, she gives shape to the ways that emotional rules feel on her body when she describes her feelings about teaching, such as, “Like there’s no getting out and no staying in. Like I’m trapped.” This caged-ness offers an embodiment of the emotional rules many teachers may experience (Zembylas, 2005). In addition, Caroline offers insights into the consequences of the emotional rules teachers experience in their school lives. One consequence is the feeling of no longer possessing knowledge of who you are, such as when Caroline states, “So fuck it, it’s all so messed up and I don’t know who I am anymore.” She teaches us that emotional rules dictate which feelings to express (Zembylas, 2002, 2005), do not provide ways to eliminate feelings of frustration or anger despite demanding that they be suppressed, and are felt on the body. The emotional rules of teaching, then, can leave educators feeling unknown even to themselves and further alienated from their students. As Caroline alludes to in the beginning of her portrait, the teachers in this study seek to protect their students from the sadness caused in part by these superimposed rules regarding their expression of authentic feeling. MIRANDA’S STORY “Of course I don’t tell anyone about this, you know, except for like [my partner] and [a few friends]. But it’s not as if I’m going around telling people how I really feel about teaching. Maybe they know, they can see I’m getting more and more frustrated as I’m in it longer, but I also think I probably am still able to hold a lot of it in.” —Miranda A lot of our talk today was focused on things she “should” be doing, things she is “supposed to” or “not supposed to” talk about it and feel. There was a general sense that she was not meeting some overarching commitment or expectation —either from administration or from herself, definitely more herself than others because she said “everyone else thinks I’m holding it together just fine.” But it was clear she was not “holding it together” as well as she would have liked. She talked a lot about what it might mean to have more autonomy in what and how she teaches. She mused that perhaps that agency would help her feel like the teacher she “wanted to be” again, versus the teacher she feels like is now. That divergence —between her imagined teacher self and her actual teacher self —was the “this” that she didn’t want to tell anyone. And if it’s that hard to talk about, I kept wondering what it was like to live it. —Field notes, interview with Miranda Miranda’s attempts to “hold it together” sat as a constant weight upon her, interacting, shifting, and reacting with all the other aspects of her life. This feeling of “holding it together” adds to Caroline’s explanation of the embodiment of the emotional rules of teaching (Zembylas, 2005); similar to the caged-ness Caroline felt in response to emotional rules, Miranda senses these rules as a threat to being able to keep herself whole, together, and thriving. In addition to being a 12th grade English teacher (AP and IB) at the school, she also served as the IB coordinator. Certainly she had grown accustomed to the myriad responsibilities she had on a daily basis; in addition to being a teacher, she is also a self-identified “lesbian mom.” But as a former actor and dancer —artists for whom the expression of the depths of human emotion is the crux of artistic ability —Miranda’s inability to be who she wanted to be as a teacher and say what was on her mind felt unnatural and stagnating to her. She wanted to do more and be more but was not sure how to accomplish that in a setting where “holding it together” was about all she could manage. She wondered aloud about leaving teaching to pursue a doctorate, hopeful that it might provide her a context in which she could find authentic and uninhibited conversations about the realities of schooling. Miranda’s wondering offers insights into the ways that teachers may seek out other avenues, such as graduate school, through which to express emotions that have been outlawed by the emotional rules of their school lives (Boler, 1999; Diaz-Strong et al., 2014; Zembylas, 2005). But for Miranda to leave the school would be a huge blow, and some part of her probably knows this. In the IB program, the English department, and even Wilson as a whole, she is a mainstay. She speaks quietly, deliberately, and thoughtfully in every encounter, and she is a gifted communicator with students and colleagues. She is, quite simply, a force for tremendous good in a place that often feels stifling for teaching and learning. With repeated words such as “should” and “[not] supposed to,” this excerpt and its field notes paint a portrait of a teacher who is weighed down by the expectations of those around her. The constant inkling that there was some sense of overarching commitment she was not meeting points toward the historic role of teaching as meant for temperate, hardworking, and nurturing figures. If she was not gaining such personal satisfaction merely through serving others, certainly something must be wrong. These “should” and “supposed to” moments also nod to the emotional rules that dictate the lives of many teachers (Zembylas, 2002). As she notes in this interview, Miranda is expected to not only do her job but also to be happy doing her job, making it increasingly strenuous to exist in a neoliberal space with such little autonomy (Dunn, 2016; 2018b; Saltman, 2001). Much of the enactment of emotional rules involves a form of expectations; Miranda is expected to thrive as a teacher, she is seen as an educator who is able and willing to “hold it together” for her students and their families, and it is these expectations that give shape to the emotional rules Miranda confronts as she passes through her days at Wilson. Because of these structures, she is unable to discuss the disappointment she feels both in her professional atmosphere and in the person she tries to hard to be, leading to shame, disappointment, and frustration. Though she attempts to relegate these emotions to only her partner and closer friends, the exterior becomes increasingly hard to maintain. ALLISON’S STORY Alyssa: I know I’m asking you to be really vulnerable here. Allison: Yeah. Alyssa: How do you feel about that? Allison: Okay I guess. I trust you. Obviously, right? [laughs] But it’s not something I’m used to. Alyssa: Why not? Allison: Our profession doesn’t seem like an emotional one to me, at least not in that way. Teachers are supposed to be strong and not complain and be in it, like, for the kids, right? I mean isn’t that like what people always expect you to say? Like I’m not in it for the paycheck. But ya know what, I’m honestly kind of in it for the paycheck. I don’t mean that I don’t love my students and don’t want to teach, but why do we expect teachers to work for free? Like how is that okay? Alyssa: I know, it’s an unfair expectation. Like just because we’re committed to the profession, we are expected to work for nothing. Allison: Exactly. And so it is a vulnerable thing, like if you’re one of the ones who has to be honest and be like, yeah, the money DOES honestly matter to me. Because I have to pay my freakin’ bills. Cause people probably don’t expect you to say that and they won’t like it if you do. So you’re really putting yourself on the line there.” The trailer was very hot today. Very hot. Even with the door open, it was oppressive. I didn’t know how she managed to teach for eight hours in there, especially because I’m sure the students were vocal in their discomfort. And how could they not be?! Just a few months ago, though, they’d been in here in hats and coats and gloved, bundled up on yet another day with no heat. So is it any wonder that, at the end of the day, A. sits down across from me in a creaky old desk that sighs heavily. “I don’t know how much longer I’ve got in me,” is how she starts the conversation. When I ask her to talk with me about her feelings on staying or leaving the profession, she hesitates. This surprises me, because we’re friends. We’ve talked about it before, but never “on record,” so to speak. It’s when she starts to talk about teachers’ salaries that she gets the most emotional, as she thinks about her shrinking salaries and benefits, and her one-bedroom apartment in the basement of someone else’s house. —Author A, field notes, interview with Allison Allison is in her fifth year of teaching Spanish at Wilson. She spends most of her days in a trailer located in the school’s back parking lot. She loves theater and directs the school’s theater program in her limited and intermittent spare time, and receives no monetary compensation for the role. The inability to be honest in her professional context is as stifling as the summer heat in the trailer, making it increasingly attractive to consider leaving to teach in a private school, to teach theater, or do something else entirely. Because her partner is often deployed to undisclosed locations through military service, her support system is often at a distance. Allison’s interview offers a few ways to view the emotional rules of teaching, first by alluding to an inherent contradiction between the cultural narratives of teaching and the expected behaviors of teachers. She references how teachers are “supposed” to be: strong, and able to restrain themselves from complaining —the epitome of an angelic public servant, as Catharine Beecher might say. The amount of pause she gives before answering these questions is telling; the vulnerability Allison feels around simply saying that money is important speaks to the shame she feels about her identity as a teacher. It is also entirely contradictory to her natural personality. She talks a lot, she talks fast and always with her hands; she is theatrical in her teaching, even if she is not teaching theater. She expresses an emotion that one might call outlaw when in she describes the “vulnerability” and injustice of teacher salaries. She interrogates an educational system that requires teachers to work in under-resourced conditions, show love for their students, and “basically work for free.” This expression of emotion, frustration, and anger, in particular, can be considered outlaw because dominant society would expect (really, demand) teachers to be only loving and nurturing without complaining about their salaries. Allison and other teachers learn that the emotion of vulnerability is “outlawed” through the emotional rules that they learn within their teaching contexts. Allison further offers a commentary on how outlaw emotions take shape through the emotional rules of a context; namely, she states that actors’ “expectations” force and constrain particular emotions for teachers. VICKY’S STORY Vicky: It’s definitely a weird thing to think about. Alyssa: How so? Vicky: Because I’m not used to thinking about myself. This job is about being selfless. So when you ask me to think about how I’M feeling, how I’M doing, it’s like . . . when was the last time someone asked me that? Alyssa: Do you know? When the last time was? Vicky: [pause] Uh no, no, I guess I don’t. Alyssa: What do you think about that? Vicky: I guess I think maybe I wouldn’t be feeling this way if people asked each other that more frequently. Or EVER. And by people, I really mean the people with the power to make changes based on what we say. Alyssa: Like administrators? Vicky: Right. Like if other teachers know I’m feeling burned out, that’s one thing. But we can’t do anything that will actually make things better. So it’s the people who CAN make things better that should be doing the asking. Alyssa: Right. Vicky: So I think that’s why it’s so weird to talk about, because I’m not used to it. Alyssa: Uh huh. Vicky: I’ll get used to it though, so we can have something to talk about. [laughs] The phone rings incessantly in her classroom. Today, I am there for an hour or so and I think she answers it about seven times. It’s everything from being told about student absences, to suspensions, to a duty she now has to cover, to something about cheerleading uniforms, to a parent calling back about a grade, to an administrator asking her a random question that she says they’ve “talked about ten times already.” When we finally get to talking about how she is feeling lately, she just looks at me and pauses for so long that I wonder if she heard me. And then, as she talks about, she almost doesn’t know how to answer me because so few people ask her that. I feel badly, and it makes me wonder if I ask my teacher friends enough¾if I check in with them enough, because I know how SHE is feeling is likely how THEY are feeling, too. But I’m not the one she wants to know how she feels; she wants the administrators to know, and to care about it, and to DO something about it. But, watching her from the outside, no one would think to ask. She seems just fine. She is chipper seemingly all the time. She is unceasingly devoted to her students’ needs. She is who others teachers aspire to be . . . and yet she’s driving herself into the ground, sees few ways out, and is concerned about even talking about it.¾Author A, field notes, interview with Vicky Vicky was a veteran special education teacher frequently honored as an exemplary educator by teachers, students, and parents at her school. Still, she expresses similar emotions of anger, frustration, and burnout as do her colleagues, due to the context of her school setting. She also offers a commentary on the definitions and force of emotional rules of the profession. She states that it feels “weird” to talk about herself because the job requires her to be “selfless.” And Vicky is nothing if not selfless; as an educator for students with disabilities, she is comfortable with and skilled at advocating for her students’ individual needs in the classroom and beyond. She is known for it, in fact; it is one of the reasons that, when alumni come back to the school, the first place they go is to find her. The historical context of teaching as a calling for benevolent and nurturing women is so deeply ingrained that, even today, Vicky feels she is falling short of her duties. The emotional rules of her context are so visceral, then, that a feeling as natural as concern for oneself is made to feel unfamiliar and “weird.” But if you heard Vicky’s boisterous laugh from down the hallway, you would have no idea what she was actually feeling. Her laugh is loud and frequent and infectious; it is a near-constant part of daily life in her classroom and in the school hallways. Vicky’s portrait also offers us another view of emotional rules as embodied through the divided attention she must navigate throughout this one short interview session. In the interview, she is pulled away to answer the phone “at least seven times”; This image of pulling constraints on Vicky (the need to answer the phone to discuss a student, to discuss emotionality with Alyssa, and to navigate administrative questions) all converge together, tugging at her mind. This is evident in Vicky’s extended pause after the first interview question, and we can almost see her coming back to herself as she shifts from the tumultuous and unceasing demands on her attention in her teaching context to being present in the interview. The divided attention that Vicky must negotiate can weigh on the chests of teachers in all settings, and in this case in urban settings, as they work to navigate the emotional, embodied rules of teaching. Vicky offers evidence of outlaw emotions in this portrait through framing the possibilities that could be offered by administrators, or those in power, if the breaking down of particular emotional rules were allowed. In noting how different the circumstances would be if those in power actually listened to teachers and how they feel, she expresses an outlaw emotion. Through pushing back against those who seek to control the emotions of particular groups, in this case teachers, one might break down the boundaries around emotion that administrators perpetuate in the daily lives of teachers and students. As we note further, Vicky’s expression of an outlaw emotion, far from being selfish, is an act of courage. Portraits as a Collective In each portrait above, we told a participant’s story in their own words and the words of Alyssa’s field notes, attempting to weave in descriptions of their context alongside an analysis of their portraits in light of literature and theory on emotional rules and vulnerability. Each portrait also mirrors one or more historical categories of teachers. In the table below, we summarize what each portrait tells us about emotional rules, vulnerability, and the categories of historical teacher representations. Table 1. Portrait Analysis Summary Table Portrait What it tells us about emotional rules What it tells us about vulnerability How it aligns with categories of historical teacher representations Caroline Caroline describes certain emotions as “negative,” including anger, frustration, disappointment, and later, shame. Caroline tries to regulate these emotions. For example, she is ashamed of her shame and angry about her anger Vulnerability (or the perceived inability to be vulnerable) is at the center of these “negative” emotions. Teacher as simultaneously softhearted and hardworking Teacher as selfless Caroline creates boundaries around both what she thinks is appropriate to feel and also to whom she feels she can safely express emotions of discouragement, frustration, and anger. Emotional rules require that she keep sadness away from her students, which makes her feel caged. It is too vulnerable for Caroline to share discouragement and frustration with most people at her school. There is a vulnerability in sadness, particularly when that sadness is admitted to someone else. But it is also sad to not be able to admit sadness. Teacher as savior/martyr Teacher as simultaneously softhearted and hardworking The emotional rules of teaching, then, can leave educators feeling unknown even to themselves and further alienated from their students. The inability to be vulnerable makes us hard to recognize, even (and perhaps especially) to ourselves. Teacher as selfless Miranda Miranda’s emotional rules about “holding it together” keep her from being “whole, together, and thriving.” Being weighed down by the expectations of those around her, the “shoulds” and “supposed to” of emotional rules dictate her life. Miranda feels vulnerable when expressing the emotions of “should” and “supposed to.” “Should” and “supposed to” are manifestations of shame. Teacher as selfless Teacher as savior/martyr Allison Allison alludes to an inherent contradiction between the cultural narratives of teaching and the expected behaviors of teachers: “Teachers are supposed to be strong.” In contrast, she is expressing outlaw emotions. She expressed vulnerability around money and shame. In particular, these are vulnerable expressions because society demands teachers to be only loving and nurturing. Teacher as mother Teacher as unpaid or underpaid volunteer Teacher as simultaneously softhearted and hardworking Vicky Vicky expresses emotions of anger, frustration, and burnout. She demonstrates that emotions are embodied. One of the ways this embodiment is evident is through the pulls on teachers’ already divided attention in schooling contexts. Her emotions all of these feelings pertain to vulnerability in that we view vulnerability as the center of all other emotions. Teacher as unpaid or underpaid volunteer She feels strange talking about about herself because teaching is supposed to be selfless. These emotional rules are visceral. A difficulty with talking about herself is a manifestation of shame. This inability to be vulnerable keeps her in a shame cycle. Teacher as selfless Teacher as simultaneously softhearted and hardworking. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS TEACHING TOWARD VULNERABILITY IN A TEACHER-SHAMING WORLD Through these vignettes, we see examples of teachers who feel unable to express the difficulties of their current experiences in the profession. All allude to shame and frustration, somehow feeling they fall short of who society expects them to be as educators. While this shame and frustration, like all emotion, could be conceptualized as innate or residing within the teacher, we argue, along with other scholars of emotion, that the emotions teachers experience in their schooling lives are always bound up and even created in particular social contexts through the rules that regulate the form and expression of emotion (Boler, 1999; M. Dunn, 2019; Zembylas, 2002, 2005). This leads us to several conclusions and implications. EMOTIONAL RULES ARE EMBODIED It is important to note that the feeling of being caged in is more than just a feeling; it has a real impact in the social and educational context in which educators teach. The ongoing understanding and socialization of teaching as a feminized profession has lasting and profound impacts on teachers’ ability to thrive. This is because the emotional rules that govern femininity generally, and feminine teaching in particular, require that women negate the self in order to better meet the needs of other people. Mere survival — “keeping it together” —is not something to which any teacher (or human being) should have to resign themselves (M. Dunn, 2019). As the data have suggested, the emotional rules of teaching can leave educators feeling unknown even to themselves, which puts a strain on their ability to relate to students. Teachers, Zembylas (2002) asserted, have been “urged and incited to follow these rules, to define and regulate themselves according to them, [and] to establish principles for conducting and judging their professional lives” (p. 201). Teachers learn to “self-regulate,” or know when to “control their emotions of anger, anxiety and vulnerability and express empathy, calmness, and kindness” (p. 201). Even teachers who identify as men, though they were not in our study, are also constrained by the legacy of these emotional rules on the profession. TEACHERS’ EXPRESSIONS OF OUTLAW EMOTIONS SHOULD BE VIEWED AS COURAGEOUS Although participants exemplify how emotional rules prevent them from expressing outlaw emotions among their administrators and peers, they also voice those emotions. We consider voicing outlaw emotions as a courageous act in the face of a teacher- shaming world. We do not rely on the teachers themselves to define this act as courageous; rather, this is our interpretation of their actions, regardless of how they would describe their emotions. We use the term courage understanding that it looks different for every person; moreover, one’s ability to be outwardly courageous in this way is also related to one’s privilege to be so (race, class, gender identity, union status/tenure status, etc.). One may ask why we consider demonstrative outlaw emotion a courageous act for teachers. Considering the neoliberal era in which we live, teachers live in an oppressive time —socialized against expressing how they feel —and are often treated as a marginalized group. One need not look further than the voices of teachers from this study and the Time magazine covers to see this. Many are unable to live in a way that Brown (2015) described as wholehearted. Living a wholehearted life requires things like practicing authenticity, self-compassion, cultivating joy, and building gratitude and sufficiency. As our participants describe, a profession that requires its practitioners to “keep it together” in a neoliberal society where they are constantly falling short of unrealistic and toxic expectations, how could we possibly expect them to feel wholehearted? We cannot expect teachers to feel safe expressing outlaw emotions and being vulnerable unless we create institutional contexts that are truly open (not just in rhetoric but in reality) for them to be courageous in breaking these emotional rules. In this context, we perceive such a space to be one where teachers can be part of an empathetic culture, able to share outlaw emotions, and express vulnerability without fear of reprisal or being shamed. Without being able to fully express themselves within their schooling contexts, it becomes exceedingly difficult to attend to what many would claim is the most important component of teaching: building relationships with students in humanizing ways (M. Dunn, 2019; Paris & Winn, 2014). Vulnerability must be nurtured at both individual and institutional levels in order to build teacher community, reduce feelings of burnout and isolation, and ultimately (hopefully) reduce teacher attrition. TEACHERS MUST BE SUPPORTED IN EXPRESSING VULNERABILITY The stories of these teachers point to Brown’s (2006) conceptualization of shame. Through the messages they receive constantly from the media and even their own colleagues, teachers are shamed into upholding the appearance of “keeping it all together.” Though this paints a bleak picture, Brown’s (2006) research pointed to practices that may be able to alleviate some of this shame. She said, SRT [Shame Resilience Theory] proposes that shame is a psycho-social-cultural construct . . . the cultural component points to the very prevalent role of cultural expectations and the relationship between shame and the real or perceived failure of meeting cultural expectations. (p. 45) In teaching, the expression of outlaw emotions goes against the cultural norms and rules those in power have assigned to teachers (Boler, 1999; Jaggar, 1989; Lorde, 1983). Teachers, then, have been socialized into those rules that disallow expressions of vulnerability and shame and encourage joy and enthusiasm for teaching. For these reasons, and for the teachers in this study, we argue that vulnerability is an outlaw emotion. The teachers in this study were not deliberately choosing to be courageous or vulnerable, but in the end, they were both of those things. We argue that, sometimes, being intentionally vulnerable can be a move toward being subversive in the face of challenging working conditions. Vulnerability is subversive in two ways. First, it serves as a way for teachers to perceive the injustice that surround their schooling contexts. Jaggar (1989) wrote that outlaw emotions, like vulnerability in the cases of our participants, “may provide the first indications that something is wrong with the way alleged facts have been constructed, with accepted understandings of how things are” (p. 161). Outlaw emotions like vulnerability along with anger can prove to be subversive for teachers, then, because of how they can point to the injustice they and their students experience. One example of this lies in Caroline’s story, who demonstrated her vulnerability when she described herself as feeling “Burned out, exhausted, like I’m a crappy teacher in a crappy situation. Like there’s no getting out and no staying in. Like I’m trapped.” We name this assertion as vulnerable, and also as an outlaw emotion that could, and did, lead Caroline to expressing anger toward district administrators who placed teachers like herself in these positions. Second, vulnerability becomes subservisive when it is used to combat the shame that often manifests in feelings of being trapped, powerless, and isolated —emotions that all participants described. Through acknowledging and speaking to vulnerability in a positive light, we may begin to combat destructive narratives about teachers and so-called outlaw emotions. Shame Resilience Theory (SRT) proposes that people who “experience shame in an area where they are aware of their personal vulnerabilities demonstrate higher shame resilience” (p. 48). This critical consciousness raising speaks to the cognitive state of “linking personal experiences with social/cultural issues” (p. 48), allowing teachers to engage in empathetic exchanges in which mutual vulnerability is both encouraged and celebrated. Vulnerability is critical for advancing the profession but, even more so, for supporting teaching as a human and humane endeavor. As Brown (2013) noted, “Too often we lose sight of the fact that vulnerability is also the birthplace of joy, belonging, creativity, authenticity, and love” (n.p.). We must encourage teachers to express rather than suppress these outlaw emotions when needed, to push back against the emotional rules of the profession, and to view their emotions as potentially subversive so that they can feel valued as human beings. Valuing the humanity and emotions of teachers, we ultimately argue, is a critical step in ensuring humanity for all of our children. Acknowledgment We wish to thank Eli Kean for their insight on issues of gender in an earlier draft of this manuscript. Notes 1. When we discuss the feminization of the profession, we are referring to feminine gender norms, not female as in biological sex. We distinguish biological sex from gender identity. We understand gender as a (problematic) social construct that reinforces the assumption of two stable genders (man/woman), creating the illusion of a binary that erases those who identify as transgender, agender, gender-fluid, gender non-binary, or gender non-conforming. 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Teaching and Teacher Education, 21, 935 - 948. APPENDIX Categories of Historical Teacher Representations Categories of Historical Teacher Representations Historical Scholarship Evidence Teacher as nurturing mother “ . . . necessarily the guardian of the nursery, the companion of childhood, and the constant model of imitation” (Beecher, Essay on the Education of Female Teachers, 1835). Woody (1929) further emphasizes Beecher’s connection between motherhood and teaching, citing Beecher when she states: “The great purpose of a woman’s life¾the happy superintendence of a family¾is accomplished all the better and easier by preliminary teaching in school” (p. 483). (See these sources for further historical grounding of Beecher’s claims about women and the profession, see Weiler, 1989; Hoffman, 1979; Kaufman, 1984; Sklar, 1973) Teacher as selfless “She is to read books, not to talk of them, but to bring the improvement they furnish . . . The great uses of study are to enable her to regulate her own mind and to be useful to others” (Beecher, 1827). “As there is neither honor nor profit connected with this position, we see no reason why it should not be filled by a woman” (Woody, 1929). (See these sources for further historical grounding of the ways women were seen as “mild mannered” and “particularly well-suited to teach children”: Elsbree, 1939; Weiler, 1989; Woody, 1929) Teacher as savior/martyr Women should be “missionary teachers” to the “ignorant and neglected American children” in the western frontier of the U.S. (Beecher, 1827). Teacher as simultaneously softhearted and hardworking Men teachers are “incompetent,” “intemperate,” “course, hard, unfeeling… too lazy or stupid” (Beecher, The Evils Suffered by American Women and American Children, 1846) Elsbree (1939) further emphasizes the ways women were seen as better suited for teaching than men, without “doubt. [Women’s] manners are more mild and gendler, and hence more in consonance with the tenderness of childhood” (p. 201). Teacher as unpaid or underpaid volunteer Women teachers “need support only for herself,” whereas “a man requires support for himself and a family” (Beecher, 1827). “As there is neither honor nor profit connected with this [teaching] position, we see no reason why it should not be filled by a woman” (Woody, 1929). (See these sources for further historical grounding of the ways women were seen as particularly well-suited for teaching in the 19th century due to their marginalized status in the economy: Weiler, 1989; Woody, 1929). Cite This Article as: Teachers College Record Volume 122 Number 9, 2020, p. - https://www.tcrecord.org/library ID Number: 23415, Date Accessed: 9/1/2020 12:47:32 PM