Teaching Through Turmoil: Social Studies Teachers and Local Controversial Current Events

Abstract

The protests against the Budget Repair Bill in Wisconsin during the spring of 2011 provide a powerful moment in which to examine social studies teachers’ curricular, pedagogic, and personal political decisions in the context of a local, controversial current event. We engaged 7 middle and high school social studies teachers from small and large, liberal and conservative communities who participated in the protests in in-depth, semi-structured interviews using direct prompts rooted in critical incident scaffolding and open questions in keeping with oral history traditions. The teachers’ stories reveal the profound significance of that moment in their lives, the ways in which teaching through turmoil deepened their political awareness and activism, a range of factors influencing their decisions of whether or not to disclose their opinions to their students, the importance of the need for “balanced” teaching of controversial issues, and the ways in which they feel their voices have been silenced in the aftermath of the legislation.

Keywords:

• controversial issues
• current events
• unions

Notes

1. ¹The story of what happened in Wisconsin in 2011 is much more complicated than the brief summary provided above or than this endnote could capture. That said, in the interest of contextualizing this study, it may be worth noting that Wisconsin was the first state in the United States to allow public unions the right to collectively bargain (in 1959). Wisconsin’s political move to the right was marked not only by the election of Scott Walker as a governor representing the Tea Party movement, but by Republican majorities won in both the Wisconsin state house and state senate. A majority of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court’s justices at the time (and at the time of this writing) leaned right. (Wisconsin elects its state Supreme Court justices.) This background matters as it played an important role in the passage of Act 10 and similar other legislation since. Act 10 served as the first major step towards accomplishing Governor Walker’s goal of making Wisconsin a “right-to-work” state. Half of the states in the US are currently “right-to-work states,” where generally speaking, labor is lesser-paid and provided with fewer and costlier benefits packages than in states where unions are allowed. Act 10 essentially disallowed public unions in the state from requiring payment from those who received its benefits. Act 10 also allowed radical changes to teacher pay formulas, teacher evaluation procedures and conditions for being fired. In many districts, after the passage of Act 10, teachers can be released from their jobs for “any or no cause,” making their positions far less secure. In addition, Act 10 disallowed public employees from collectively bargaining with employers over work conditions or base wages except as a percentage of cost-of-living inflation increases.

2. ²All names are pseudonyms.

3. ³We identified the political make-up of a community by looking at its 2010 gubernatorial voting records.

4. ⁴It is worth mentioning that all of the participants were trained and experienced teachers; none were emergency-certified or the products of alternative certification programs like Teach for America.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katy Swalwell

KATY SWALWELL is an Assistant Professor at Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011. She can be contacted at [email protected].

Simone Schweber

SIMONE SCHWEBER is the Goodman Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706. She can be contacted at [email protected].