The disobedient professional: Applying a nomadic imagination toward radical non-compliance

The role of the nomad

In examining the normalizing/limiting nature of discussions of professionalism in teacher education, it is apparent that an emphasis on compliance and normalization is a common interpretation of what makes one a professional. Teacher candidates who are seeking their own qualities of professionalism have challenged much of what is presented to them as professionalism as “petty shit,” “all about complying,” and “absent of humanity.” Toward challenging these notions, teacher candidates have engaged in conversations with me and others in class sessions, at school field sites, and during seminars/retreats. Out of these conversations, we came together to suggest that in place of themes of compliance and docility, professionalism instead requires:

“C’mon pack”

One such story is one of kindergartners and lines. The teacher who shares this story (originally in Leafgren and Bornhorst, 2016) is Catherine Bornhorst. As a first-year teacher, she questioned her professionalism when comparing her choices against the prescribed and predictable choices her more experienced colleagues were making in their interactions with children. In this narrative, she tells of a day when her students joined the rest of the school on their every-afternoon trek through the school hallways to get to the school busses parked alongside the building. She wrote of this incident: “I was keenly aware that the manner in which students walk in the hall is indicative of the quality of the teacher. Human children in the hallways could not possibly have good teachers” (Leafgren and Bornhorst, 2016: 37)—echoing again Popkewitz and Brennan’s (1998) articulation of the “good teacher” as one who complies with internalized teacher norms, and indicating the striated nature of the school(ed) day.

On this trek to the busses, Catherine noted that her children were “line-ish and all accounted for,” with some children moving to the busses side by side and others in groups “more clumpy” than other groups. As the children moved in their pack-like way, enjoying the comfort of the joyful proximity of friends and teacher, another kindergarten teacher looked at the children in Catherine’s line and then turned to her straight, silent, and disconnected line of children to state loudly: “Good job, my class. We know how to walk in a line.” Catherine and her students looked at the other teacher’s line: “Her children were standing equally spaced, hands to their sides or behind their backs, and they were all facing forward. It was textbook” (Leafgren and Bornhorst, 2016: 37). Her children, “who had been smiling and laughing,” froze in place and looked to their teacher, expecting a scolding. The children in Catherine’s class expected their teacher to respond in a manner toward normalizing their behavior toward docility and conformity. As Catherine wrote: “It doesn’t take long to recognize and understand oppression”—and they could see that their actions had got their teacher “in trouble” (37).

Just as her experience as lazy and unprofessional hand-writer in her college preparation had elicited from Catherine a critical questioning of professionalism as compliance, this moment led her to make a similar decision about her choices as a professional educator:

I was presented with a conflict: my students were “being disobedient.” It was true, my students and I were blatantly disregarding the school rules as to how to walk in [the] hallway. But in this moment, we find connection to Zinn’s (1968) insight toward rule-following and morally/humanly motivated disobedience in the children’s humanity, their innate need to move, to be near one another, to touch, to interact with their environment and other humans. As the adult, placing myself in the moment with my children, seeing that our conflicts are not separate—that we are mutually becoming in the stratified space of the hallway, I realized that together we had the pleasure of smoothing spaces for unbridled joy and humanity in the face (metaphorically and literally for the opposing teacher) of conflict. I had the choice to recognize my students as the humans they are, versus the “trouble-makers” they were perceived. (Leafgren and Bornhorst, 2016: 37–38)

In this moment, Catherine made a professional and nomadic decision to support her children’s humanity. A professional embracing the radical imagination is nomadic. Such a professional seeks to build and sustain a world that does not yet exist and is willing to be in a “relatively constant state of movement … flowing over the land in a free-form, amorphous flux rather than demarcating the land according to fixed boundaries” (Bogue, 2004b: 170–171). Catherine recognized the fixed boundaries and precise expectations of “the line” and found spaces for her children to exist in those boundaries even while honoring their nature to avoid capture. “Like rhizomes, nomads have no desire to follow one path” (Gough, 2006: 640) and, like the rhizome, her pack did not wander aimlessly, but wandered humanly. As they shared this moment of resistance to docility expected by the school/state, Catherine noted that: “Our pack, our identity was born … [and she] smiled [her] deepest smile, proud to be their leader, and to [her] children (and to the other teacher) said, ‘C’mon, pack. Let’s go to the bus’” (Leafgren and Bornhorst, 2016: 38). Catherine was not compliant, not adhering to the norm, but in considering her moral and ethical obligations to her students’ humanity, she was operating as a professional.

Second-grade subversives

A narrative of non-compliant professionalism from my own bank of teaching experiences tells the story of 27 second-graders and their card-flip chart, and how I learned that sometimes being professional might mean being subversive, and that there are no better partners in subversion than second-graders.

After years of a spontaneous and epidemic spread of a specific version of Canter and Canter’s (1992) assertive discipline—in this case, a flipping of various colors of cards to record children’s non-compliance—the administration of my large urban district determined that each of the 47 elementary schools in the district would adopt en masse the card-flipping strategy of coercing children into compliance. The district hired a national consultant to train the entire staff—including all teachers, custodians, office staff, and food workers—to use this simplistic and behaviorist means of coercing children into docile behavior. While the flip-card method represents only one means of interpreting the assertive discipline model—other loose variations include ClassDojo, moving clips, and cute variations such as ocean-themed (your fish drops further into the ocean as your behavior is less acceptable) and “tree-mendous” behavior charts—it is quite easy to find discussions and explanations of these “easy-to-use” behavior management systems (e.g. see Leafgren, 2009; Wistrom, 2012). The district then purchased the behavior management pocket charts to display in each elementary school classroom.

About a week after the mass training, the chart appeared in our classroom. I recall sitting on the carpet with my second-grade students as we stared at the chart together. To many of the children, it was a familiar scene, for while the charts they had experienced in their kindergarten and first-grade classrooms were generally teacher-made before this year, they knew how such systems worked and how it worked on them.

Most of the children expressed comfort with the idea of the chart—some claiming to me and the class that they needed it to help them to “be good”—and seeing the chart again likely spoke to the children’s unconscious desire for that which aligns with what they already know about themselves and how they can and should be (Britzman, 1998). I consider this to be a marker of Foucault’s (1979) notion of the carceral—meaning that the children operated under a system where “some hold[ing] the power to punish is not only accepted, but embraced! Therefore, the judges of normality are everywhere, and the normalizing practices very difficult to resist” (Leafgren, 2009: 125). Listening to some of the children as they rejoiced in seeing the familiar and comforting chart was, therefore, disconcerting but understandable. As Foucault (1979: 301) explains: “Perhaps the most important effect of the carceral system is … that it succeeds in making the power to punish [and reward] natural and legitimate [and lowers] the threshold of tolerance to penalty.” Even by second grade, children have experienced and even contributed to the deeply striated nature of school, and many raised concerns about what would happen if we took on a plan to disrupt the trajectory of the chart.

Some of the children were concerned that I would “get in trouble” for not using the chart. This perhaps reflects a narrative of compliance which notes that assumptions held by teachers and children are not only about who the Other (the Other, meaning the non-compliant, the outsider, the bad teacher/child) is not but should become, but also is about who is about who the “privileged must be in order not to be the Other” (Kumashiro, 2000: 27). Through making normal and desirable norms of surveillance and control, these behavior charts, thus, operate on children in ways similar to the ways in which professionalism requirements operate on pre-service teachers in teacher education programs. Children, too, learn to belong and be valued through “internalizing…norms that compel them to act in particular ways” (Fenwick, 2016: 27)

So, what can be done in the face of such pervasive and accepted oppressive circumstances?

According to Johannes (2015), “a nomadology approach can honour the less powerful.” The less powerful are obviously the children compelled to classrooms, but are also, clearly, teachers. So, being less powerful together, the children and I operated as nomads in the striated space of the classroom with the flip chart. We sought to engage with the chart via a dissymmetrical passage between the smooth and striated spaces—which in Deleuzoguattarian terms brings state-driven striations that confine and limit movement—in ways that would resist, smooth, and radicalize (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004). In collaborative subversive and thoughtful resistance to the chart, we engaged in a narrative of pretending to conform to the chart. Tally (2010: 15) explains that in nomadology, fresh and unexpected territories are co-constructed in associations between the nomad and the state, “projecting an alternative line of flight—a line that will allow us to re-imagine the classroom in enlightening and productive new ways.” We needed the imposition of the chart in order to have the opportunity to engage in our allied resistance.

In our discussion of the ways in which the chart seemed to speak to our identities of students and teacher, we engaged in a series of wonderings and what-ifs. We determined together that the chart had the potential for interfering with the very human and delicate relationships we had been forming during those first few weeks of school. In raising those critical questions and toward honoring the integrity of our classroom and relationships, we determined that we did not want to use the chart as it was intended to be used according to the training and instructions. The children and I plotted ways that we could engage with the chart and still become ourselves together in ways that allowed for alternative lines of flight.

Pretending was the answer. As the chart was publicly displayed on a classroom wall, it was open to surveillance by anyone. The children told me that their siblings and friends were asking why everyone in our class was always on “green,” even when they knew the children in our classroom were not that good. Other teachers in the building questioned me about the ever-green chart, and so did my principal. A nomad smooths and so, rather than responding to the interrogations by falling into the expected line, we pretended.

Every day during our morning meeting, a few children would volunteer to “be on yellow” or “be on red” that day. In this way, as others peeked at our chart, they would no longer see only green (good) cards showing in each child’s card pocket, but would see the smattering of red and yellow which suggests that we were properly sorting children by degrees of compliance, as was mandated. We not only did this to keep out of trouble with the school/state, but did so nomadically in ways that suggest to the children (and me) that they/we have the power to become something other than merely compliant.

As the weeks went on, the children began to take joy in our caper, and they began to elaborate. Herndon noted that it might look “fishy” that our chart showed color changes first thing in the morning, but then stayed the same for the rest of the day. The answer to that concern led to a scheme that included a naming not only of the color the child was choosing to be on, but the time of day that the card should be flipped. A rich side benefit was that this plan led the children to constantly check and so read the analog clock on our wall to ensure that the “red” or “yellow” child moved his or her card at the proper time. One day, Peyton raised her hand to take a turn at being on red, and named her penance like this: “Okay. So, I’ll be on red today and I want it to happen at exactly 11:13 a.m., and it will be because I saw the principal in the hallway and yelled out, ‘Why you keep spying on us!!!’” We all laughed and a new tradition began, further bonding us in our subversive alliance and allowing for experiences in imagination and composition of narrative that enriched beyond any expectation the value of nomadic collaboration. And from that day, the nomads of our classroom further smoothed the striations of compliance to the norms of the school by articulating not only the color and time, but also what they had “done” to warrant their punishment!

Recounting this narrative recalls the questions of professionalism named earlier—and I can see, on reflection, how the joy I found in these moments did not come merely from how funny some of these offenses the children named were, but because of the power they were demonstrating. If I consider the purpose of schooling to include empowerment, liberation, critical thought, skepticism, and depth of understanding of difficult concepts, and the development of empathy, awareness, and trust in self and others—and I do—then this experience emerging from resisting the imposition of a behavior chart was one of the most powerful learning events of that school year. So, while I was not obeying a mandate from my district, I was acting with professionalism.

Abby, the helpful teacher, and a note to authority

The final narrative is from a first-year teacher who is struggling to maintain her professional identity in the face of constant and kind pressure to conform to the normative practices rampant in her new school. Abby Lyons, a former student, is teaching two states away from me now, but she communicates via text and email, and her first contacts consisted of SOS messages: “This is so hard”; “I keep seeing how cute and easy things are in the other classes, and I don’t want that! But … .” Abby is a deeply conscious and aware teacher, and has invested Herculean energies into resisting assimilation into the collective of the school. I see her efforts as professionalism in action and asked her to participate in this article via the inclusion of her text and email messages. Abby has agreed enthusiastically to share excerpts of these communications, which I believe represent her active and explicit commitment to professionalism that transcends compliance:

This job is hard as hell … but I cannot concede to treating kids like dogs and giving them stamps and assigning them colors … can you help me formulate a response [to this teacher’s email]? (email from Abby, 13 October)

I started stamping the back of my kids’ hands for extra good days. Then the color stamp changed to reflect the type of day the child had … The stamps were just representative of being that “good seed.” It was more for the kids that had GREAT days—not the ones that didn’t. They then got to know what behaviors were “stamp” (good seed) behaviors and what behaviors weren’t.

I’ve noticed most classrooms at our school do daily colors. I fully respect your classroom and why you don’t, but would like to offer a reframe: It’s a way to positively connect with the students being “good seeds” … It also gives the kids a tangible and visual sign to look at to know what their expectation is … that way they are getting a “reward” that can also be a tool in many areas beginning with knowing their parent will celebrate with them … no matter what behaviors another student had … If you never use anything like it, I support you 110%. (paraphrased/truncated email to Abby from helpful teacher, forwarded by Abby, 13 October)

Abby is openly struggling to live her understanding of professionalism—as a skeptic, a disruptor, and with integrity. She asks for my help in how to respond to the kind teacher who offers advice that Abby does not seek—advice that only makes her experience more difficult. As a student in our teacher educator program, she was aware of and critical of the language of professionalism as it was framed by some professors in her program. She, in fact, was one of the students who engaged in the discussion of professionalism described at the beginning of this article, and contributed to the list of qualities that guide this article. She studied and struggled and attended critically to what was happening in schools in our area as she completed her field studies and internship. And still she is shocked and surprised by how hard it is to resist the ease of complying to normativity—to resist, as nomad, the deep striations inherent in schools and classrooms.

Here is what holds her to remaining nomad—as she states in her email to me in response to her colleague’s kind and helpful email: “I cannot concede to treating kids like dogs.” As Fenwick (2016: 170–171) notes, she raises a reconceptualization of professionalism through criticality: “a broadly shared aim of professional education is to stimulate critical thinking that will recognise and interrupt arrangements that control and limit, particularly when these arrangements produce injustice and inequities.” Abby perceives applying normative and striating impositions on her children as something she needs to interrupt.

On 28 September of her first year of teaching, Abby emailed a summary of work she had done with her first-graders in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey and, even more compelling, she publicly shared the decisions she made in making the work explicitly non-compliant. In early September, she and her students had begun a month-long project that came about as a response to her students’ concerns about children suffering due to Hurricane Harvey. The first-graders worked with a local food bank and “posted signs, wrote letters, collected contact information, and asked their parents to drive them around neighborhoods with one goal in mind: ‘Tell the whole city about the people in Texas.’” In her summary, Abby detailed the connections to curricular mandates via the experiences they had related to writing, mathematics, and social studies. Abby thus adapted Bogue’s (2004a: 328) explanation of a Deleuzian view of learning as not “mere acquisition of any new skill or bit of information, but instead the accession to a new way of perceiving and understanding the world.”

Abby’s tacit application of Deleuzian notions of learning as more than “mere acquisition” of things is made apparent as she closed her summary:

Each of the aforementioned contributions to this food drive were made possible because 22 children decided it was important to exemplify empathy in a moment of sadness and hurt.  1,617   pounds   of   food   was   collected   and   donated   to   the   food bank.   All   of this   was   possible   because   first   graders   took   action.

Abby sent the summary in its entirety to her principal, assistant principal, director of elementary education, superintendent, and the staff at her school. She also included this list at the end of her summary:

The following also emerged from this work:

1. 24 State Learning Standards were covered [she noted these for them on a separate page].

2. Zero worksheets were used.

3. Behavior charts were unnecessary to prompt students to stay “on-task,” responsible, ready, respectful, and safe. These behaviors emerged as a result of full participation of all students.

4. 22 children were fully engaged.

5. I (Abby Lyons) learned that when I choose to allow space and time for our students to engage, collaborate, and explore their ideas and dreams, amazing things are possible! (my emphasis)

In a return email, I asked Abby: “When you listed about not using behavior charts and zero worksheets, was that a purposeful statement on practices that are in place, presumed, expected, mandated?” And she wrote: “yes, yes, and YES!” She elaborated:

I sent it as a public act to demonstrate the capacity of my students and the impact we can have on our community and at a national level. I also wanted to clearly articulate the ways the district curriculum could be “creatively maladjusted” to meet the needs of my students as well as the wider community. Lastly, I chose to send it because I wanted my colleagues to understand the thought and reflection that was put in to this work. Part of it was wanting to prove that I knew my shit and I wasn’t just blindly doing cute/fixing projects with my students. I had truly considered the impact at a relational and curricular level before, during, and after the work.

Abby is embracing the radical imaginary. As Stovall explains:

The radical imagination is not something we “possess” but it is something we “do” … [he sheds light on the importance of creating and building], not in the sense of reform, but to embrace the spirit of the radical imaginary that affirms that something different can be created. (Stovall, 2014: 71)

Being radical means to become “accountable to anger for justice, to the historical and prophetic imagination [toward provoking teachers to] disrupt, dislocate, and destabilize” systems that blocks the chances of creating the impossible (Dantley and Green, 2015: 835). In her radical action, Abby indicates that she feels alone in her space and that swimming so hard against the stream is exhausting. I do not worry about her commitment and stamina; I do worry about the power of the norm and the impact that power may have on her and her children.

The radical impossible

I find that in school(ed) places, accepting—even welcoming—constraints and blinders that serve to sustain the broader injustices, inequities, and ignorance that infect our society is common practice and is often shrouded in the cloak of professionalism. In many ways, this is a cloak of invisibility—not apparent or unusual, not worthy of skepticism—due to the nature of the deep striations that seem indelible and inescapable. The nomad does not fall for this. Akin to the notion of the radical imaginary (creating the impossible), Deleuze and Guattari’s explanation of becoming-other is about being/becoming attuned to the unrealized, unseen, not-yet possibilities that we do not realize are possible (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004). Zembylas (2007: 331) theorizes a pedagogy that arouses “creative, transgressive and pleasurable forces within teaching and learning environments,” catching students and teachers in “powerful flows of desire” which subvert representations and significations that have been normalized and stratified by the state and its instruments. In examining the consequences of compliance disguised as professionalism, it becomes clear that what is necessary to reimagine school places is a radical non-compliance. Radicalizing a teacher’s professional life requires deep inquiry, skepticism, raising critical questions, integrity, a willingness to challenge and disrupt, and a radical imagination. It requires an energizing embrace of the spirit of the nomad.