In the fall of 2020, amidst widespread pandemic closures and ongoing international protests in response to racialized police violence, a public conversation emerged about whether and how teachers ought to teach students about race and racism. The conversation was propelled by a political messaging campaign, which involved the intentionally decontextualized repurposing of the term “critical race theory” (CRT) as a “shock phrase” (Bartolomé & Macedo, 1997, p. 237) with considerable political utility that suggested radical indoctrination by educators. By February of 2021, in a pattern reflecting national trends in political polarization, 36 U.S. states had undertaken legislative efforts or executive actions to “restrict education on racism, bias, the contributions of specific racial or ethnic groups to U.S. history, or related topics” while 17 states had seen efforts to expand the same; seven states witnessed efforts in both directions (Stout & Wilburn, 2021). In states where restrictive legislation or executive orders were enacted, the chief mechanism for enforcement was the threat of legal action against schools and districts as well as disciplinary action against individual teachers alleged to have taught “divisive concepts.” 

The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate the experiences of five white educators with self-identified commitments to social justice education as they navigate teaching in New Hampshire (NH), a state in the US that at the time of data collection, had recently enacted a law prohibiting the teaching of “divisive concepts.” The paper is guided by two research questions: 1.) How do teachers and administrators in one predominantly white school district describe their work in the context of the recent passage of divisive concepts legislation? 2.) How do these educators see legislation prohibiting the teaching of divisive concepts as shaping their practice and leadership? 

Like many teachers, those we include in this analysis cited moral commitments to the well-being of young people and to improving the world for future generations as central reasons for their decision to enter the profession. The strong thread of moral concern that runs through the accounts of the teachers highlighted in this study bears many similarities to the concerns expressed in Santoro’s (2018) study of teachers’ demoralization. We draw on Santoro’s theoretical framework which defines teacher demoralization as a loss of access to the moral rewards of the work. Teachers experience demoralization when they are confronted with moral concerns they cannot resolve or avoid. These fall into two broad categories: concerns relating to harm to students and those relating to the degradation of their profession. First, demoralization may arise from demands that teachers engage in practices they suspect are “developmentally inappropriate, pedagogically ill-advised, or damaging to students’ social-emotional well-being" (Santoro, 2018, p. 62). Second, teachers may become demoralized when conditions in the school and the broader community make them accomplices in processes that degrade the profession of teaching. 

While demoralization is primarily an effect of the conditions of teaching and not, as is often suggested about burnout, a consequence of insufficient or systematically depleted internal resources of the teacher, Santoro (2018) argues that teachers may find means with which to prevent or rebound from demoralization. Santoro presents five categories of strategies observed among teachers striving to re-moralize their teaching practice: professional community, voice/writing, activism, teacher leadership, and student-centered action. Together, demoralization and re-moralization situate our understanding of the experiences and actions of the educators in this study. While our study is situated within a US context, it has relevance abroad as schools throughout Europe consider how to teach topics related to race and colonial histories.  

This study is part of a larger study that examines how 17 self-identified justice-oriented teachers and administrators in one predominantly white school district engage with concepts of race, anti-racism, and whiteness. In collecting our data, many of the participants discussed recent divisive concepts legislation as it relates to their work as teachers and education leaders. While our initial study did not center on such legislation, we were struck by the extent to which our participants spoke about this in our interviews. Given the timely nature of divisive concepts legislation, we explore how the educators think about their work in the current context and how it shapes their practice and leadership. South Adams School District1 (SASD) is a suburban, progressive-leaning area in NH with a district population of approximately 2,000 students. Of the 2,000 students, 87% are white. This district was selected as a unique case (Patton, 2022) because they have been responding to racist incidents in their schools with district-wide initiatives for the last several years. SASD proves fruitful opportunities to examine how teachers and administrators in a mostly white, affluent school district think about their obligations as justice-oriented educators in the context of divisive legislation. For the larger study, required criteria included teachers and administrators who have organized and/or elected to participate in anti-racist professional development (PD) in the past two years. Initial recruitment efforts began with administrators and key planners of school-based anti-racist PD initiatives. We used snowball sampling, which was useful because it drew on a small pool of initial informants to nominate others who fit our selection criteria. We asked participants about educators in SASD who spearheaded and/or participated in these efforts and often heard the same names mentioned as others we should talk with. We focus on five (four teachers and one administrator) of the 17 participants in particular because of the extent to which they discussed this legislation having an impact on their personal and professional lives. Semi-structured interviews were our main source of data. Each participant engaged in two interviews with a member of the research team. We also drew on district-related documents and observed community meetings to contextualize the study. The research team analyzed the data inductively using constructivist grounded theory guidelines (Charmaz, 2014) which includes a process of initial coding, focused coding, and discussing the data in multiple iterations to bring our themes into greater focus.

Our data show that divisive concepts legislation 1) threatened educators’ personal lives and professional integrity, 2) inhibited their voice and pedagogy, and 3) was filtered through variability in school and district leadership support. However, 4) many educators expressed commitment to persisting in critical teaching despite the risks. Threats to educators’ personal lives and fear of professional repercussions: We found persistent anecdotes that described confusion about the language and implementation of the legislation; worry that their teaching could be misinterpreted by students, community members, and fringe groups as “contentious” or “controversial”; and fear of backlash from families or community members and subsequent professional sanctions. The educators reported real and perceived threats to their livelihoods and concerns about their mental health. Inhibited voice and pedagogy: This atmosphere has created a chilling effect and thwarts these teachers’ ability to enact the moral values that led them to become educators in the first place. Guided by their moral beliefs of educating students to think critically and become global citizens, they find their voices quelled, and they are hesitant to make instructional decisions they believe would be best for students. Variability in school and district leadership support: For the most part, teachers felt strongly supported by their superintendent’s leadership, which assuaged some of their fears about the legislation and their ability to persist in anti-racist and justice-oriented teaching. However, a few teachers’ interviews pointed to worries, sadness, and in some cases frustration in instances when leadership support revealed its limits. Persisting in critical teaching and leading: Despite the myriad emotions that the participants felt, we found that many of them were adamant about continuing to teach in critical ways because of their moral centers that call them to educate students to be reflective, democratic, and agentic human beings in society.

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