Radical Joy: A Series of Interviews With Teachers
Written by Sarah Johnson
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Radical joy is the act of completely owning and nurturing one’s own happiness, and in times like these, radical joy can be used as the greatest combatant against global uncertainty. Teachers are specialists in finding and harnessing radical joy; with so many internal factors and outside forces trying to — both directly and indirectly — pry away all joy for teachers, radical joy becomes the superhero shield that deflects and protects what is most important: student learning and accelerating that learning. However, not all teachers correctly use radical joy and that’s where the problem surfaces and eventually takes over.
Facing the truth is liberating, and it can be hard on the soul, which is why embracing radical joy is important.
Over the next few months, Teaching Lab will honor and appreciate teachers for the incredible work they did this last year and ask them to share, in their own words, how they find joy in their professional learning and in their work. This is the first installment of that series, which begins with Alice Ng.
Meet Alice Ng, 7th-Grade Math Teacher
As school systems and schools prepare to use federal funds to reimagine student learning, we also urge systems to reimagine how we organize the teaching profession. Appreciating teachers is much more than holding a party every now and then or saying, “We appreciate you” one week out of the year. It is about taking teacher learning, development, and school culture seriously so that every teacher has a high-impact and joyful year of learning every year of their careers. When we take teacher learning seriously, we take student learning seriously.
“When we take teacher learning seriously, we take student learning seriously.”
Alice Ng is a Teacher Advisory Board member and New York City 7th-grade math teacher. Learn about what she calls the “joy factor” and how she connects teacher experiences of joy to her student experiences of joy in her math class.
Question: Are you familiar with the term “teacher joy”? What does it mean to you?
Answer: I know it as this term called Joy Factor. In grad school, I did an assignment on Joy Factor. Over the years it has meant different things:
The first school I worked at was a “no-excuses” charter and the administration micromanaged teachers and students. There was micromanagement of teacher joy, and therefore it was not fun. So at the beginning of my career, I thought of teacher joy as another checklist item. I didn’t have a good relationship with it.
As I’ve progressed in my career, my concept of teacher joy has evolved with the cultures of the schools I have worked at. When teacher joy was not top-down, there was a collaborative/start-up environment. Teacher joy exists at schools with positive relationships with their teachers; trust has to exist.
Teacher Joy can manifest in teacher appreciation week, and I do appreciate feeling that there is a coalition of appreciation, but it's more important when teachers are supporting each other. During COVID, our teachers came together. As a collective, we advocated for our needs, that is, teacher joy! Things like SWAG or a free period, these things are important, but collective support is powerful. Teacher joy is meaningless at schools where teachers have no power. Teacher joy is meaningful in schools that have leadership and admin who support and have relationships with the teachers.
Q: High-quality professional learning is important, especially in shared-learning spaces for teachers. Do you have any experiences or stories that highlight teacher professional learning joy?
A: Collaboration with co-teachers in the math department has been essential. As math teachers in a charter school, it’s not that we are constantly focused on tests, but they are important; it directly affects our renewal. Making sure our students are successful, and finding math joyful, is really important. We’ve come up with initiatives to engage students in the fun (joy) of math. Together, we support students to make their thinking more visible, while allowing them to express themselves aligned to standards. As a math department, over the last 2 years, we have built out multi-year scaffolds. We consider: What is the goal, and how do students need to show their work? We help students learn big concepts and reframe their thinking about making mistakes.
We also consider: What principles can we all focus on collectively, in addition to the curriculum? Changing students thinking around math to understand that mistakes are valuable. We know the school/network goal and we know our students; so we collaborate on how to get them there, over years. We tell students: You can always raise your hand, you can always ask a question! Small moments of teacher joy is collaboration. When we share what we learn in our own training with each other, it can be eye-opening for teachers, especially around strategies to help students change their mindsets.
Q: In your time with the Teacher Advisory Board, how would you describe the community you are building with other teachers?
A: We have a lot of diversity of experiences when it comes to Culturally-Responsive Teaching practices. Even as a new group, we are already supporting and giving advice/strategies to each other to improve.
We were asked: where do we see Culturally-Responsive Teaching and where do we not in our school? It pushed us to see that we must show up intentionally. Where is the implementation? That’s an important teacher joy moment, a shared experience of growth. Another participant shared that Culturally-Responsive Teaching happens a lot at the beginning of the year, but as the year progresses, it happens less and less … or those Culturally-Responsive Teaching papers lay in a box in your desk. How can those conversations happen consistently, and progressively? Do students feel consistently safe to speak?
Even in a new group, there have already been moments of teacher joy that have grown out of connection, shared learning, and sharing solutions and strategies.
Q: Why is it important to build a supportive teacher community for shared learning?
A: I’m sure teacher communities for shared learning have always been important, but I do think in the last decade there has been a trend of money being funneled out of education. Less money in education, but more pressure on teachers and schools. Education has become politicized. Teaching has always been a profession that can be difficult at times, that takes empathetic and patient people, to teach and care for the whole child along with the school’s priorities. But this is all now compounded by the continuing politicization of the teaching profession. We are either the hope for the future or the cause of all the problems… with little that we can actually control. It has caused increased stress on teachers, to reach goals that are not possible with the resources we have. We get little sympathy from the outside world. That is why teacher community is so much more important at this time; we need the support of other teachers.
Teacher joy as shared collaborative spaces can look many different ways: they can be advisory councils/boards or staff meetings; it’s about creating intentional affinity spaces. One thing I’ve learned from our school affinity spaces is that I have time to focus on what we want (big and small). We need ownership of our goals, and need to identify how we know we got there? That is so hard to answer and pushed us to find actionable steps. It’s easy to name what you want, it’s harder to name how you know you’ve got there. How do we get to joy, how do we get to teacher healing? And how do you know it has happened?
Please check out the Teaching Lab blog periodically for the next installment of Radical Joy: A Series of Interview with Teachers. Or sign up below for our e-mail newsletter to get latest updates from Teaching Lab.
