Teaching in the Service of Fugitive Learning

#CritEdPol: Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies at Swarthmore College

Volume 3 Issue 1 Beautiful Experiments Article 5

January 2021

Karen Zaino CUNY Graduate Center, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Zaino, Karen (2021) "Teaching in the Service of Fugitive Learning," #CritEdPol: Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies at Swarthmore College: Vol. 3 : Iss. 1 , Article 5: 64-80. DOI: 10.24968/2473-912X.3.1.5 Available at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/critedpol/vol3/iss1/5

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ABSTRACT

In educational scholarship, abolition and fugitivity have been used to theorize youth literacy practices (The Fugitive Literacies Collective, 2020), teaching in solidarity with Black and brown communities (Love, 2019), and learning as an act of rebellion within the oppressive structures of schooling (Patel, 2016; 2019). Additionally, recent works in sociology (Shedd, 2015) and anthropology (Shange, 2020; Sojoyners, 2016) have thoughtfully and comprehensively documented the ways in which the disciplinary mechanisms of schools serve to contain, surveil, and expunge Black students.This paper draws on these recent scholarly interventions as a lens through which educators might engage with the students who and schools in which they teach. Patel (2016) suggests that authentic learning in schools structured by racial capitalism is a “fugitive act”— elusive, subaltern, and, as a result, under-theorized” (Patel, 2016, p. 397). What “fugitive acts of learning” take place in our schools? What relationship to these practices can teachers adopt so that we might “serve and shield” these spaces of “unruly learning” (Patel, 2016, p. 400)?

Keyords: fugitivity, abolition, literacy, autoethnography, racial capitalism

#CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 65 Introduction This paper draws on these recent scholarly Education scholars such as Leigh Patel (2016, interventions as a lens through which educators 2019), Bettina Love (2019), and the members of might engage with the students who and schools the Fugitive Literacies Collective (2020) have in which they teach. Patel (2016) suggests that increasingly drawn on the legacy of the Black authentic learning in schools structured by racial Radical Tradition (Kelley, 2002; Robinson, 2005) capitalism is a “fugitive act”—elusive, subaltern, in their work, along with its attendant theories of and, as a result, under-theorized” (Patel, 2016, p. abolition (Davis, 2005; DuBois, 1935; Gilmore, 397). What “fugitive acts of learning” take place in 2017) and fugitivity (Hartman, 2019; Moten, our schools? What relationship to these practices 2003; Sharpe, 2014). Robinson (2005) coined the can teachers adopt so that we might “serve and term Black Radical Tradition to encompass “the shield” these spaces of “unruly learning” (Patel, ideological, philosophical, and epistemological 2016, p. 400)? natures of the Black movement” that arose in the This paper documents my attempts to “[see] wake of the global expansion of capitalism, which more clearly the fugitive acts of learning as they he argues was racialized from its inception (p. 167). occur within oppressive structures” in schools (p. Robinson’s excavation of the twin histories of racial 400). After positioning myself as a white former capitalism and the Black Radical Tradition has high school teacher who recently transitioned contributed to contemporary interest in abolition to doctoral study, I explore the Black Radical and fugitivity among scholars and activists. Tradition, abolition, and fugitivity—including Abolition has come to mean the dismantling of the oppressive structures in which this tradition racial capitalism and its byzantine systems of foments—in more detail, followed by a review of containment, especially the prison-industrial the educational literature that has taken up these complex (Davis, 2005). Fugitivity, meanwhile, is concepts. Then, following Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s “a powerful way to imagine black life that persists (2017) idea that “abolitionist critique concerns in and in spite of” white supremacy (Sharpe, 2014). itself with the greatest and least detail of the In educational scholarship, abolition and arrangements of people and land and resources fugitivity have been used to theorize youth literacy over time” (p. 227, emphasis in original), I explore practices (The Fugitive Literacies Collective, the very small world that I inhabited for seven 2020), teaching in solidarity with Black and brown years, an urban high school in the Midwest. I use communities (Love, 2019), and learning as an act an autoethnographic case study (Ellis et. al., 2010; of rebellion within the oppressive structures of Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007) to name the concrete schooling (Patel, 2016; 2019). Additionally, recent ways in which oppressive structures shape this works in sociology (Shedd, 2015) and anthropology school and identify the fugitive learning that occurs (Shange, 2020; Sojoyners, 2016) have thoughtfully within, around, and in spite of these structures. By and comprehensively documented the ways in proposing these initial sites of fugitive learning in which the disciplinary mechanisms of schools serve one school, I hope to inspire further conversation to contain, surveil, and expunge Black students. and questions about the ways in which educational practitioners might more consistently engage in

66 #CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 abolitionist practices. article spoke to a desire I didn’t know I had until I read about it: I wanted to better understand Background what happened in my school in a way that neither For the last 12 years, I have worked as an English romanticized my students’ learning possibilities nor teacher in public high schools. I generally relied on diminished the subversive acts of learning in which sociocultural theories to frame my thinking about they participated. learning (Nasir et. al., 2006; Vossoughi & Gutierrez, As I transitioned from teaching to doctoral 2016) and tried to make space in my classroom for education, I wanted to take advantage of the students’ diverse literacy practices (Morrell, 2008; possibilities of this liminal position (Turner, 1967; Paris & Alim, 2017). But my efforts were sporadic Cook-Sather, 2011) to consider my observations rather than sustained, especially once I moved from my years in school in light of my deeper from a predominantly white community outside immersion in theoretical literature. Over the Philadelphia to a racially diverse working-class course of this project, I have become increasingly school in a small Northern Kentucky city. In this identified with the academy in which I now situate second context, my classroom practice was shaped myself, losing some of the intimacy of immediate by the school-wide contours of rigid curricular experience in my school but also gaining important mandates, frequent high-stakes testing, and zero- insights into what it means to research and theorize tolerance disciplinary policies. These constraining about schools. For instance, as a white researcher, factors are not unusual in urban schools, especially I experience increasing ambivalence about taking those that serve working-class, racially minoritized up the idea of abolition and fugitivity, practices students, and I appreciated research that clearly inseparable from the Black Radical Tradition documented these problems (Au, 2016; Christle et. (Kelley, 2002; Robinson, 2005). What are the limits al., 2005; Kavanaugh & Fisher-Ari, 2018; Meiners, to my capacity to understand fugitivity and limits 2007). At the same time, I was frustrated by to the general applicability of a theory that arose in scholarly literature that either delineated the perils the very specific context of chattel slavery? What of restrictive contexts or explored the meaningful are the dangers of the white appropriation of such learning happening in less restrictive contexts. theorizing? It was difficult to find research that attempted to However, rather than evade the messiness theorize meaningful learning that might happen of exploring these limits, I want to grapple with even within the constraints of under-resourced, them directly. I want to acknowledge this tension over-regulated schools. and consider the extent to which this theory of My introduction into the Black Radical fugitive learning speaks to something important Tradition, fugitivity, and abolition was a short that is happening in urban schools. In particular, I article by Leigh Patel (2016). By characterizing think it is essential for educational researchers and learning “as dialectic to the stratifying cultures of practitioners to consider the roles we can play in formal education” (p. 397), Patel evokes both the serving and shielding spaces of unruly learning oppressive conditions of schools and the meaningful (Patel, 2016, p. 400). Before we can adequately learning that might take place within them. This serve and shield such learning, however, we must

#CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 67 understand what fugitive learning in schools might “collective resistance by Blacks to slavery and look like. In the next section, I explore the Black colonial imperialism” (p. 169) was undergirded Radical Tradition, fugitivity, and abolition in some by a “shared sense of obligation to preserve the detail, first as they have been theorized across a collective being” (p. 171). These “freedom dreams” range of scholarship and then how these concepts (Kelley, 2002) have persisted alongside and serve have recently been applied to educational research. as a constant foil to racial capitalism, and have manifested in two particular forms of resistance: Conceptual Framework fugitivity and abolition. The Black Radical Tradition Robinson points out the earliest forms of In his book Black Marxism: The Making of the rebellion against enslavement “took the form Black Radical Tradition, Cedric Robinson (2005) of flight” (p. 130). African fugitives were less begins his theory of the Black Radical Tradition interested in dismantling plantations than they with a critique of Karl Marx’s theory of capitalist were in recreating their own communities outside development. Marx failed to recognize “one the boundaries of European domination (Robinson, of [Europe’s] most profound terms of order”: 2005). While escape attempts may have appeared racialization (p. 66). Robinson suggests that individualistic and spontaneous, Robinson argues “racialism and its permutations” have existed in that they were part of a collective consciousness European culture throughout history (p. 27-28). that resulted, at times, in maroon societies and, Therefore, as capitalism arose in Europe, it did in the case of Haiti, a nation. Fugitivity is an so in the context of a social order that was always essential unruliness (Hartman, 2019; Moten, 2003; already racialized. As Ruth Wilson Gilmore Sharpe, 2014;), the act of “seeing around corners, (2017) succinctly argues, capitalism requires stockpiling in crevices, knowing the un-rules, being inequality, and racism—which she defines as “the unruly, because the rules are never enough, and not state-sanctioned and/or extralegal production and even close” (Macharia, 2013). Fugitive planning exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability has a long history in Black critical thought (Moten to premature death” (2007, p. 247)—enshrines it. and Harney, 2013; Sharpe, 2014; Kelley, 2016). Racism provides the organizing logic for capitalist Kelley (2016) suggests that fugitive planning “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey, 2004), invokes “a memory of freedom, dreams of seizing the system through which disinvestment of some it, and conspiracies to enact it.” In the 21st century, becomes a site of wealth accumulation for others. fugitivity “takes myriad forms, including school The Black Radical Tradition arose as racial truancy, gender nonconformity, border crossing, capitalism became global and gave birth to the trans- bench-warrant avoidance, and prison abolition” Atlantic slave trade. Kidnapped from their homes (Quan, 2017, p. 185). These fugitive activities by Europeans, enslaved Africans retained their can be individual or collective, spontaneous or “ontological and cosmological systems” (Robinson, calculated, but they are united by a commitment to 2005, p. 122). These cultural legacies contributed to dreaming and enacting freedom. the development of a unique resistance movement Abolition, though traditionally associated among members of the Black diaspora. The with the successful movement to abolish slavery

68 #CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 in the United States, has gained renewed attention and educational researchers to recognize these followingthe longtime work of prison abolitionists “fugitive acts of learning” and to “differentiate such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis, those moments… from the seductive mollification and Mariame Kaba. Davis (2005) has elaborated of school-based achievement” (p. 397). Noting the W.E.B. DuBois’s (1938) conception of “abolition- stubborn conflation of learning with the production democracy”—an imagined social organization, of test scores, Patel argues that we need theories of briefly enacted during Reconstruction, in which the learning that complicate and supplant the emaciated principles of freedom were broadly applied to all— ideal of achievement. Her theory’s namesake, and argued that prisons must be abolished. Gilmore marronage, is the term applied to the overt and (2007, 2017) has likewise theorized abolition covert practices used by historically enslaved extensively, noting in a recent interview with The people to seek liberation. Marronage is “a practice Funambulist (2019) that: of freedom that must, necessarily, start from the Contemporary prison abolitionists have made condition and category of enslavement in order to this argument for more than two decades. transgress it” (p. 401); Patel suggests that learning, Abolition is not absence, it is presence. too, can be understood as occurring in spite of, as What the world will become already exists a consequence of, and in the shadows of traditional in fragments and pieces, experiments and schooling. possibilities. So those who feel in their gut Along with racial capitalism, Patel identifies deep anxiety that abolition means knock it all settler colonialism, a type of colonialism in which down, scorch the earth and start something the settler as the organizing logic of traditional new, let that go. Abolition is building the schooling. Indeed, in the United States, racial future from the present, in all of the ways we capitalism has always worked in tandem with settler can. colonialism, defined by Tuck and Gaztambide- Fernandez (2013) as “the specific formation of Abolition, in Gilmore’s formulation, builds on the colonialism in which the colonizer comes to stay, fugitive practices that already exist in the world, making himself the sovereign, and the arbiter of the “beautiful experiments” (Hartman, 2019) that, citizenship, civility, and knowing” (p. 73). This sheltered and sustained, flower into a future that is “logic of elimination” creates territorial claims free. and concomitant wealth generation through the Fugitivity and Abolition in ongoing erasure of indigenous peoples (Tuck Educational Scholarship and Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013, p. 73). Settler colonialism and racial capitalism, manifesting as Theories of abolition and fugitivity have indigenous erasure and pervasive antiblackness, increasingly been invoked in educational are thus inextricably linked in the production of scholarship. In “Pedagogies of Resistance and capital in American society, and in this paper, I use Survivance: Learning as Marronage,” Leigh Patel the term racial capitalism with an understanding (2016) characterizes learning as a “fundamentally of its original relationship to colonialism and fugitive act” (p. 397). She challenges educators extraction (Robinson, 2005) and its contemporary

#CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 69 relationship to settler colonialism in the United with a range of related cultural practices] as strategic States. In Patel’s formulation, learning exists in tools for the curricular and pedagogic refusal of the dialectical relationship to racial capitalism, a series hegemony of whiteness and anti-Blackness” (p. of risky practices whose transformative potential is 189). inherently unpredictable and liberatory. Along with fugitivity, theories of abolition A group of literacy scholars, the Fugitive in educational practice have proliferated in the Literacies Collective, has also taken up theories of last few years. Abolitionist thinking in education fugitivityin their work on teaching and learning. grows outof attention to how education funnels In a recent special issue of English Education, racialized students into the carceral system through guest editors Esther O. Ohito, Jamila Lyiscott, the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Christle et. al., 2005; Laura Gonzales, and Mónica González Ybarra Wald & Losen, 2003), a metaphor that has since (2020) describe the Collective as “a constellation been troubled by scholars wishing to complicate our of critical scholar-friends of color… [who] think, understandings of the relationship between prisons study, write, and publish together in an intentional and schools. More recently, the terms school-to- effort to irradiate the knowledges, complexities, and prison nexus (Meiners, 2007), school-prison nexus tensions that percolate when possibilities for the (Annamma, 2017; Krueger, 2010; Krueger-Henney, real or fictive liberation of historically marginalized 2019), the prison-industrial complex (Meiners & and dehumanized persons and communities…” are Winn, 2010), and the universal carceral apparatus taken seriously (p. 180). (Shedd, 2015) have been taken up to suggest the In this issue, Ohito (2020) argues that attention complicated material and ideological manifestations to Black fugitivity in the literacy classroom of carceral logics in schools. Carceral logics deny confronts an ongoing problem in anti-racist Black and brown children access to the supposed literacy scholarship that frames white teachers and innocence of childhood (Dumas & Nelson, 2016; students as the protagonists and “Black people… Meiners, 2016; Morris, 2015) and infuse schools as embodied reminders to white people that they, with disciplinary policies, practices, and police, too, are raced” (p. 195). Fugitive literacy practices all of which disproportionately punish and exclude provide an opening for Black scholars to theorize racialized children (Annamma, 2016; Crenshaw, the experience of Blackness “as something more 2012; Schynder, 2010; Shedd, 2015; Turner & than an abiding source of suffering and abjection” Benneke, 2020; Wun, 2015). As Rodriguez (2010) (p. 197, emphasis in original). Similarly, in the points out, “the carceral-cultural form of the prison same issue, Lyiscott (2020) suggests that in a world has naturalized a systemic disorientation of the that devours the public spectacle of Black pain, the teaching act, so that teaching is no longer separable private shared intimacies, cultural practices, and from the work of policing, juridical discipline, and experiential wisdom of Black people are fugitive state-crafted punishment” (p. 8). acts. Authors in this special issue ultimately Abolitionist approaches to educational research coalesce around Ohito’s definition of fugitive and practice are predicated on this understanding literacy practices as those that “involve creative of schools as an extension of the carceral state. uses of reading, writing, and oral language [along Abolition is “a messy breakup with the state” in

70 #CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 contrast to liberal reforms, or even revolutionary Love’s recommendations range from those that ideologies, that seek to revise or “win control” over can be enacted in the classroom (curriculum the state apparatus (Shange, 2020 p. 5). To imagine development and pedagogical practice) to those that “abolitionist futures” in education “requires are school- and system-wide (equitable funding; reconstructing the structures and traditions that ending exclusionary disciplinary practices and safeguard power and privilege, just as much as discriminatory standards for behavior and dress; taking down those that visibly punish and oppress” abolish high-stakes testing; etc.) (Meiners & Winn, 2010, p. 273), as well as shielding Meanwhile, David Stovall’s (2018) provocative the “Black autonomous spaces”—the spaces that call for “’school abolition’” uses the framework have allowed for the flourishing of Black creative for the abolition of the prison industrial complex life and freedom struggles that are often the explicit to reimagine education beyond the material and and implicit target of policing within and beyond ideological structures of traditional schooling. schools (Sojoyner, 2016). Abolition “anticipates “Schooling” in its traditional sense—both as a the task of remaking the world under transformed literal place and as a set of ideologies about learning material circumstances” (Rodriguez, 2010, p. and behavior—is distinct from, if not explicitly 15), asking us to work alongside young people, antithetical to, education for liberation, instead especially Black and brown students “whose relying on surveillance and containment to enforce imagination often [outpace] the mundane rituals of narrow, Eurocentric ways of being and knowing. a standards-driven curriculum” (Schynder, 2010, p. Stovall contrasts “school” with the liberatory 349). educative agendas of historical slave rebellions, Bettina Love’s (2019) recent book We Want to the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Quilombo movement do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the in Brazil, and the Black Lives Matter uprisings in Pursuit of Educational Freedom has propelled the the United States and encourages us to consider term abolition into mainstream teacher education. how we might enact such educational possibilities Love draws on thinkers such as W.E.B. DuBois in our own contexts. Thus, although broad in its and Angela Davis, as well as the contemporary vision, abolitionist teaching and learning requires Black Lives Matter movement, to distinguish her sustained attention to the minute ways in which abolitionist approach from traditional reformist carceral logics permeate schools and the ways in models of school improvement. Whereas reform which young people resist these mechanisms. models encourage Black and brown students and families to survive in schools, to adapt to unjust Methods conditions, abolitionist teaching calls on educators In this project, I employ an autoethnographic case to dismantle the policies and practices that diminish study approach (Ellis et. al., 2010; Eisenhardt & and dehumanize students and families. Abolitionist Graebner, 2007) to provide concrete examples of the teaching is thus both a theoretical stance—a vision oppressive structures and fugitive acts of learning for education that imagines its possibilities beyond that occur within Midwest High School, the urban its racist instantiations—and a daily practice of high school where I taught for seven years. While working in solidarity with communities of color. not generalizable in the traditional sense, a case

#CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 71 study is well-suited for theory building and allows of Cincinnati. The school is located in a working- us to understand more concretely what fugitive acts class community, and the student body is racially of learning might look like in one specific context diverse: 46 percent self-identify as white, 33 percent (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007). I explicitly engage self-identify as Black, 11 percent self-identify as in an autoethnographic case study to draw on the Latinx, and 10 percent self-identify as multiracial. experiential insight I have gained as a teacher in In my case study, I am draw from examples and this school (Ellis et. al., 2010). This specificity practices that span racial categories. At the same is important when considering colonial logics time, I do not want to suggest that white students are of erasure: claims of objectivity or universality surveilled to the same extent as Black students, or actually center specific White, patriarchal, middle- that the experience of a bilingual Latinx immigrant class norms (Wynter, 2003). By looking closely at at Midwest High is the same as the experience one school and centering my personal knowledge of of a Black student. It is necessary to explore the this school, I try to honor the specificity of place and differential impacts of racial capitalism, but that disturb universalizing Eurocentric epistemologies. project is beyond the scope of my autoethnographic I am also inspired by Davis et. al.’s (2020) recent case study. With Gonzalez et. al. (2020), who provocation to look “closely at children’s acts of employ fugitive literacies to theorize the resistance contestations and moves to elsewhere,” to highlight practices of transfronterizx youth, I aim not to individual practices as they “emerge from social equate incommensurate student experiences but to histories and carry future potentialities that shape contribute to the ongoing necessity of re-thinking learning and intellectual life within, and sometimes our often carceral approaches to young people in beyond, the setting” (p. 2). Indeed, Shange (2020) schools. points out that “[a]s an analytic, abolition demands specificity – the very kinds of granularity that An Autoethnographic Case Study of Fugitive ethnography offers as an accounting of the daily Learning at Midwest High School practices that facilitate Black material and symbolic In this section, I explore three iterations of death” (p. 10). fugitive learning that I witnessed during my time I attempt to balance this close attention to as a teacher at Midwest High School. Following detail with my desire to protect young people Patel’s suggestion that learning must be understood and their practices. Patel (2016) points out that in dialectic relation to oppressive structures, I slave narratives, for instance, “keep lots of details organize each example of fugitive learning by loose in order to protect the fugitive spirit of the first identifying a particular policy that serves to ideas” (p. 400). Recognizing that undue attention constrain students; I then explore the ways in which to fugitive practices can lead to further restrictions students subvert or creatively re-appropriate these and punishments, I maintain the anonymity of my mechanisms. students and their school and discuss their practices generally, rather than specifically. Repurposing Technologies that Control & Midwest High School is the only public high Surveilence school in a small Northern Kentucky city just south In 2016, Midwest High School implemented a

72 #CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 1:1 initiative in which every student was assigned music, and read the news. Ironically, the laptops a laptop. Administrators and teachers attempted to allow students to locate—either serendipitously control how laptops were used through a variety or through targeted research—videos, articles, and of techniques.The laptops were front-loaded with social media posts that provide contextfor local expensive scripted curricula that strictly dictated injustices (e.g., sexist dress code) that they otherwise what students would be taught. The school also assume are individual or inevitable. In fact, it was purchased surveillance technology that allowed through reading news online and through social teachers and administrators to remotely view and media sites like Facebook that students learned hijack student screens, to shut down computers, about the nationwide March for Our Lives student to send messages to students, and to lock them protest in 2018 and were inspired to join. The out of applications at any time. Popular websites laptops, meant to narrow opportunities for learning like youtube, Facebook, and political news sites and control the content students encounter, became were blocked by the district and/or the state. These empowering tools that opened up “fundamentally “unseemly realities of containment and profit” unpredictable” possibilities for critical thinking, were “accepted obliquely under the umbrella of literacy, and solidarity (Patel, 2016, p. 399). schooling and… wrongly associated with learning” (Patel, 2016, p. 397). Of course, surveillance isn’t Sharing Subversive Texts in a Standardized always high tech, and it isn’t always expensive. Curriculum At one staff meeting, our principal suggested that One of the primary reasons Midwest High School teachers organize our classrooms by lining the purchased laptops was to prepare students more desks against walls, making the students face the efficiently for high-stakes tests. In Kentucky, many wall so that we could surveil all of their computer high school classes culminate in corporate end-of- screens simply by standing in the middle of the course assessments, and the content of these tests room. In other words, he unironically asked us to dictates the contours of the classroom curriculum. turn our classrooms into versions of the panopticon English teachers, for example, are required to (Foucault, 1975). structure their curriculum around decontextualized, But students found ways to evade censorship culturally hegemonic nonfiction passages; multiple- and to repurpose these technologies. They choice questions; and brief on-demand writing downloaded apps that provided answers to popular exercises. These are the kinds of narrow literacies corporate curricula; they found proxies that gave that students will encounter on standardized tests. them access to blocked websites; they used the Students at Midwest High were thus denied access messaging tool on the surveillance program to to diverse literacies and culturally sustaining send messages back to teachers, saying “leave me pedagogies (Morrell, 2008; Paris & Alim, 2017; alone” and “I’m not doing anything wrong.” As a Skerret, 2010). result of these workarounds, students were able to But within this prescribed curriculum, use their laptops as powerful tools for research and students found a “side street from the test score communication: they applied for jobs, chatted with production factory mill of schooling” (Patel, friends, researched colleges, watched movies, made 2016, p. 400). Students pursued their own diverse

#CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 73 literacy practices, sharing subversive texts of all takes many forms: administrators conduct constant kinds: Snapchats, text messages, music, art, poetry, announced and unannounced walk-throughs, during memes, gifs, and novels. None of these practices which they check for daily learning objectives, were school-sanctioned, especially those that standardized test practice, and student compliance. involved communicating using cell phones.Indeed, Administrators also ask teachers in these classes even the once staid English class tradition of reading tosubmit raw data in the form of practice test novels became fugitive in this context. There has results, and the analysis of these results, every six been a huge influx of popular young adult novels weeks. Teachers must submit unit plans, lesson in the last few years, of which The Hate U Give by plans, and yearlong curriculum maps. As a result, Angie Thomas (2017) may be the most emblematic. even teachers who may wish to supplement or Featuring a young Black girl whose unarmed friend eschew required curricular mandates are given few is killed by a police officer in an all-too-familiar opportunities to do so. context, this book quickly became a best-seller for As certain classes receive intense scrutiny, young people nationwide. though, students can find untested, under-surveilled Students at Midwest High School found The spaces and times, where there is more room for Hate U Give and similar books in the library and genuine conversation, exploration, and creation. began reading them during their classes under their Certain spaces are less subject to administrative desks. Friends would badger one other: “When or teacher control: the library, the cafeteria, are you gonna be done? I want to read that.” Yet counselor offices, and other non-instructional these literacy practices rarely occurred as part of spaces can provide momentary refuge from a highly the official curriculum. When I tried to incorporate regimented schedule. At Midwest High School, some of these texts as a simultaneous undercurrent students often gather in the library during lunch, to my official curriculum, my students began before school, or during class time when they have reading these novels in other classes, and some finished assignments; the librarian teaches them to teachers called me to complain. They asked me if I knit and recommends books. Each year, she hosts could tell my students to stop reading in their class. a chess tournament, and for weeks beforehand, Authentic literacy practices—reading, sharing, and dozens of students gather in the library to learn discussing texts that have been deemed illicit—are to play. The relaxed, collegial atmosphere of this fugitive acts in this school. space is a marked contrast to many classrooms. This supports the range of scholarly literature that Claiming The “Weak Spots” In A Restrictive confirms the importance of after-school activities Schedule for student learning (Eccles & Templeton, 2002; Because so many courses culminate in high-stakes Darling, 2005). tests, the results of which are used to determine But even within the school day, certain times school performance ratings (and subsequent are less scrutinized than others. Lunch, elective sanctions) in Kentucky, many classes are closely classes, and the brief times between classes become surveilled by the administration. This surveillance momentary refuges from the otherwise carefully

74 #CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 scheduled day. Even in closely monitored courses, can provide insight into the policies and ideologies however, certain times are more amenable to risky that abolitionist teachers and researchers must and transformative acts of learning. In the weeks target in their interventions. In locating sites of following the administration of high stakes tests, for student resistance, repurposing, and evasion, we instance, most classes are under-surveilled, because can untangle the specific policies and ideologies the purpose of formal schooling —demonstrating that create the conditions students subvert. In this mastery on an exam—has been accomplished. The section, I examine these conditions at Midwest days before and afterextended breaks from school High School and draw conclusionsabout which are also less likely to be carefully monitored. policies and ideologies require dismantling, along Teachers and students use these more relaxed times with which practices can be served and developed. in a variety of ways: they watch movies, plan outof-school events, read, debate and discuss, research Surveillance Technologies topics of interest, play games, and write poems and Surveillance technologies in schools reinvigorate stories. Though Midwest High School may not be racist legacies of hyper-surveillance of communities a “place for transformation” (Patel, 2016, p. 397), of color (Sewell et. al., 2016; Glover, 2008; Lewis, within its walls, students, and sometimes teachers, 2006; Raible & Irrizarry, 2010). These technologies carve out spaces for fugitive learning. are part of the larger “carceral-cultural form of the prison [that] has naturalized a systemic Discussion disorientation of the teaching act, so that teaching In her recent book We Want to Do More than is no longer separable from the work of policing, Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and Educational juridical discipline, and state-crafted punishment” Freedom, Bettina Love (2018) argues that abolition (Rodriguez, 2010, p. 8). When schools assume is both a theoretical stance—a vision for education that student access to content must be controlled, that imagines its possibilities beyond current racist they reveal the lack of trust at the heart of their school policies—and a daily practice of working in school culture and the assumptions that students solidarity with communities of color. Abolition is will misuse and abuse freedom. Educational essential in conceptions of learning as a fugitive act; practitioners can combat these policies on a local when learning is fugitive, abolition is the process level—turning off these technologies in their own of dismantling the structures that force learning classrooms, advocating for its abolition at the school into secret “side streets” (Patel, 2016, p. 400). This and district level—and researchers can investigate dismantling can take many forms and addresses the impacts these technologies have on student both the practical manifestations and ideological learning and school culture. As Love (2018) argues, underpinnings of racial capitalism in schools. though, abolition is not merely dismantling—it is Case studies in fugitive learning, drawing also imagining and building a different reality. on the legacy of “radical scholarship [that] Abolitionist teachers and researchers must ask: continues to make visible histories and pathways What does a school look like when it trusts its of resistance” (Meiners & Winn, 2010, p. 273) students? What happens when students are given

#CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 75 the freedom to use tools and technologies to their recognize the value of these offices, libraries, full creative potential? and elective courses (Eccles & Templeton, 2002; Darling, 2005; Goodin, 2010; Kachel, 2011), both High-Stakes Tests And Narrow Curricula documenting their value and actively protecting High-stakes tests have been consistently their existence in schools that are constantly seeking delegitimized as adequate measures of learning to cut funding to “non-essential” elements (Ravitch, (Berliner, 2011; Fisher-Ari et. al., 2017; Knoester 2016). Although certain spaces, like libraries, & Au, 2017),and some communities have fought are almost universally important in schools, the to reduce reliance on testing in schools (Mitra et. meanings of many non-academic spaces are al., 2018; Crowder & Konle, 2015). However, contextually contingent. In one school, the college standardized testing persists in many schools (Au, counselor office might be the place of refuge; in 2016). Abolitionist researchers and practitioners another, the gym might serve this function; and in must continue to advocate for the diminished reliance most schools, multiple spaces will serve different on testing in schools and to imagine alternative students. Abolitionist researchers and practitioners curricula and assessments that are inspired by actual can also investigate more seriously specific times student literacy practices. At Midwest High School, in the year, looking for and building on important students read young adult literature and constantly learning that might happen after testing or around communicate and share resources using computers long breaks. This research requires sustained and cell phones. Practitioners can develop their own engagement with schools and students to learn to the curricula that center these resources, and they can specific places and times that yield transformative advocate for students who engage in these literacy learning. practices, shielding them from administrative Ultimately, as abolitionist researchers and control, teacher criticism, and punitive disciplinary practitioners “learn to see” (Gutierrez et al., 2017) measures. Researchers, meanwhile, some of whom fugitive learning in schools, we simultaneously set already consider the everyday literacy practices of ourselves up to gather information about the racial students outside of school (Gutierrez et. al., 2017) capitalist policies we want to dismantle—and the can consider what everyday literacy practices in practices we want to serve, shield, and build on in schools look like and how these practices can be educational spaces. incorporated more systemically into schools. Conclusion Non-Academic Spaces This case study suggests that fugitive learning While surveillance technologies, high stakes tests, in schools exists in dialectic relationship to and narrow curricula necessitate dismantling, particular manifestations of racial capitalism and non-academic spaces in school require support. settler colonialism. At Midwest High School, Schools are structured by racial capitalism, but these structures manifest in an over-reliance on within them, students find spaces of refuge that restrictive technology, a narrow emphasis on tests, can be collaborative, generative, and enjoyable. and the hyper-surveillance of certain spaces and the Abolitionist researchers and practitioners must devaluing of others. Student resistance occurs in

76 #CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 response to these particularities: students creatively Au, W. (2016). Meritocracy 2.0: High-stakes, appropriate technologies that are meant to control standardized testing as a racial project of and constrict their learning opportunities; they share neoliberal multiculturalism. Educational subversive texts within curricula that rely on narrow Policy, 30, 39–62. 10.1177/0895904815614916. definitions of literacy; and they take advantage of Berliner, D. (2011). Rational responses to high under-surveilled spaces and times in a generally stakes testing: The case of curriculum narrowing rigid school schedule.While the case study in this and the harm that follows. Cambridge Journal of article examines a limited set of practices at a Education, 41(3): 287–302. https://doi.org/10.10 single school, it provides a valuable starting point 80/0305764X.2011.607151. for research into the nature of racial capitalism Christle, C. A., Jolivette, K., & Nelson, C. M. and settler colonialism manifest in schools, and (2005). Breaking the school to prison pipeline: how and when “intermittent departures” from Identifying school risk and protective factors for these oppressive structures occur (Patel, 2016, p. youth delinquency. Exceptionality, 13(2), 69-88. 401). Further research is needed to investigate how Cook-Sather, A, and Alter, Z. (2011). What is and these piecemeal practices have been or could be what can be: How a liminal position can change developed into larger projects of transformative learning and teaching in higher education. learning in the service of abolition. However, we Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 42(1), must also acknowledge the fugitive learning that we 37–53. do not see, as adults; as well, those of us who are Crenshaw, K. W. (2017). On intersectionality: white must acknowledge that fugitive learning that Essential writings. The New Press. may be illegible to us. As Shange (2020) reminds us, Crowder, Z., & Konle, S. (2015). Gumbo ya-ya or, sometimes we must commit to “care more than we what Pearson can’t hear: Opt-out, standardized can know”—to support our students, and to assume testing, and student surveillance. The High they are always learning and creating, regardless of School Journal, 98(4), 285-289. whether their learning and creation is immediately Darling, N., Caldwell, L., & Smith, R. (2005). available to us (p. 10). Fugitive learning and Participation in school-based extracurricular abolitionist practice require imagination, a vision activity and adolescent adjustment. Journal of that draws on the “beautiful experiments” of the Leisure Research, 37, 51-76 present to envision a future in which we are all free Davis, A. Y. (2011). Abolition democracy: Beyond (Hartman, 2019). empire, prisons, and torture. Seven Stories Press. Davis, N. R., Vossoughi, S., & Smith, J. F. (2020). REFERENCES Learning from below: A micro-ethnographic Annamma, S. A. (2016). DisCrit: Disability studies account of children’s self-determination as and critical race theory in education. Teachers sociopolitical and intellectual action. Learning, College Press. Culture and Social Interaction, 24, 100373. Annamma, S. A. (2017). The pedagogy of Du Bois, W. E. B. (1935). Black reconstruction: An pathologization: Dis/abled girls of color in the essay toward a history of the part which black folk school-prison nexus. Routledge. played in the attempt to reconstruct democracy

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80 #CRITEDPOL VOL 3, ISSUE 1 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Zaino is a doctoral student in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center and a Teaching Fellow in the CUNY Queens College English Education Department. Prior to graduate study, she was a high school English teacher for 12 years in Philadelphia, PA and Covington, KY. She can be reached at [email protected].

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