Besides managing a classroom of 20 to 30 or more students while teaching lessons every day, teachers are also astute politicians. Teachers, for example, using ClassDojo, a free software application, is just another instance of teacher thinking and acting politically. More about teachers using ClassDojo as a political tactic later in the post

I do need to explain that in 2022 (during the Covid-pandemic especially) for teachers to both survive and thrive in their classrooms, they have to be practicing politicians.

Historical context for teachers acting politically

For decades, educators have winced at using the word “politics” linked in any way to their work with children and youth in schools. Let me explain the history behind this aversion to the word.

At the beginning of the 20th century, progressive reformers divorced party politics from the conduct of schooling. Governance reforms led school boards to dump party hacks from their ranks…