What Does it Mean to Work in a System that Fails You and Your Kids? : A Beginning Teacher’s Journey through the Chicago Public Schools

This ethnodramatic performance session expands (Feldman, 2005; Saldaña, 2002, 2011; Snyder-Young, 2010) data taken from four narrative interviews shared by a first year teacher in the Chicago Public Schools. The session is constructed to evoke the teacher’s personal experience and bring to life the structures of power that shape her work (Denzin, 2001; Jacob, Stone, & Roderick, 2004; Kazubowski-Houston, 2010; Lipman, 2006; Roderick & Nagaoka, 2005; Vanover & Saldaña, 2005). No claims are made as the result of the performance; no judgments are rendered; no agendas are served. The session is designed to bring audience members together to ask deeper questions about urban education, and to inquire about teachers’ struggles in high poverty schools (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Denzin, 2003; Turner & Turner, 1982).