THE GROWTH OF A MOVEMENT: LESSONS LEARNED DURING THE FIRST YEAR OF THE BADASS TEACHERS ASSOCIATION
On June 13, 2014 the Badass Teachers Association (BATs) celebrated its one year anniversary. As a member and administrator since the first few weeks, it has been truly amazing to watch this organization grow. The co-founders had no idea that a Facebook group titled Badass Teachers Association would have grown to include over 50,000 members and become a grassroots movement that fights for teachers and public education. The mission of BATs made it clear who we were and what we were about:
“Badass Teachers Association was created to give voice to every teacher who refuses to be blamed for the failure of our society to erase poverty and inequality through education. BAT members refuse to accept assessments, tests and evaluations created and imposed by corporate driven entities that have contempt for authentic teaching and learning.”
BATs is for teachers. Teachers who are routinely silenced through neoliberal privatization policies. Teachers who are expected to perform miracles for students living in extreme poverty, speak English as a second language, and have special needs without adequate resources and support. BATs became a safe place for teachers to be heard, to network, and to demand change.
As I reflect back on this past year, it is truly inspiring to see what can be done when teachers refuse to be scapegoats and demand change. Although we have had many successes over the past year we have also made some mistakes and learned some valuable lessons on how to manage a fast growing group through social media. One of the things I learned, was that although we might all be badass teachers we were and still are a very diverse group of individuals. We come from all over the country and world, work in different settings, belong to different political parties, and have a variety of beliefs on many issues. It might be part of human nature to believe that people who share the same profession also share the same values but diversity in all forms is what makes us human.
The rapid growth of BATs took all of us by surprise. The founders and admins had been in many social media groups before but none of them had as many members as we did in our first 2 months. The admins spent countless hours each day admitting new members and monitoring conversations. We immediately voted to ban posts that contained spam and were racist, sexist, and homophobic. We also did not allow posts that disparaged either political party, attacked teachers, parents, administrators, or students. We learned that these conversations were quick to become divisive and the last thing we wanted was to see this group implode. Discussions on changing the name also became a distraction so we deleted these posts and encouraged people who did not like the name to leave the group. These actions led to accusations of censorship, but for those of us spending 10-15 hours a day having the same conversations it was the best way for us to keep the group growing. As an online social community we had the right to dictate what our purpose was and what conversations we would allow to take place within our own group. As we tried to capitalize on our growth it was imperative that we did not allow contentious issues to divide us.
Our stance against conversations that divided us soon divided us. Members wanted to discuss any issue they thought was important while other members did not agree that those issues were pertinent to our mission. When conversations took a turn for the worse they were deleted. These conversation topics varied, but included topics such as race and racism, the pledge of allegiance, guns, and sex education. Since none of these topics were directly related to our mission we thought it best to discourage them from taking place in our group. The founders even created affiliate groups focused on specific topics where members could discuss these issues with others who also wanted to discuss them. Nonetheless, some felt as though we were silencing their voice and although it was not our intention, we did, and for that we apologize.
During the past year, the founders and administrators have understood the need to allow difficult conversations to take place. Although we continue to monitor our group and keep a list of topics that are banned, we know that conversations about race and racism are something that all teachers need to have. In light of the Trayvon Martin verdict, we agreed to allow these conversations to progress and only delete The Growth of a Movement: Lessons Learned During the First Year of the Badass Teachers Association | emPower magazine: