Chapter 8: How do I Keep My Ideals and Still Teach?

In an era marked by regimented curriculum, bureaucratic outcomes-based accountability systems, and corporatized educational aims, how do you keep your ideals and still teach? The answer to this question is multifaceted, but as we will argue in this chapter there are at least two necessary, if insufficient, responses. First, working in opposition to the mainstream of educational practice requires a question-posing approach. Second, we believe that collaborative thought and action are crucial to the understanding and transformation of educational practices and social relations. Two counterstories are explored in this chapter. The first is based on the individual perspectives of two preservice teachers. The second is the counterstory of a collective known as The Rouge Forum.