Chapter 10: Disrupting a Diversity Desert: A Rural Teacher’s Journey

This narrative shares a series of reflections and vignettes that represent my experiences as a rural teacher evaluating and reimagining technology and civic education during and after the 2011 and 2012 Arab Uprisings. Others refer to this time as Arab Spring, but I use the term “Uprisings” purposefully. It acknowledges civic behavior and the plurality of heterogeneous experiences, locations, issues, and outcomes (Williamson & Abadeer, 2014). In this context, I explored the transformative use of technology to enable democratic and participatory discourse (Bartow, 2014) while also disrupting stereotypes so that my students could recognize the humanity of people who lived outside of their community (Subedi, 2010) and who were often marginalized or vilified in American media (Shaheen, 2012). I humbly offer my experiences in support of similarly situated teachers who may be questioning, experimenting, and disrupting stereotypes to explore justice-oriented citizenship with their students.