In this age of civic and political turmoil, there is much to learn from the nation's teachers.
We just have to pass the mic and listen.
How would you describe teaching and learning in this age of civic and political turmoil?
A Pilot Phase
Not Research About, But Research With Teachers
This is the beginning of a longer journey, and we want teachers to help shape it.
We’re in the exploratory phase of Teachers Holding the Line, and we’re gathering short, anonymous reflections from educators to understand what feels most urgent right now. Your responses will help us identify the themes and questions that matter most to teachers in this moment.
We’ll use what you share to:
• Inform the design of future focus groups and interviews
• Surface emerging themes
• Highlight powerful (anonymous) quotes on this site
No identifying information will ever be shared. We’re interested in the texture of teachers’ experiences—not in tracing any response back to a person or place.
Thank you for helping us build this project from the ground up.
The Project
Teachers Holding the Line is a qualitative and historical inquiry documenting how teachers experience their work amid an increasingly anti-immigration and anti-democratic political climate. The project is both a historical preservation effort—creating an archive of educators’ voices during this critical moment—and a civic-democratic one, highlighting teachers as moral and civic actors on the front lines of democracy.
The project seeks to “pass the microphone” to educators whose voices are often absent from the record, situating their stories within broader questions about what it means to teach, care, protect and resist under intensifying state control and social precarity.
Teachers often ‘hold the line’ in ways that are rarely named: they sustain civic norms, create spaces of belonging, and shoulder the daily work of helping young people navigate an increasingly fragile democracy.
About Us
As education researchers, former high school social studies teachers, and as the daughters of immigrants, we care deeply about the lived experiences of educators. We value the care and compassion teachers bring to their practice every day. And we recognize that, too often, the civic, intellectual, and emotional labor of teachers goes unseen and unrecognized.
Teachers’ voices, experiences, and insights represent a wealth of indispensable knowledge worth documenting and preserving. As researchers, we’re aiming to build this project in partnership with teachers to honor, highlight, and learn from their perspectives and their stories. We are committed to amplifying teacher voices to bring teachers’ knowledge and insight to bear on what the nation knows and understands about what it means to teach in the current moment.
We believe that attending to teachers’ insights can improve education practice and research and enrich the historical record, which has long been too light on teacher perspectives rendered in their own words.
— Erika Kitzmiller
—Carmen Delgado
Coming Soon
Stay tuned for updates! As we collect your anonymous reflections, we’ll be sharing what we’re learning as we go. We’ll let you know how many have responded and what kinds of themes are emerging. We’ll also share powerful quotes so you can see what your fellow teachers are saying.
Keep an eye out for upcoming informal focus groups and other opportunities to connect!
Interested in Joining the Conversation? Care to learn more?
We’d love to keep you posted on upcoming events, and developments. Join the community, and let’s connect!