Rebellious Education: Joyful Teaching as Resistance in the American South and Appalachia

Featuring accounts of P-12 educators, Rebellious Education: Joyful Teaching as Resistance in the American South and Appalachia offers a rebellious counter-narrative to the modern tale that teaching is a profession void of joy. Like the teaching profession itself, the American South and Appalachia are areas with juxtaposed narratives, both romanticized and villainized in popular culture. In this book, teachers in Southern and Appalachian spaces reveal their experiences of enacting their practice in challenging situations, but this is balanced with purposeful pedagogies and powerful accounts of teaching as an act of joyful resistance, pushing back against the stereotypes and false narratives currently plaguing the profession.

This book is written for educators to provide a collection of accounts that offer hope and resilience to those working to make our schools better places in geographic locations that often experience lower pay and less support. The book also serves as a tool to help motivate and sustain beginning and veteran teachers alike; it provides a community of voices against the ever-present message that teaching is not a profession worth pursuing.