Systemic Interferences

This autoethnographic reflection provides an intimate look into the thoughts and feelings of a graduate student in a teacher education program who embarks on a directed study project with her professor and academic adviser. The experience gives her the opportunity to cross unfamiliar thresholds regarding culture and class, urban and suburban, and power and privilege that would change her life trajectory. The reader is invited to join the student author as she narrates her day-to-day experience at a predominantly Latinx elementary charter school in urban Detroit. She centers on the experience of the student rather than the perspective of the institution and reveals systemic interferences caused not by teachers, children, or families, but by a crumbling school infrastructure, unsustainable building maintenance pressures, outdated and unreliable technology, and inadequate instructional resources. Concurrent resistance movements in Detroit, such as the “Detroit teacher sick-outs,” demonstrate the magnitude of the issue and its negative impact on teaching and learning. Through her experience, a story unfolds that shifts her gaze from traditional pedagogical and classroom management concerns toward the sociopolitical context that sustains pervasive and structural inequalities in schools and funding structures. She turns inward to examine her own privileged educational trajectory and her role in advocating for change. The authors close with considerations for teacher education, including support networks such as learning communities that stimulate teacher dialogue, creative solutions to address resource issues, and partnerships with university faculty to mobilize for change.