ABSTRACT
For the past several years, I have explored the locally situated meanings that teachers and others attach to large-scale ‘school restructuring’ in the USA. More than in any prior studies of teachers’ work lives, I have found myself drained at the end of each day of observation and interviewing. I attribute this state not simply to the intellectual concentration and physical stamina required for extended field research, but to the emotional range and intensity I confront at every turn. Amid well-wrought narratives and cogent analyses of school life, teachers weave vivid tales of exhilaration and despair, anticipation and disappointment, intimacy and loss. Emotions lie very near the surface in these schools. As teachers reach the four year point in a five year funded program of school change, they more frequently employ the language of ‘burnout’ to describe themselves or their colleagues. Teachers report to us and to one another that they are ‘pulling back’, ‘hanging in’ or ‘moving on’, signaling not only turning points in relation to particular reforms, but also certain shifts in the contours of their teaching lives and careers.
