Oklahoma 2018 Education Walkouts: An Oral History Project

About the Project

-Dr. Erin Dyke

Oral history narratives were collected during 2019-2021 by a team of 12 current and former K12 educators that live and work in three general regions of Oklahoma: Tulsa (northeast OK) and its surrounding suburbs and towns; Oklahoma City (central OK) and its surrounding suburbs and towns; and Stillwater (northcentral OK) and its surrounding rural communities. Most of the team have been directly impacted by the 2018 statewide walkout and played a significant role in our schools and districts in the lead-up to and during the event.

For this project, we first met in regional teams to build our skills in oral history interviewing methods and ethics, with the training support of the OOHRP. As a whole team, we prioritized conducting oral history interviews with teachers and education support professionals whose voices were not necessarily shaping public media narratives during the walkouts but who had an important story to share and/or who helped to make something important happen (e.g., a local protest or march).

Each individual team member identified a list of potential narrators who fit these criteria. We compiled and organized our list in a spreadsheet that enabled us to visualize the positional and geographic diversity of our potential narrators. We then prioritized interviews that would contribute to the diversity and the richness of narrative experience of the walkouts. Each researcher set up individual meetings to complete the interviews. During these interviews, the researchers asked the participants open questions based on pre-identified general topics that allowed the narrators to share their individual experience. While we had shared topics, we tailored our questions to the specific narrators we interviewed, ensuring they had opportunities to elaborate their specific relationship to and activities during the walkouts.

This oral history collection was made possible (in part) by a grant from the Spencer Foundation (#201900232). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Spencer Foundation.

Community-Based Participatory Oral History Analysis and Co-Writing

After each interview was completed, co-researchers wrote paragraph summaries and research memos identifying key aspects of each interview they conducted for the team’s immediate review. The audio files were transcribed, and co-researchers had the opportunity to review their own and one another’s interview transcripts. During this review process the researchers worked to identify and collect an encompassing list of themes. We further collectivized, focused, and refined our thematic analyses via two video conference meetings where we worked in small and large groups to prioritize and make sense of our themes as a team. These meetings have further enabled us to identify gaps in our oral history interview collection that we desired to fill and additional potential narrators.

Visualization of our analysis:

 

From these efforts, we co-authored an article in an open-access special journal issue themed on the 2018 “Red State” Walkouts:

 

Dyke, E., Anderson, H., Brown, A., El Sabbagh, J., Fernandez, H., Goodwin, S., Hickey, M., Price, S., Ruby, M., Self, K., Williams, J., & Worth, A. (2022). Beyond defeat: Understanding Educators’ Experiences in the 2018 Oklahoma education walkouts. Critical Education. 13(2), 77-85. https://doi.org/10.14288/ce.v13i2.186610

Interview Topics

Personal Background: Where are you from originally? What is your family educational background? What did your parents (or custodians) do for a living?   Did or do other members of your family work in education? What events or experiences led you to become a teacher? Where or how did you train to become a teacher, if at all?

Understandings of Pressing Issues Facing Public Education: Given your experiences, what are a few of the most important issues you think are facing Oklahoma public education? How have you experienced these issues in your local school and community?

Lead up to the Walkouts: How did you learn that Oklahoma teachers and staff might strike? Can you remember the specific moment? If so, describe it. What feelings arose for you? What memories do you have of discussions with fellow teachers and staff or union members in the lead-up to the walkouts? How were you and colleagues influenced by the education walkouts in West Virginia, if at all? In what ways did you participate in these early discussions or work? How would you describe the emergent organization of the walkouts in Oklahoma?

During the Walkouts: What are your strongest memories of the walkouts? How did you experience the walkouts – what activities did you engage in? What 

After the Walkouts: Describe the months and year following the walkouts – what impact did you feel they had on public education in Oklahoma? What changes did you experience in your school culture after the walkouts, if any? What changes did you experience in your relationships with students, families, and colleagues, if any? What continued organizing efforts did you experience or observe in the months and academic year following the walkouts? 

Activism/Advocacy: Prior to the walkouts, would you have described yourself as an activist or advocate? Why or why not? How about during the walkouts? After? Why or why not? 

Significant experiences: What significant experiences or events, good or bad, occurred in the lead up to, during, and after the walkouts? What were the outcomes? Is there anything that you would go back and change if you could? 

The future: What is your advice to future new teachers who may not have experienced the walkouts directly? What strategic directions for the education labor movement would you like to see? How would you like the public to remember the 2018 walkouts?

View the Collection

Follow Us

Contact Us

Oklahoma Oral History Research Program
207 Edmon Low Library
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, OK 74078
Phone: 405-744-7685
liboh@okstate.edu

---

Interested in this project?
Request a speaker for your group.