Black Feminist Refusal for Institutional Instability aka How NYCPS allows 5 moves in 9 years.
- Shapel LaBorde
- Jun 17
- 3 min read
We have 6 days left of school. And I am ready and over it. Something that has been irritating to me is the mere fact that I will be moving for the 5th time in 9 years. I realized what this irritation means, for me as an out of classroom teacher in my school building for 9 years.
It is coated in trauma. It is ick. I have cleaned and restored and poured into four seperate rooms on three floors in that building. No more :)
From the moment I came to the building in 2017 and starting in Fall of 2025 I have moved 5 times. After nine years and five classroom moves, my body and spirit are speaking clearly: I'm tired of building sanctuaries only for them to be dismantled. I've survived a litany of aggressions and terror and always made it a point to make each classroom a home because it was an imperative me and as my pedagogical praxis as an ENL teacher. No I am not just moving desks and posters, I am re-rooting parts of myself in a place where the adminstration tried to get rid of me and attacked my pyschological wellness. And that labor of moving is not just physical, it’s deeply emotional and energetic. Mostly every start to my year has began in burnout and guardness. I have repeatedly poured love, care, and intentionality into my space—making it a refuge, not just for my students, but for me, Shapel. That takes an enormous amount of unseen labor. And each time it’s undone or relocated, it chips away at the sense of stability I desperately tried to cultivate in the place I spend most of my time.
Five classroom moves in nine years is institutional instability. It signals that my work environment isn't consistently supporting me. I never received mentorship at this school, I worked hard to be the leader and educator I am today by situating myself and networking. And that compounds the exhaustion of being a Black woman educator constantly asked to give more, nurture more, show up more—often without reciprocity or preservation. So what now, when decorating my classroom was not superficial but it’s an act of care. In bell hooks’ terms, I have been creating engaged pedagogy, not just through curriculum, but through space. My classroom has been a site of healing, belonging, and embodied knowledge. And because I am/ my students are ritualistically displaced, I say its an end of an era.
I know my irritation is justified a response to the extractive expectation that Black women endlessly beautify and hold space, without that space being held for them in return. It is not just teachers move all the time, its the absent rationale or rather the blatant inconvenience for the sake of. My now 33 year old body through all the ridiculous, interconnected traumas, chooses the refusual to decorate as a counter-hegemonic act. A quiet strike. A reclamation of my right to simply exist and not perform care through aesthetics. It hurts to come to this but its about not overfunctioning when my labor is seen as infinite and charged. An act of self-preservation over performative professionalism.
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