Bangkit Semangat—Raise the Spirits: Teachers’ Vulnerability, Resilience, and Voice in Postdisaster Indonesia

Abstract

The recent discussion paper on teachers presented at the United Nations Transforming Education Summit emphasizes the inclusion of teachers in social dialogue at the global and local levels. However, the requisite structural arrangements are not yet in place for teachers’ voices to be heard or their perspectives acted on, especially in humanitarian settings. Only now are humanitarian actors beginning to understand the ways in which teachers respond to and work during complex emergencies. Humanitarian actors are also coming to realize how rarely teachers’ perspectives inform the technical guidance documents that determine the conditions in which they work (Adelman 2019; Falk, Shephard, and Mendenhall 2022; Pherali, Abu Moghli, and Chase 2020). Based on an ethnographic study with teachers who experienced the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake in Bantul, Indonesia, this article contributes to a nascent body of literature on teachers’ work, their vulnerability and resilience, and the importance of their voices during emergencies. As Marchezini (2015, 370) states, “It is necessary to look at survivors not merely as affected people, but as subjects with their own cultures and coping strategies.” With insights from teachers’ own narratives and the recurring concept of bangkit semangat (raise the spirits), I contend that the absence of teachers’ voices from global policy and guidance means that we have an inadequate understanding of teachers’ agency and fail to recognize their potential to realize, reimagine, and rework global recommendations at a local level.