The Pepper Mill Effect: Emotional Grinding and the International Migration of Black American Teachers from US Classrooms to the United Arab Emirates: Teaching Between Borders: Identity, Emotion, and Educators' Decisions to Remain in the United Arab Emirates

Traditional studies on teacher turnover often focus on two categories. Attrition delineates teachers who leave the profession, and migration includes those who move between schools. This presentation takes an analytical turn from these studies by exploring a less-examined path, which is the international migration of American teachers from schools in the United States (US) to those in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). By focusing on Black American teachers, a group disproportionately affected by attrition in the US, the teachers in this study share narratives of emotional exhaustion and systemic pressures that pushed them to the brink of burnout. Therefore, using a dual theoretical lens of intersectionality and emotional transnationalism, this presentation discusses a study that identifies three core themes conceptualized as emotional collisions which analyze various factors that influenced these teachers’ decisions to remain in the education profession but to relocate abroad. Like peppercorns in a mill, these educators describe being ground down by their experiences teaching in US classrooms while comparing those narratives to experiences teaching in schools throughout the UAE. This presentation concludes with recommendations for educational policymakers and school leaders to consider more inclusive retention policies that offer accountability and sustainable strategies to support the stock of international/expatriate teachers attracted to fill the private and public classrooms within the UAE. Rather than solely focusing on the vision of the UAE national educational policy, this conversation brings forth the reality faced by several teachers who choose to voluntarily leave their home countries to teach in schools throughout the country.