While we were interviewing her, a student and his father unexpectedly entered the classroom. Without missing a beat, the teacher stood up, her tone shifted, and a warm smile appeared on her face. She gently addressed the student, redirected him to another room, and only then returned to us. The transition was so fluid; it was care made visible, embodied. It was also, in many ways, a quiet demonstration of what Hochschild (1983) termed “deep acting”: not the mere display of emotions, but the genuine cultivation of feeling to meet the moral expectations of a role.

Throughout our time in the field, it became clear that deep acting was not an isolated occurrence. Educators didn’t just perform empathy, they lived it. As Miss Shalini noted, This isn’t like other professions, You need an extreme level of commitment here. If a teacher lacks the willingness to provide that, they should reconsider pursuing this as a profession. Such moments not only illuminated the emotional depth of the educators’ work, but also began to subtly shift our own understanding of the field; not as a fixed site of observation, but as a space we were being emotionally drawn into.

 Field Site, while conceptualised in theory as a fixed physical space, revealed itself to us as something far more fluid than we imagined. The idea of the field site, as we began our data collection, then slowly started becoming a constantly shifting state, both spatially and emotionally. Our interactions with special educators took place mostly within the premises of schools. Though we remained seated in the same room, we found ourselves transported into the many locations they described: their homes, the youth festival stage, or moments of solitude after a long day. The field site, then, became not just a location, but a site of memory, of many places all at once.  It became a space constructed as much through words and memory as through geography.

In such moments, the notebook and interview guide, the traditional tools of research, silently sat backstage. What took the frontstage instead was the act of listening, of simply being there, not just as researchers but as people holding space for vulnerability. Being “in the field,” then, became not merely the question of where we were but instead the question of how we were—mentally, emotionally, and ethically.

Across the course of our fieldwork, it became evident that the majority of our interlocutors were female educators, deeply committed to their work, and each situated within varying understandings of special education as a professional category. However, through our interactions, it became evident that many of their spouses or parents perceived their engagement in special education as an act of social service rather than legitimate employment. The gendered nature of the field; where women were far more present than men, shaped not only our participant pool but also the texture of our conversations. We were able to speak with two male educators, but both interactions were marked by a palpable discomfort. One of them, for instance, gently excused himself mid-conversation, saying he had a class in five minutes, even though it was clear we were in the middle of a break. These moments felt less like outright refusals and more like quiet withdrawals, subtle expressions of the social conditioning that teaches men to hold back emotionally, particularly in professions centred around care.

The experience with women, however, played out quite differently. At one of the schools, we were first greeted by a female interlocutor who was already familiar with the presence of researchers and the process of giving interviews. Without hesitation, she stepped inside and called her colleagues, who soon appeared carrying chairs for us and for themselves. There was an ease and immediacy in their response that set the tone for what followed. Though they laughed lightly at the formality of the consent forms we brought, they fully embraced the conversation. Seated together in a circle, they engaged not only with us but with one another discussing, debating, and often arriving at collective conclusions. It turned into a space of openness and understanding, where care, friendship, and emotions naturally surfaced.