This article critically explores the realities of our own border classroom resistance--the "story-circle" dialogue protocol--as a liminal, local practice of resistance to discursive practices of education and broader politics which seek to surveil students and teachers and commodify their achievement. More broadly, we suggest here critical pedagogy serves as a vital locale to address and resist dehumanizing historical, structural and ideological conditions as well as the discourses of standardization and commodification to which these conditions are reciprocally related.