In the last four years, teacher-activists in the United States have engaged in an unprecedented wave of protests and strikes. The developing body of literature seeking to understand this flurry of activity has taken various analytical approaches; for example, distilling movements into their key tactics in the hopes of lending important tools to activists and movements both within and beyond education. However, largely unconsidered are the ways in which these tactics and relations come to be possible in the first place. This article applies a Foucauldian analytics of protest which, rather than focusing upon the actors and actions of protests, seeks to understand the rationalities, or systems of reason, by which these actors and actions become possible. Through the case of Arizona, the paper makes visible the ways in which some examples of recent activism have operated within a system of reason and conception of futurity which potentially reinscribes historic modes of governance while fundamentally limiting the possibilities of activist efforts. To conclude, the piece offers a counter-example with the intent to imagine further possibilities for teacher activism. [Cover title varies: "Can Teacher Protests Reify What They Protest?: Examining the Rationalities of Recent Teacher Activism through a Foucauldian Analytics."]