I have been reading some of Pauline Britzman’s work on teacher identity and it has gotten me thinking about my own teacher identity. I remember when I first started teaching and how I felt like such a fraud. I was still clinging to my ‘riot grrl’ identity, but I didn’t know how to bring that into the classroom. I ended up feeling completely split between the identity I performed outside of school, and the identity I performed in the classroom. I was always fearful I would run into one of my students on the weekend and they’d realize that I had absolutely no business being their teacher. Even worse, I feared running into their parents. I had the most difficult time talking to parents. My principal and all of the teacher preparation courses harped on the fact that you must form positive relationships with families. I was so intimidated (and hopelessy self-conscious) that I rarely made contact with parents. During my interactions with parents I would interpret their questions and facial expressions as accusations: ‘this girl doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing. I was always genuinely surprised when parents would come up to me and thank me or tell me that they appreciate what I’m doing with their kid.
Now, I’m facing a different identity crisis. I am finishing my final year of grad school. This means doing, speaking, acting, and performing a particular academic identity. The graduate student identity I have constructed for myself is much more self-assured than my teacher self. I am confident in my theoretical knowledge, my research, and my familiarity with the research in my field. Even though I am a graduate student in a college of education, my graduate student identity is only tangentally related to my teacher identity. In my research setting and when I facilitate professional development in schools, I assume the role of ‘the knowledgable other.’ I position myself as being one of them (a sympathic insider), while also positioning myself as someone from the University with knowledge and expertise for them to draw upon (useful outsider). I am the person that teachers come to complain about what’s not working or to ask my opinion about a particular lesson I observed. My opinion is valued because ‘I know what it’s like’ having spent time in the classroom,’ and because I am now a representative of a university. Teachers come and talk to me in ways that they don’t talk to their principal, their co-workers, or anybody on the school staff.
Now that I am returning to teach elementary school I am finding that I am repositioning myself again. I have had the strange experience of applying for an academic position (a summer teacher education position) and an elementary teaching job during the same week. The way I positioned myself in the two cover letters shone some light on the tensions between grad and grade school. My academic cover letter boasted my accomplishments in research and in teaching in other university settings. On the other hand, I feel like I have been minimizing my PhD in my application for teaching elementary school. Part of this, I realize, is to position myself in a way that is not threatening to the principal or whoever is reading my job application. I will have more education than most of the administration in the district, and I realize this makes some people uneasy. But, I think what i’m really trying to do is reclaim my ‘just one of you’ identity. I am trying to become a full time insider, no longer straddling the border as I do now. And to do that, I feel like I need to diminish my accomplishments in graduate school.
T his worries me. I have taught and written about being an advocate for English language learners. And, if I’m so concerned about being ‘just one of you’ then how am I going to disrupt the status quo and advocate for students. I feel like my graduate degree marks me as being an idealist and will keep me on the periphery of the school unable to make real changes. In my mind I already hear my co-workers saying ‘oh she thinks she knows everything because she has a PhD. So this is a real dillema. How do I take advantage of the knowledge I have gained through the process of earning a PhD in a way that still allows me to be recognized by teachers as an insider.
