Examining a teaching life: Stories of experience as epiphanies.

Abstract

I research my life and my professional practice, which extends over three decades, as an elementary classroom teacher. My autobiographical inquiry focuses on three epiphanies, or pivotal points in my life: my relationship with the African American community, leaving a Religious Community and entering marriage, and the return to graduate study. The history and development of myself as a writer is interwoven with those critical moments where my personal life and my teaching practice are interrelated. I have experimented with a narrative style, paralleling the experiences of my students with my own experiences as a growing and changing human being. Integral to my teaching story is my engagement in writing through active participation in my third and fourth grade classroom community writers' process. I argue that consistent autobiographical writing through multi-purpose journals, letter writing as by electronic mail, and life stories serves a transformative function. The autobiographical text of my life explores a way of knowing which is shaped by the reflexive practice of my narrative of experience. These reflexive narratives of experience are also practiced by the students in my writing/reading classroom, as well as by other persons who interact in our classroom learning. I view the relationships of those in my classroom as educational and present a narrative that invites the reader into my life and classroom through the eyes of a preservice teacher. The educational significance of my study lies in the ways in which I have been influenced to change my practice through writing the autobiography of my life, a method critical to the reshaping of my pedagogical perspectives. I view engagement in writing as a community-based experience, critical to self-development and valuing the teacher as learner. Our classroom writers' community provides a forum for young writers to engage in life study, to interact in their own learning process, and to assume responsibility for self and others.