Being a writer and teaching writing on the ‘rackety bridge’: through the lens of new teachers

Imagine a bridge. Not just any bridge; it’s what performance art theorist (Phelan, 1993) describes as a ‘rackety bridge’. On this bridge appear six middle and high school teachers. They are engaged in ‘a performance suspended in the space between self and other’ (p. 174) where ‘neither of us ever fully meets our selves or the other’; where ‘the who to whom we address our teaching is never the who who replies’ (Ellsworth, 1997, p. 158) because meanings shift with time and context. But who is the other? Who is the self? As teachers of writing, who are we really?