ABSTRACT
This chapter describes critical narrative approaches to supporting teacher candidates in excavating their own histories of privilege and marginality. It discusses the author's own raced, gendered, and classed family heritage, tracing her teacher identity back to the experiences of her great grandmother, Pearl, a philosopher and teacher mentored by John Dewey in the early 20th century. Toggling back and forth across space and time, the chapter discusses how racial privilege and gender inequities functioned in Pearl's time and continue to operate today in teaching and teacher education. It situates critical autobiographical writing as a tool of teaching and inquiry in critical race and feminist theories. Critical race theory (CRT) values story, in particular counternarrative, as a way for people from marginalized groups to share their experiences and speak back against marginalization and dominant storylines like the grit narrative. Through counternarrative, people name their own realities instead of a-critically accepting institutional labels such as "at risk".
