ABSTRACT

This chapter offers a discussion on how to take ownership of your teacher identity. Administrators, the culture of leadership at the school, students, and the immediate community, recent reform activities at the school, and a teacher's relationships with colleagues all influence teacher identity. Sudden life changes, such as getting married, losing a loved one, or moving to a new area, will all have influences on us as people and on our teacher identities. A political view might shape the way you respond to particular education reforms, such as English-only mandates or a science curriculum on evolution. One of the major struggles for teachers occurs in the internal and ongoing tension between didactic teaching and constructivist teaching. Constructivist educators believe that true learning is noisy, social, frequently messy, and rarely linear. Students were more or less autonomous individuals who rose or fell in the classroom based on their own individual wills.