ABSTRACT
In the chapter, the author shares findings from a teacher educator research study of a critical, project-based experience that initiates preservice teachers’ (PSTs) shifting conceptions of themselves as writers. The author explores how providing a space for teachers to publicly engage in authentic writing practices with urban youth beyond school walls affects the kinds of teachers they become within school walls, starting with teachers’ own understandings of their writing identities. The author highlights examples from critical reflections on the experiences of preservice English teachers and middle and high school students writing together in an after-school program as part of the Writing Our Lives youth writing project. This critical, project-based experience engages a theoretical and practical stance toward transformative and emancipatory pedagogies for urban youth writers and provides a framework for preparing PSTs to engage in this kind of work. This reflexive pedagogy holds potential to inform the ways that teachers recognize and value the writing lives of their students.
