I’ve been in an extended period of inquiry lately regarding my professional identity (who am I kidding, this has been at least a 14-year journey in various iterations) and I’ve come to realize that as much as I struggle with how these different parts of myself get expressed, there are certain commitments that are at the heart of who I am as an educator: commitment to ongoing growth through reflection; commitment to students; commitment to praxis (the intersection of theory & practice). When I look at these 3 categories, I really see myself as an educator and it makes me happy that essentially, I’m not as complex as I originally thought. I wanted to use today’s post to sort through these 3 areas for myself to give further clarity as I’m preparing for future work.
Commitment to Ongoing Growth through Reflection
This blog is part of that commitment, but it’s seen throughout my research as well, in that most of my work has been anchored in the work that I’ve done, whether facilitating inquiry, teaching pre-service teachers, or in my own 8th grade English classroom. This commitment is also present in my pedagogy as I promote my students’ reflection in their work and their growth through thinking about what they’re learning and relating it to their present selves in the emergent stages of their professional identities and what implications the work they’re doing now and ideas they’re learning about now could have for their future practice.
Commitment to Students
Recently, when asked to make a pie chart of where my time goes as an academic, I placed 65% of my time in teaching. While acknowledging that this is not a healthy balance, it’s a hard one for me given that my students have always been central to my identity as an educator. Whether my 8th graders (staying with them after school, making parent phone calls, grading until all hours of the night or redesigning lessons to be more engaging) or my preservice teachers (answering late tweets about assignments, extending office hours, giving extensive feedback on assignments, responding to discussion board posts, e-mailing them to check-in), my students and the difference that our work together might make in their futures are what make this work so fulfilling. I became an educator to make a difference in the lives of others and to this day, it still drives me in my work.
Commitment to Praxis
At the end of the day, I’m a pragmatist, but I will never be a technocrat. As part of my commitment to students, I want my practice to be informed–I continue to study, read theory and empirical research, and model research-grounded practices, but I also couldn’t ever solely immerse myself in theory without a practical application. It’s been hard for me to acknowledge that, as research really captivates my inner nerd, and I LOVE engaging in thoughtful discourse related to ideas, but without the relationships with students and the enactment of theory into practice, something is missing for me. I’ve come to a point in my life & career where I know that my work will always be grounded in practice and will always seek to inform the practice of others whether teacher educators, preservice teachers or currently practicing teachers.
So, it’s probably not all that easy, but it’s inherently more simple than I anticipated. And when I look at who I am, it helps to ground the person I am becoming–in the end, what honors my professional identity any more than that?