Listening to Voices: Storied Moments of a Changing Teacher Identity Inside Shared Spaces

The objective for this program of research was to retrospectively, narratively, and autobiographically examine how my professional identity shifted when I moved from the secret, safe space of my own classrooms to shared spaces with other teachers as a newly appointed Differentiated Instruction Facilitator. In education today, teachers increasingly share their classroom spaces with other professionals and often the shifts in identity of the people sharing spaces are not examined. In this inquiry, I examine my own identity by viewing the metaphorical dance floor of the Differentiated Instruction Project from both my position on the dance floor and from the balcony above. I inquire into the nature of my dancing relationships with many partners over two years on my middle and secondary school landscape and how these relationships changed how I understood myself as a teacher and as a facilitator. I look at the differentiated philosophy I was expected to deliver and the knowledge my colleagues brought into our time together and how these two knowledge realms interacted and shifted my own knowledge and, in turn, my relationships with my teacher partners and their students. My professional identity within the Differentiated Instruction Project shifted often. In the beginning, I attempted to integrate voices of the conduit and their system and sacred stories with my own personal practical knowledge. In this inquiry, I explore the relationship between the conduit and my work inside classroom spaces. I inquire into the effect of stories on my own personal practical knowledge and the knowledge of my colleagues and their students. I examine the ways in which many dancers were positioned on my educational dance floor and the ways in which these voices shaped the voice of my identity. Finally, I imagine possibilities for living and reliving and then telling and retelling stories of shifting identities within shared spaces