Examining a teaching life: Stories of experience as epiphanies.

I research my life and my professional practice, which extends over three decades, as an elementary classroom teacher. My autobiographical inquiry focuses on three epiphanies, or pivotal points in my life: my relationship with the African American community, leaving a Religious Community and entering marriage, and the return to graduate study. The history and development of myself as a writer is interwoven with those critical moments where my personal life and my teaching practice are interrelated. I have experimented with a narrative style, paralleling the experiences of my students with my own experiences as a growing and changing human being. Integral to my teaching story is my engagement in writing through active participation in my third and fourth grade classroom community writers' process. I argue that consistent autobiographical writing through multi-purpose journals, letter writing as by electronic mail, and life stories serves a transformative function. The autobiographical text of my life explores a way of knowing which is shaped by the reflexive practice of my narrative of experience. These reflexive narratives of experience are also practiced by the students in my writing/reading classroom, as well as by other persons who interact in our classroom learning. I view the relationships of those in my classroom as educational and present a narrative that invites the reader into my life and classroom through the eyes of a preservice teacher. The educational significance of my study lies in the ways in which I have been influenced to change my practice through writing the autobiography of my life, a method critical to the reshaping of my pedagogical perspectives. I view engagement in writing as a community-based experience, critical to self-development and valuing the teacher as learner. Our classroom writers' community provides a forum for young writers to engage in life study, to interact in their own learning process, and to assume responsibility for self and others.Doctor of Education (EdD)EducationElementary educationLanguage artsTeacher educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129929/2/9711912.pd