Literacy and Identity

I am a true believer that teachers have a major impact on how students feel about school. A “bad” teacher could ruin a student’s experience for life and vise versa for a “good” teacher. I put these two qualities into quotations because there are many different definitions for these two broad qualities. Students learn different ways, and when a teacher doesn’t help their students learn in ways which work for the students and the teacher themselves, than many students will give up and believe they just aren’t cut out for school. Whereas the “good” teacher will find a balance that allows for the teacher to teach to the best of their ability and for the students to comprehend and engage in topics discussed. Now to achieve being the “good” teacher, there are many different techniques and the teacher must find what works for them and what they are comfortable with, aka finding their teaching identity. As Williams would say, “we face problems as teachers when we try either to (a) perform an identity that is incomprehensible or inconsistent for our students or (b) inhabit an identity that we know our students believe a teacher should have but that doesn't work for us.”

In my 13 years of formal schooling, I have encountered many different identities, in which each one affected me in different ways. My senior year in high school I had an English teacher who only taught intense, advanced placement classes. Yet somehow I managed to be enrolled in her only regular English class. Lucky me. She was our seemingly all knowing, ruthless commander. As I would define her: a “bad” teacher. She made me so nervous, to the point where I was scared not to do my homework in fear she would call me out on it in front of the entire class.  I was too scared to raise my hand to ask a question or go in after class to talk to her. The most important thing she taught me the whole year is that I want to be nothing like her when I teach and that I never want to have another teacher like her.

Since I did have her so late in my schooling career, she didn’t have much effect on how I felt about school as a whole. Yet I do feel that if I had a teacher like her in my prime learning years, then I would absolutely be turned off to schooling completely. Luckily throughout years of experience, I have learned how my teachers work within a few weeks of being in class. And I had her identified way early on and could adjust. Williams sites some identities that I can relate to my other teachers or stereotypical teachers, such as friend, coach, talk-show host, counselor, cheerleader, and the commander. All of these teachers with different identities and different teaching methods that they believe work the best.  But which identity is really the best method? They all use different methods that reach their students in different ways. Is there an identity that reaches students more effectively than the others? I suppose it all depends on the combination of the teacher’s individual identity and the mixture of students that sit in their classroom.