How I Became a Teacher — Building Your Teaching Identity
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How I Became a Teacher — Building Your Teaching Identity
I did not go to university to teach. I came to teaching through hospitality, immigration, 120 hours of supervised practice, a fight I am still fighting, and a daughter who changed what ‘the future’ means. Teaching identity is not a certificate. It is built from every lesson you taught badly, then better, then well enough to try again tomorrow. If you are reading this as a teacher — you already started building it.
Teaching identity is how a teacher understands themselves in their professional role. Research (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Varghese et al., 2005) shows it is:
– Not fixed: it develops through reflection, feedback, and experience
– Not one thing: shaped by biography, context, learners, and institutions
– Practitioner-led: what you believe about learning drives every decision you make
Questions that reveal your teaching identity:
Why do I correct errors the way I do? Why do I like this activity? What do I believe about learning?
1. Reflective journal: after every lesson, write one thing that worked and one you’d change
2. Peer observation: watch someone else teach with a focus question (not just general impressions)
3. CPD: one article, one podcast, one webinar per month — not to collect content, but to interrogate it
Reflective practice
1. What is a reflective journal for? To notice patterns in your teaching — what you repeat, avoid, improve. Evidence-based self-development.
2. What’s the difference between experience and reflective experience? Experience alone repeats the same year 20 times. Reflective experience improves — it asks ‘why did that work?’
3. What does your teaching identity say if you always explain before eliciting? It may reveal a belief that the teacher’s role is to transmit knowledge — a more transmission-based view than a communicative one.
Independent project; not affiliated with, endorsed by, or accredited by Cambridge University Press & Assessment. Confers no qualification.
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