Remembering Children, Remembering My Selves: The Autoethnography of an Educator in Hawaii

• In Event: 63.084 - Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: 63.084-11 - Autoethnography, Embodiment, and Being

Abstract

These rememorated narratives represent an effort to understand the subjectivity of being a Chinese, male, first grade teacher in Hawaii, and the effect that those subjectivities have upon my work as a teacher educator today. While I explore my complicity with the values of Hawaii’s school system through critical literacy projects, I draw upon postmodern and postcolonial critique, and discover that the primary colonizing force in my classroom is the authority that my history holds upon my capacity to imagine new forms of teaching. I am able to develop metaphors for teaching through an autoethnography that allows me to form a reconciliation between my childhood memories, my adult anxieties, and the development of more nuanced responses to conventional curricular tropes.

Author

• Christopher Au, University of Hawaii