Teacher Identity as a Superpower: Analysis of the Stories of Teacher Leavers

• In Event: 18.031 - Leavers, Pushed-Outs, and Those Who Stay: Teacher Responses to Professional Pressures

Abstract

Most studies of teacher attrition represent it as a disaster narrative. However, Pinnegar (2012) in studying teachers who prepared to teach but never taught found they continued to enact their teacher identity in other contexts. This S-STTEP project examined narratives of teacher identity of teachers who no longer taught in K-12 schools to examine how characteristics of teacher identity were still evident in their lives. Our stories told from differing life contexts demonstrate we still hold a teacher identity even though we left teaching. This is evident in our stories which provide evidence of the fundamental elements of our teacher identity as a superpower: I don’t take crap, I bestow knowledge, I bring order, I propel learning, I make do.

Authors

• Celina Marie Lay, Brigham Young University

• Anna Bromley Andrews

• Lana Robinson Bailey

• Stefinee E. Pinnegar, Brigham Young University