"Oh, So You Just Want to Teach?" An Autoethnographic Account of One Traditionally Trained Teacher in a Teach For America–Hiring School

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Nine
  In Roundtable Session: The Power of Self-Reflection: A Focus on Autoethnographic Accounts (Table 7)

Abstract

We present an autoethnographic analysis of one traditionally trained teacher’s experience working in an urban charter school with predominantly TFA-trained colleagues. First, we provide a literature review that highlights the research landscape’s hyper-focus on TFA CMs, after which we describe the theoretical work that has informed this study. We then outline our methodology, which we label autoethnography, and present our findings/analysis, focusing on the following thematic elements: 1) Just being a teacher and 2) Psychology of novice teachers. To conclude, we discuss various implications of this work for teacher education, as well as the teaching profession at large, paying particular attention to the ways in which neoliberal education reforms, including TFA, effectively incentivize the individualization of teaching (and learning).

Authors

• Gretchen Cook, University of Tennessee
  Presenting Author

• Ashlee Anderson, University of Tennessee
  Presenting Author