LAE

7735 – TeacherEd E-TAB 1

English Teacher Auto-Biography (E-TAB)
Purpose:
A first step towards teaching with sensitivity to students’ cultural and educational histories—especially
when those students are future teachers!—is understanding your own. In this assignment, you will
explore how your past experiences inform your present assumptions and practices regarding
English/teaching and the preparation of future teachers. For example, were there significant people in
your life who were teachers? What role did English (reading/writing/listening/speaking) play in your
childhood? How might these experiences inform your teaching of future English teachers?

Audience:
This assignment calls for reflection on your own experiences. Thus, the primary audience is YOU.
However, you will also share this work with your colleagues in class in order to explore patterns across
your experiences. So you should feel free to write without worrying about editing concerns like
grammar, word choice, and formatting; but, you may wish to provide explanations of the personal
events and their contexts which for you might be unnecessary, but for us will be helpful to
understanding their significance. For instance, did where and when you went to school shape how you
became an English teacher? What might we need to know about those contexts to understand how
they influenced you?

Process:
(Please note that this process is suggested in order to help you prepare for and accomplish this task;
however, since you are already an accomplished scholar and writer, please feel free to deviate from it if
you see other ways to complete the assignment that better suit your needs).

For each of the following, please plan to spend 10 minutes of uninterrupted time writing. You may
answer the questions in each section consecutively (all at once) or separately, over several days. Please
turn in these process materials with your assignment.

1. Listing (50 min.):
Please try to write a few words or short phrases for each bullet.

WHO (10 min.)
• Who are you as an English teacher? List some essential qualities that characterize you.
• Who are your students (or who have you taught)?
• Who are/were important people in your life who influenced your decision to become an English
teacher? (former teachers, family members, etc.)
• When you imagine an English teacher, whom do you see/hear?

WHAT (10 min.)
• What do you do as an English teacher? List some activities that characterize your teaching.
• What do you most enjoy about teaching
o Reading?
o Writing?
• Growing up, what did you most enjoy about
o Reading?
o Writing?
 LAE 7735 – TeacherEd E-TAB 2
o English class?
o School?
• When you imagine an English teacher, what is that person doing/saying/feeling?

WHERE/WHEN (10 min.)
• Where did you go to school?
• Where did you feel most at home as a learner?
• Where did you learn the most about teaching English?
• Where do/did you teach?
• Where do you imagine yourself teaching in the future?
• When did you go to school? (i.e., in what decades, time periods)
• When did you feel most at ease as a learner?
• When did you decide to become an English teacher?
• When did you decide to become an English teacher educator?

HOW (10 min.)
• How do you learn best?
• How do/did your students learn best?
• How do you know when your students have learned something?
• How did you learn to
o Read?
o Write?
• How do you know when you are doing a good job as a teacher?
• How did you learn to teach?

WHY (10 min.)
• Why should we learn to read? Why should we learn to write?
• Why did you decide to become an English teacher?
• Why should we teach teachers?

2. Developing (50 min.)
Please review your answers to the questions above.
• (2 min. ) For each category (WHO, WHAT, WHEN/WHERE, HOW, WHY), please choose one or more
of the bullets about which you felt the most interest/sadness/anger/excitement.

(50 min.) Please spend 10 minutes developing your response to each category (you may write a few
paragraphs or a few pages). As you write, please consider the following:
• How might you bring readers into your exploration of the question(s)? (“When I think about…”
or “On the day that I…” or “As a writer, I typically…”)
• What story might you tell in answer to the question(s)?
o Who are the characters? What did they do/say?
o What happened? When? Where? How?
• How does this story relate your past experiences to your present assumptions and practices
regarding English/teaching and the preparation of future teachers? (“Because of this
experience, I know that I…” or “Looking back, I realize that…”)



 LAE 7735 – TeacherEd E-TAB 3
3. Connecting/Arranging (20 min.)
Please review your developed answers to the questions above.
• What connections do you see across your responses? You may wish to highlight (perhaps in
different colors) words, phrases, or ideas that go together.
• Please write for 10 minutes about the connections you identified. When you look at these answers
together, what do notice that you didn’t when they were separate?
• For 10 minutes, try arranging your responses in different orders (e.g., try putting your response to
“WHAT” after your response to “WHEN/WHERE.” What other connections emerge? Which order do
you like best?

4. Revising/Finishing (30 min.)
At this point, you have arranged your previous writing in an order that you like (perhaps one that best
brings out the connections you noticed). Now, please add a beginning and ending.
• Please spend 10 minutes writing a beginning: How might you lead readers into the set of stories
you will tell to relate your teaching history to your current assumptions/practices? How might
you prepare them for the connections you will make?
• Please spend 10 minutes writing an ending: How might you make connections for readers
across the stories you told? Together, what do those stories mean about how your past
experiences relate to your present assumptions/practices?
• Please spend 10 minutes reviewing your draft: How might you add/subtract/revise your stories
to bring out the connections you made in your beginning/ending?

Rubric:

Criterion 4.0 3.0 2.0 1.0
Process: Stories and interpretations emerge from the author’s
reflective process materials, turned in with the assignment draft
Significant: Stories and interpretations thoroughly address how the
author’s prior experiences inform current assumptions/practices
regarding English/teaching and the preparation of future teachers
Coherent: Stories and interpretations clearly connect to one
another and to an overall sense of how the author’s past relates to
present and future as an English teacher/educator