Teacher as a Foreigner in Critical Multicultural Teacher Education

Abstract

Abstract In this article, I discuss my own experience as a critical multicultural educator who is an Asian American. Using the psychoanalytic ideas of Holding Environment and Countertransference, I use the two questions of where you am from and where are you really from in this article as a way to think through and learn about my own emotional world and its influence on multicultural education teacher education courses that I teach. I conclude that such exploration into my emotional world is helpful and necessary in giving new and different meanings to my emotional experience beyond seeing it as a mere response to students’ questions and understanding their psychical world in which questions like where are you from and where are you really from become the students’ own defense against difference.