The Autobiography of the Answer: Emerging Specifically and Particularly as an English Teacher

ABSTRACT This essay explores how and why English teachers, especially women, must unpack and honour the many facets of our autobiography that make up our experiences and identities in classroom practice. Drawing on the work of Jane Miller and Anne Turvey, it starts with a ‘moment’ with a Year 10 class. It calls for attention to be paid to the intensely personal factors of place, time, gender and Anxiety that allow for its true significance in my emerging as an English teacher to be understood. It argues that alongside ‘the moment’, it is crucial to reflect on the significance other autobiographical ‘non-moments’ in our school lives so we can make sense, and perhaps write about, the myriad experiences we have there more richly than before.