Teacher Identities Institute
This institute offers an ongoing self-reflection environment to in-service and pre-service teachers in Southern Arizona. Participants will have the opportunity to meet teachers from Mexico and conduct different joint activities to explore and define their identity as educators of young children, adolescents, adults, first generation, low-income, immigrants and diverse community representing ethnicity, race, sexual preference, first language, etc. Identity definition and its comprehension will assist in-service and pre-service teachers from both countries, to conduct effective teaching and learning practices for Latinx students in borderlands.
According to Olsen (2008) and his analysis of different authors talking about What is Teacher Identity? Teacher Identity is a useful research frame because it treats teachers as whole persons in and across social contexts who continually reconstruct their views of themselves in relation to others, workplace characteristics, professional purposes, and cultures of teaching. A self-reflection stimulation will guide in-service and pre-service teachers to discover the real teacher’s world (Rodriguez, 1992; Britzman, 1986) and transform teaching practices into relevant learning experiences considering student lives, community, other significant characteristics, and themselves -teachers-as human beings.