Wilson, A.K. (2018). Changing gears. In M.M. Lengeling (Ed.) Narratives and experiences of teaching English in Mexico.

Mexico: Universidad de Guanajuato, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California.

Changing Gears

CHANGING GEARS

Amanda K. Wilson
Universidad de Guanajuato

Introduction

What makes a teacher? There are those who believe teaching is a vocation,
something one is born to do. Some believe it comes from the thousands of
hours one spends as a student. Still others believe it comes only with special
training and education. I believe there is validity in each of these theories,
but perhaps it is only when taken together that they provide a full picture
of what makes a teacher. Our life experiences are what shape us as teachers.
Those experiences allow us to understand our students, not only the way
they learn, but what is interesting or important to them, what they are ex-
periencing as they learn, and perhaps most significantly, what our students
are going through in their lives outside of the classroom. I believe, as teach-
ers, we must understand and accept our responsibility for all aspects of our
students’ lives while they are in our classrooms.
In examining my own very different and circuitous route to becom-
ing an English teacher in central Mexico, I recognize that my path has
been like that of so many other language teachers because of its difference.
Speaking with colleagues, I have yet to find any who have taken a straight
route toward this profession. It seems that everyone arrives at language
teaching through their own, uniquely circuitous route. This is such a com-
mon phenomenon that a phrase has been coined to describe it: “falling
into the job” (Lengeling, 2010, p. 28). But it is those different routes which
I believe make us teachers, and that give us the experience necessary to
understand our students and their own unique routes. Perhaps examining

15
 Amanda K . Wilson

the similarity of our differences may further help us understand our stu-
dents and their differences.
In this chapter, I will examine the question of “how” I arrived at this
profession in anticipation that it may help answer the question “why” I
have chosen to become an EFL teacher at this point in my life. I recognize
that the selection of life incidents I include in the story of my path toward
becoming an English teacher is necessarily subjective. I have, however, at-
tempted to recount them as honestly and objectively as I can, although even
that judgment I must accept is equally subjective. Access to “the subjective
dimensions of social action” (Maines, Pierce, & Lasett, 2008, p. 3) is made
possible through recounting life experiences. Through that, “motivations,
emotions, [and] imaginations” are made visible (Ibid.). In selecting my
own life incidents to re-tell, I have been struck by one common thread: it
has been the most difficult and painful experiences that have taught me the
most about myself and other people. It is those times that I find coming to
the foreground in recounting my path toward becoming a teacher.

Contexts: Colorado, Texas, Louisiana,

San Francisco Bay Area, and Mexico

The story of how I came to English teaching spans countries and decades. It
begins in southwestern Colorado, in a small town during the 1960s. Times
were less complicated, and a three-speed bike was all that a girl needed to be
fully occupied during the long, summer vacations. The gears start changing,
and the story moves to the Colorado School of Mines (Mines) followed
by Texas and Louisiana and the oil and gas business during the 1980s oil
boom. The boom turns to bust, which leads to another gear change, mov-
ing the story to law school and public interest law in the San Francisco Bay
Area. Life circumstances then take the story to central Mexico, to a univer-
sity town, and the third gear: a third career as an English language teacher.

16
Changing Gears

Literature Review

My story is about how and why I became a teacher. Teachers’ stories have
much to tell, not only about personal experiences, but also about how
those experiences relate to the world around us. Coffey and Atkinson
(1996) explain that teachers’ stories “have functions of self and cultural
identity, entertainment, moral evaluation, and news. They provide media
for reflecting teachers’ cultural context in the work they do” (pp. 62-63).
In examining teacher stories, we look for themes in our analysis of what
those stories have to tell (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Several themes
present themselves in telling my story, themes which are perhaps common
to the stories of other English teachers. In this section, I will discuss litera-
ture relevant to themes related to how teachers enter the field of language
teaching, whether it be by falling into the job or the result of outside pres-
sures for professional development, and what ultimately makes someone
a teacher.
As Lengeling (2010) notes, there is “a range of entry methods into the
EFL profession and a range of educational backgrounds” (p. 204). As men-
tioned above, the spectrum of theories about how someone becomes a
teacher includes the belief that teaching is a vocation, that it is something
absorbed during the thousands of hours one spends as a student, and that
it is something requiring special training and education. For English lan-
guage teaching, however, there has been an additional path of entry. This
path was recognized by Lengeling (2010) as almost universally followed
by English teachers in Mexico, where, she explains, “‘falling into’ the job
represents the primary EFL career entry path... Few teachers begin in the
classroom with any formal EFL training” (p. 190). Being able to speak the
language has historically been the key to obtaining an English teaching
job for many English language teachers. Teacher training or education has
not been considered that important, much less training or education in
the profession of teaching a language (Ibid.). Is there more to the English
language teaching than mastery of the language? I examine next the devel-
opment of theories regarding the teaching profession.

17
 Amanda K . Wilson

The etymological derivation of the word profession shows the term de-
veloped in a religious context. Brown (1992) explains, “The earliest mean-
ing of the term profession was religious, and referred to a proclamation of
faith” (p. 18). Its etymological history illustrates this evolution:

c.1200, vows taken upon entering a religious order,’ from Old French profession
(12c.), from Latin professionem (nominative professio) ‘public declaration,’ from
past participle stem of profiteri ‘declare openly’ (see profess). Meaning ‘any sol-
emn declaration’ is from mid-14c. (Profession, n.d., Online etymology dictionary)

Perhaps because of the historical significance of the term and its develop-
ment in a religious context, it is not uncommon to hear teachers speak of
their profession as a vocation, or of having a calling. While a natural ability
or interest in teaching may cause one to want to enter the profession, in
and of itself, it may not be sufficient today, as the world of language teach-
ing adapts to the needs of a growing global economy. We have begun to
recognize the complexities involved with teaching, and in particular, with
teaching a language. As a result, how teachers learn to teach has been the
subject of much research.
Lortie (1975) describes what he called an “apprenticeship of observa-
tion”, and argued that this apprenticeship is responsible for many of the
beliefs teachers have about teaching. Prior to receiving any teacher train-
ing, young teachers and student-teachers already have had significant
exposure to teachers and teaching. Lortie argued that those thousands
of hours spent as schoolchildren, watching and judging other teachers, is
what determines how we are as teachers. When we begin teaching, we may
simply imitate the way we were taught. As Borg (2004) notes, however,
“One of the consequences of this apprenticeship period is that... student
teachers may fail to realize that the aspects of teaching which they perceive
as students represented only a partial view of the teacher’s job” (p. 274).
This argues for more formalized training and education.
The academic reality of teachers has seen an increased pressure to have
ever-higher levels of educational degrees (Muñoz de Cote, Lengeling, &

18
Changing Gears

Armenta, 2014, p. 18). This increased emphasis on teacher training and

development has led to interest in borrowing concepts from other disci-
plines, sharing methodology with other subjects, publishing, and lecturing
(Darn, 2005). The path for many teachers in Mexico, who have historically
entered the language teaching profession by “falling into the job” (Lenge-
ling, 2010, p. 190), is changing. That has been my experience in becoming
an English teacher at a university in Mexico. How I approach teaching,
however, has been greatly influenced by my life experiences outside of the
teacher training classroom.
Johnson and Golombek (2003) recognize that teacher learning is
a lifelong process, and argue that we can understand the individual na-
ture of teacher learning better by recognizing that we do not learn in a
vacuum, but rather, that our cognitive development is a process of inter-
nalization, or the “progressive movement from external socially mediated
activity to internal mediation controlled by individual learners” (p. 731).
This individuality of the learning experience must take into account prior
life experiences. Those life experiences not only affect how we as teachers
learn, but ultimately, how we teach. As Golombek and Doran (2014) ex-
plain, “Learners perceive experiences in a new environment through the
prism of perezhivanie” (p. 104). In introducing the sociocultural theory,
Vygotsky (1994) used the Russian term perezhivanie to acknowledge the
importance of individual experience: “the same environmental situation
and the same environmental events can influence various people’s devel-
opment in different ways” because we each “experience [...] the situation
in a different way” (p. 341). How we experience and understand is a func-
tion of who we are as individuals, which is in turn dependent on our own
unique, prior life experiences. This theory of individuality in learning fits
my own experience with learning and understanding. A significant part of
the learning process is internal, and in telling my story, I hope to expose
some of this internal process. What is visible, after all, is what our experi-
ences ultimately lead us to (Johnson & Golombek, 2003).

19
 Amanda K . Wilson

Methodology

Writing my story has been a process of “living and telling, and reliving and
retelling” (Clandinin, Steeves, & Caine, 2013, p. xv) in a narrative frame-
work. Although a distinction may be made between “story” and “narra-
tive”, I use the terms interchangeably to mean a recounting of events in
an organized manner which leads to an interpretation with some social
significance (Squire et al., 2013, p. xv). In the re-telling, I have struggled
with what it means to talk about oneself. It is not easy, as society discour-
ages us from using the word “I”. Questions and self-doubt about my abil-
ity to narrate this story, as well as why anyone would even be interested,
have plagued me throughout this process. What “social significance”
(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 130) could my story represent? Part of
my doubt comes from the difficulty in selecting which life experiences to
re-tell, as well as how to tell them. The selecting and telling are bound by
my subjective view of what is relevant or important.
Qualitative research is “the product of the researcher’s subjective inter-
pretation of the data” (Dörnyei, 2011, p. 38), and is therefore a product of
the researcher’s personal values, history, attitudes, and beliefs. In interpret-
ing anyone’s story, that interpretation will be affected by one’s own personal
beliefs and background. There is a greater vulnerability, however, in inter-
preting one’s own story. While my prior life experiences clearly affect how
I have selected, viewed, and analyzed my own story, there is most probably
an even greater impact from those prior experiences on the process of re-
telling and analyzing precisely because it is my own story. My interpreta-
tion will necessarily be biased. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) recognized
that this is especially common in autobiographical texts as “memory is se-
lective, shaped, and retold in the continuum of one’s experiences” (p. 142).
As this process has been marked by my personal values, history, attitudes,
and beliefs, it is important to acknowledge and make that visible in order to
create as open and honest a narrative as possible (Dörnyei, 2011; Hunter,
Emerald, & Martin, 2013; Ortlipp, 2008). I have therefore also struggled
with how to make this process more transparent, and how to increase both

20
Changing Gears

the objectivity and reliability of my re-telling. Dörnyei (2011) encourages

this “because of the emphasis placed in qualitative research on uncover-
ing... meaning” (p. 59). For that reason, I have chosen to look first at the
question of “how” I arrived at this profession, on the path to discovering
“why” I became an English language teacher (Holstein & Gubrium, 2012;
Kohler Reissman, 2008). The details I include in the telling of my story will
hopefully help reveal some meaning (Daiute, 2014).

Data and Discussion

The telling of this story begins with a three-speed bike. It was a dark green
bike with white pin striping, a “girl’s bike”, given to me by my father for my
eighth summer. That bike carried me all over our small town in southwest-
ern Colorado for many summers: over the graveled streets in our neigh-
borhood, to the public swimming pool where I baked until the blonde hair
on the back of my hands and arms was crispy, and to the public library.
With my bike parked outside, I would enter the coolness of the library, and
the smell of books, to check out “the limit” every day it was open. That bike
had three gears, and it is three gear changes that have carried me to other
places in my life.

First Gear

The gears started changing, and my story moved to the Colorado School of
Mines (Mines) in Golden, Colorado. In high school, the pie graph show-
ing my aptitude test results indicated that I had an equal aptitude for all
skills, or no particular aptitude for any one area of study. I was offered
scholarships to study engineering and journalism. Because I could more
easily transfer from engineering to a liberal arts college than the other way
around if I decided to make a change, I chose Mines. It had a joint pro-
gram with the University of Denver Law School for graduate school, and
as I had spent many hours after school sitting in my father’s law office, I
thought that path might be a good way to accommodate my lack of a par-

21
 Amanda K . Wilson

ticular aptitude. So I enrolled at Mines to study geophysical engineering.

In a class where coeds comprised approximately five percent of the student
body (Altman et al., 1999), it was not always a welcoming environment for
“girls”. After a particularly grueling exam upset a coed classmate, one of
the civil engineering professors complained, “If they’re going to allow girls
in this school, I wish they would make it so they can’t cry.”
When I graduated with a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), I went to work for
Superior Oil Company. From the office headquarters in Houston, Texas, I
was sent to the swamps and marshes of southern Louisiana and the moun-
tains of west Texas. Monitoring the work of a contract field crew from Ca-
jun Exploration was one of my first field assignments. As a “company bird
dog” at age twenty-two, my job was to observe the field crew’s progress and
make daily reports to my office. Even in those days, there was a man on the
crew who refused to come to work while I was there because he believed it
was bad luck to have a woman in the field. While the rest of the crew was
more accepting, it was still a “man’s world”. We spent long, muddy days
on boats working in the marsh lands located south of Avery Island, where
McIlhenny Tabasco Sauce is made. When I asked the crew chief where
I could use the restroom, he laughed and said, “Make like a raccoon and
hang over the side of the boat by your toenails.” I stopped drinking water
for the remainder of the weeks I was with that crew.
Superior Oil was bought by Mobil Oil in a frenzy of mergers that con-
sumed the oil and gas industry in the 1980s, and at the same time, the oil
boom turned to bust. I watched as my co-workers, men with mortgages
and kids in college, were “found redundant”, and lost their jobs in a nonex-
istent job market. In keeping with my original plan, I was already enrolled
in the University of Houston, College of Law when the bottom fell out and
I got laid off.

Second Gear

When I started talking to my parents about going to law school, I wor-

ried that I would be thirty years old by the time I graduated. My father

22
Changing Gears

asked, “How old would you be if you didn’t go to law school?” He was right,
of course, and so back to school I went. Compared to working in the oil
and gas industry, it was a welcome relief. Moreover, considering the fate of
many of my colleagues in the oil and gas industry, I felt fortunate to be able
to change gears.
While in law school, I took several classes in environmental law, as it
seemed a natural combination with my undergraduate degree and work
background. One semester, I had an internship with DNA (Dinébe’iiná
Náhiiłna be Agha’diit’ahii) People’s Legal Services on the Navajo Reserva-
tion to work on a lawsuit involving coal mining on the reservation. From
where I worked in the small, reservation town in New Mexico, I could see
the mountains around the town in Colorado where I grew up. When the
price of coal dropped, mining plans stopped, and the need for a lawsuit
disappeared. Since I was there for the semester, they put me to work rep-
resenting Navajo clients in cases involving consumer rights, government
benefits, and other typically “public interest” cases involving poor and un-
derprivileged people. I was like a duck to water. I finally discovered the
type of work I wanted to do.
When I graduated, I was able to continue working in public interest law,
representing children, elderly, immigrants, prisoners, disabled, and other
disenfranchised groups in class action and impact litigation. Through that
work, I watched clients struggle to make changes in their lives by using the
legal justice system to make their conditions better. As people disenfran-
chised by their conditions, it took courage for them to try to work within a
system which had left them in positions of such disadvantage. Having law-
yers at their side, however, gave them an advantage they had been lacking.
But their experiences in dealing with the legal justice system were still dif-
ficult, even painful at times. I stood beside them as they stood up against
their oppressors. I watched Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees stand up
against a slumlord, despite their understandable fear and mistrust of gov-
ernments after the almost unspeakable traumas they had experienced at
the hand of their own. Some Cambodian women refugees had been struck
blind by their experiences under the Khmer Rouge; although there was

23
 Amanda K . Wilson

nothing physically wrong with their eyes, their brains simply refused to
process what they saw any longer (Van Boemel & Rozée, 2008). I stood
with African American families after a group of high school students com-
plained about being denied service at a local Denny’s Restaurant because
of their race. They were refused service when they attempted to go there
following a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) College Forum so they could continue talking about their col-
lege plans. After those high school students, children of Freedom Riders,
brought Denny’s discriminatory practices to light, thousands of other Af-
rican Americans came forward with similar complaints, and our class ac-
tion was finally settled. I sat beside women inmates as they testified about
sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of the very guards who con-
trolled almost every aspect of their lives in jail. Many of these women had
long histories of sexual abuse as children and adult women. I heard them
talk about the fears they faced, and saw the courage it required for them to
then face the guards.
The ordeals my clients went through in trying to improve their lives was
at times difficult to witness, in my role as their lawyer. It took strength and
bravery for them to see their cases through. Working with clients during
cases that sometimes lasted in excess of five years gave me the opportunity
to get to know them, their families, and their life circumstances. I believed
the work to be meaningful, and I valued my role as a lawyer helping people
improve their lives.

Third Gear

Life is rarely a straight path in my experience, and events along that path
seem rarely to be of our own making. It is what we do with those life
events that both are a result of who we are, and shape who we will be-
come. With my step-daughter’s graduation from high school, my husband
and I took the opportunity to move. We both wanted the experience of
living in another country and, after spending some time traveling, settled
on central Mexico. In anticipation of that move, I went back to school

24
Changing Gears

again, this time to study Spanish. I loved learning the language, and am
proud of the Associate in Arts in Spanish I obtained in a night program at
a local community college.
Once in Mexico, I began working with a local nonprofit organization
which provided university scholarships for bright, poor students. Working
with and getting to know the students and their families was a privilege.
I saw the changes the students went through, the challenges they faced
going to university, and the opportunities which were opened to them as
a result of an education. I had felt fortunate to get to know my clients and
be part of their struggles to improve their lives, and working with these
university students gave me the same feeling. I discovered what Ur (2002)
summarized: a teacher is a “bringer-about of real-world change” (p. 390).
Just as I had recognized that public interest law was work I loved, my expe-
rience working with these university scholarship students helped me reach
the same realization about teaching.
Perhaps teaching is “in my blood”, my “calling”. My mother taught
second grade on the Navajo Reservation when I was growing up, and in
1923, my paternal grandmother was in the first class to graduate with a
teaching degree from Western State College, after it was renamed from
the Colorado State Normal School (Western State Colorado University,
n.d., Western’s History). I was able to teach English in a night program
for adult learners similar to the one I had enrolled in to learn Spanish.
As a litigation lawyer, I had been invited to teach courses and lecture on
trial techniques, negotiation and mediation, interview and counseling
techniques, ethics, and other areas of substantive law. Teaching other
lawyers was a challenge, but one I enjoyed. Teaching English was an even
bigger challenge because I had no training or experience. Unwittingly I
had joined the legion of other “backpack teachers” who become language
teachers simply because of their ability to speak the language. Without
any teacher training or education, I turned to my “apprenticeship” as a
student to help me as I began teaching English. I found I relied not only
on my experience as a student and the hours I spent observing teach-
ers, specifically as a Spanish-language student, but I believe I found my

25
 Amanda K . Wilson

teaching style by remembering experiences with other lawyer-trainers,

and copying how they taught.
After teaching in the night program, I enquired at the Universidad de
Guanajuato (UG) about teaching English there. Despite all my education,
I was told I was not qualified. The academic reality of university teachers
has seen an increased pressure to have ever-higher levels of educational
degrees (Muñoz de Cote, Lengeling, & Armenta, 2014). At the UG, this
mindset includes the professional development of language teachers
(Ibid.). I remembered my father’s words when I had questioned the wisdom
of finishing law school at the age of thirty. If I wanted to teach university
students, no matter my age now, I needed to get the necessary education. I
entered the In-service Certificate in English Language Teaching (ICELT)
from the University of Cambridge, given at the UG.
Being a student again felt good. I was excited about learning to teach
English as a foreign language. The ICELT program, however, required
some significant adjustments, particularly in my approach to research
and writing. As a lawyer, I had to rely on the opinions of different courts
to argue my clients’ positions. Judges never expressed any interest in my
personal opinions, nor could they. Their rulings depended solely on the
concept of stare decisis, meaning they had to look to the written opinions
of other judges. My job as a lawyer was to find and then argue the applica-
bility of those other written opinions. The ICELT program included ex-
tensive research and writing assignments, and I thought this would come
naturally for me as it had been a big part of my work in law. Although I had
experience with research and writing, I was not prepared for the world of
academic writing. It was a steep learning curve. Even the citation style us-
ing American Psychological Association (APA) was markedly different.
When I discovered that my opinions, albeit supported by other authority,
were not only expected but required, I struggled.
I continue the struggle with the process of writing my story here. This
adjustment in the way I approach writing has been one of the biggest chal-
lenges I have faced in my pursuit of teacher education. Just as I have re-
sisted the idea of writing about my personal beliefs, I find the process of

26
Changing Gears

writing about my personal experiences even more daunting. I am plagued

with the question of why anyone would care about either my beliefs or my
story. To write my own story is very foreign.
When the UG began offering a Maestría en Lingüística Aplicada a la
Enseñanza del Inglés (MA), I signed up. Admittedly, there were times I had
to wonder why I was pursuing yet another degree. But most of the time I
felt happy to be learning about my new-found profession. Once again, I was
in a position to learn by observing my teachers. It was a strong reminder of
what it is like to be a student, of the frustrations and anxieties students face
as they try to juggle the demands of their classes with a personal life. It was
also a good reminder of the challenges my English-language students face
trying to learn a second language, as some of the MA courses are taught
in Spanish. As I went through the process of filling in the gaps noted by
Borg (2004) between what I observed as a student and what I was learning
through formalized teacher education, I gained a fuller view of my job as
a teacher.
Although I enjoyed learning and being a student again, the greatest les-
sons and feelings of satisfaction come every day in my own classroom. I
continue to teach English language learners, but I now find myself making
the transition to becoming a teacher trainer at the UG, giving classes in
both the BA in Teaching Spanish as a Second Language and BA in English
Language Teaching, as well as the Diploma in Teaching English. As with
being a lawyer, it is the opportunity to get to know my students and learn
about their life stories in my role as their teacher, a “bringer-about of real-
world change”, that gives me a sense that this work is meaningful. Once
again, I have discovered an opportunity to work with those who are in the
process of improving their lives.

Conclusion

Three gear changes have brought me to central Mexico, working in a uni-

versity as an English teacher and teacher trainer. By examining the path
that has brought me to the teaching profession, I understand that although

27
 Amanda K . Wilson

it has been circuitous, the path I followed, “how” I got here, has been re-
markably similar to many other language teachers. I first “fell into the job”
simply because I speak the language. Without any teacher education or
training, I turned to my “apprenticeship” as a student as I began teaching
English to help me formulate both a teaching style and my beliefs about
teaching a language. Because of outside forces, a requirement at my uni-
versity that teachers have formal teaching education, I became a student
again, giving me the opportunity to correct the partial view I had of my
role as teacher.
I now turn to the question of “why” I am a teacher. My story, as with
all teachers’ stories, reveals my identity as a teacher as “that identity is evi-
dent” (Chan, Keyes, & Ross, 2013, p. xiii) in our stories of teaching and as
teachers. As much as I have struggled with academic research and writ-
ing, and have had to adapt to the idea of expressing my personal beliefs, to
write about what I believe and the experiences I have had leading to those
beliefs has been simultaneously forbidding and freeing. Much of my life
has been spent focusing outward, first on my clients and their life stories,
and now on my students and theirs. Examining my story, turning inward
and focusing on my experiences and beliefs, has led to a better understand-
ing of why I am a teacher. Through this process, I recognize the value I
place on having work that I believe to be meaningful. I appreciate the im-
portance I place on helping those who are working to improve their lives.
I now accept that this may be my calling.
In internalizing the ideas expressed by Johnson and Golombek (2003)
about the sociocultural theory of the cognitive development of L2 teach-
ers, I recognize that as teachers, we have an understanding based not only
on our education and experience, but our individual life experiences. It is
this mixture which we use to help our students learn. Lengeling (2010)
explains that “teachers hold a complex body of knowledge, gained from so-
cially constructed experiences within a social context” (p. 57). The socio-
cultural theory of teacher learning reflects this idea of teacher knowledge
as an understanding which, like a lawyer’s, is developed through a process
of taking in knowledge through education and experience, and ultimately,

28
Changing Gears

through the prism of our individual stories, developing it into an under-

standing that goes beyond that simple knowledge.
Mine has been a journey of constant questioning and adjustment that
began as I sat waiting in a chair in my father’s law office after school each
day, looking at a picture hanging across from me with a quote by Abraham
Lincoln: “A lawyer’s time and advice is his stock in trade.” When I became
a lawyer, I understood this quote to mean that I had joined a profession
which allowed me to offer something unique because of my education and
experience: not simply knowledge of the law, but an understanding that
came from my life experiences which I could use to help my clients. Eng-
lish language teachers have a similar “stock in trade” which relies on all of
our life experiences, in addition to specific education and training. It is our
stock in trade –our life experiences, sense of vocation, training and experi-
ence– which makes us teachers.

R efer ences

Altman, K., Riebe, S., Abbink, T., Beach, M.B., Bolis, J., Kramer, S.,
Mencin, C., Schenk, T., & Tittes, P. (1999). A century of women
at Mines: A retrospective collection of the challenges, victories and
achievements of Colorado School of Mines alumnae. Golden, CO:
Florence Caldwell Centennial Celebration Committee and the
Women in Science, Engineering and Mathematics Program, Colorado
School of Mines. Retrieved from http://inside.mines.edu/ UserFiles/
File/WISEM/A%20Century%20of%20Women%20at%20Mines.pdf
Borg, M. (2004). Key concepts in ELT: The apprenticeship of observation.
ELT Journal, 58 (3), 274-276.
Brown, J. (1992). The definition of a profession: The authority of metaphor in
the history of intelligence testing, 1890-1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Chan, E., Keyes, D., & Ross, V. (2013). Narrative inquirers in the midst of
meaning-making: Interpretive acts of teacher educators. Bingley, UK:

29
 Amanda K . Wilson

Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Clandinin, D.J., & Connelly, F.M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience
and story in qualitative research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Clandinin, D.J., Steeves, P., & Caine, V. (2013). Composing lives in transition:
Early school leavers. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Coffey, A., & Atkinson, P. (1996). Making sense of qualitative data:
Complementary research strategies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
Daiute, C. (2014). Narrative inquiry: A dynamic approach. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Darn, S. (2005). Beyond training: Teaching, a review of the state of EFL
in UK and out from UK. Humanising Language Teaching, 3. Retrieved
from www.hltmag.co.uk/may05/mart01.rtf
Dörnyei, Z. (2011). Research methods in applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Golombek, P., & Doran, M. (2014). Unifying cognition, emotion, and
activity in language teacher professional development. Teaching and
Teacher Education, 39, 102-111. Retrieved from http://www.personal.
psu.edu/kej1/aplng587/Readings/Week_07_Cognition_Emotion/
Golombek_Doran_2014.pdf
Holstein, J.A., & Gubrium, J.F. (2012). Varieties of narrative inquiry.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Hunter, L., Emerald, E., & Martin, G. (2013). Participatory activist research
in the globalized world: Social change through the cultural professions.
Dordrecht: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-94-007-4426-4
Johnson, K.E., & Golombek, P.R. (2003). “Seeing” teacher learning.
TESOL Quarterly, 37(4), 729-737. doi: 10.2307/3588221
Kohler Reissman, C. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Lengeling, M.M. (2010). Becoming an English teacher. Guanajuato, Gto.:
Universidad de Guanajuato.

30
Changing Gears

Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago, IL:

University of Chicago Press.
Maines, M.J., Pierce, J.L., & Lasett, B. (2008). Telling stories: The use of
personal narratives in the social sciences and history. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Muñoz de Cote, L.M., Lengeling, M.M., & Armenta, I. (2014).
Researching teachers’ professional development and their voices.
In M.M. Lengeling, L.M. Muñoz de Cote, & I. Armenta Swadley
(Eds.), Narrative inquiry in central Mexico of EFL teachers’ professional
development and research (pp. 17-37). Guanajuato, Gto.: Universidad
de Guanajuato.
Ortlipp, M. (2008). Keeping and using reflective journals in the
qualitative research process. The Qualitative Report, 13 (4), 695-
705. Retrieved from http://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.
cgi?article=1579&context=tqr
Profession (n.d.). In Online etymology dictionary. Retrieved from:
http://www.etymonline.com/ index.php?term=profession
Squire, C., Davis, M., Esin, C., Andrews, M., Harrison, B., Hydén, L-C.,
& Hydén, M. (2014). What is narrative research? London: Bloomsbury
Academic.
Ur, P. (2002). The English teacher as professional. In J.C. Richards &
W.A. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An anthology
of current practice (pp. 388-392). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Van Boemel, G.B., & Rozée, P.D. (2008). Treatment for psychosomatic
blindness among Cambodian refugee women. Women & Therapy, 13
(3), 239-266. doi: J015V13N03_05.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1994). The problem of the environment. In R. van der
Veer, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), The Vygotsky reader (pp. 338-354). Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers.
Western State Colorado University (n.d.). Western’s History. Retrieved

31
 Amanda K . Wilson

from http://www.western.edu/about/brief-history-western-state-
colorado-university

Discussion Questions

1. The author used the metaphor of “changing gears” to represent her

teacher development. What metaphor would you use for your teacher
development?
2. What do you think makes a teacher? Do you agree or disagree with the
author?
3. Is your story of becoming a teacher similar or different from the author’s?
4. Why and how did you become a language teacher?
5. What are some life experiences which have influenced you as a teacher?

32