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Educational Renaissance Vol. 6  (2017)

Why didn?t anyone tell us what it would really be like?

How Exper ienced Secondary Teachers Make Sense of  
Their  Role
Russell Greinke, PhD, Universit y of  Cent ral Missour i 

email: greinke@ucmo.edu

Abst ract
Historically, teacher retention has been a more significant issue than teacher recruitment. This 
study looks at how teachers become ?comfortable in their own skin.? To be successful in their 
chosen careers, teachers undergo a process of Teacher Identity Formation that blends one?s 
educational philosophy, teaching style, and personality. Finding one?s own voice, one that is less 
imitative of influential teachers from one?s past, occurs in those ?Borderlands? where the 
personal and the professional meet, where who you are as a person and who you are as a 
teacher coalesce. Via an interview-based phenomenological study, this paper uses the 
cumulative wisdom of successful, experienced teachers to look at how they ultimately make 
sense of their position and overcome obstacles to identity formation. The findings may offer 
guidance to new teachers and teacher educators.   

Research Article

Int roduct ion

This research study focused exclusively on the 
question: How do experienced full-time teachers 
make sense of their role of teaching on the 
secondary level? There is a need for such a study. 
The narratives of teaching in Kane (1991), for 
example, followed the formula of beginning-
teacher-experiences-frustrations-but-then-lives-
happily-ever-after, whereas the reality may be 
quite different. The National Council of Teachers of 
English, in an issue of The Council Chronicle (2005), 
reminded readers that, regarding beginning 
teachers, ?nearly half will leave teaching within 
their first five years? (p. 2). This attrit ion rate 
assuredly has many causes, yet it suggests the 
need for a research study that goes straight to 
teachers themselves in order to peel back the 
layers and discover the center of their lived 
experience.

Allen (2000) used an analogy to Dorothy from The 
Wonderful Wizard of Oz to recall her first year as a 
teacher:

Like Dorothy, I had ended up in a place 
inhabited by people I didn?t recognize from my 
past experiences as a student and intern 
teacher. Unlike Dorothy, I had no idea where to 
begin looking for a wizard who could help me 
learn how to teach struggling and reluctant 
secondary school readers . . . . So I began 
counting the days until I could resign. (p. 1)

That is just one example of why it could prove 
insightful to understand, and capture the reality of, 
classroom teaching by going directly to 
experienced teachers.

Allen (2000) recalled a meaningful dialogue she 
had with new teachers, which highlighted the 
incongruity between teacher expectations and 
reality:



GREINKE |  WHY DIDN?T ANYONE TELL US

I recently had the opportunity to work with fifty 
teachers who were in their first year of 
teaching. I said to them, ?What would you like 
to ask me now that there is no one in the room 
who is evaluating you?? They had one heartfelt 
response to that question: ?Why didn?t anyone 
tell us what it would really be like?? (p. 88).

That is what this study seeks to do, from the 
perspective of teachers who know.

Such research may enlighten teacher training 
programs as it discovers the center of teaching as 
it is experienced by teachers who are there or have 
been there. They would seemingly possess the 
wisdom that comes from transforming theory into 
practice. Tremmel (1999) recalled that ?Once, in a 
methods class, when we were reading a realistic 
account of a teacher?s struggles, one of my 
students burst out with enthusiasm over having 
finally read something in a university course that 
seemed real and not contrived to present an 
idealized view of students or teaching practice? (p. 
42).

Those who train teachers might use this study?s 
findings to more finely calibrate what they 
emphasize regarding how working teachers 
experience the classroom.

Background

A terrible mistake was made and I was offered a 
position teaching a writing workshop. . . . Like 
branding steers or embalming the dead, teaching 
was a profession I had never seriously considered. 
I was clearly unqualified, yet I accepted the job 
without hesitation, as it would allow me to wear a 
tie and go by the name of Mr. Sedaris.

--David Sedaris,?The Learning Curve? in Me Talk 
Pretty One Day

There are substantive constructs that buttress a 
phenomenological study focusing on the lived 
experience of secondary teachers and how they 
make sense of that role. Social Identity theorists 
(e.g., Tajfel & Turner [1986]) have argued that part 
of our identity derives from the groups (e.g., 
secondary teachers in the case of this study) we 
feel connected to. Boss, Doherty, LaRossa, 

Schumm, and Steinmetz (1993) explain that 
??Identities? refer to self-meanings in a role? (p. 145) 
and that ?Roles are shared norms applied to the 
occupants of social positions? (p. 147). Social 
Identity theorists, then, try to understand 
individuals within the context of their roles in 
groups. Allport (1937) explained that the social 
influence is relevant to a study of identity 
formation because social constructs can ?become 
interiorized within the person as a set of personal 
ideals, attitudes, and traits? (p. viii). Our way of 
being in the world is partly explained by the social 
roles we occupy.

Alsup (2006) focused on pre-service teachers to 
test her hypothesis that the formation of a teacher 
identity means blending the professional life of a 
secondary teacher with the unique human being 
who inhabits that role. Her study found that 
learning to live in the space where those two 
identities overlap, which she labeled ?borderland 
discourse? and defined as ?discourse in which 
disparate personal and professional subjectivities 
are put into contact toward a point of integration? 
(p. 205), is a necessary ingredient to settling into 
the role of teacher. She focused on the 
experiences of six pre-service English teachers to 
learn how they underwent the transition from 
student to teacher. The three neophyte teachers 
who made the least progress in establishing a 
sense of teacher identity were the three who did 
not take teaching jobs, a possible cause/effect 
relationship that Alsup found significant.

A research study by McCann, T., Johannessen, L., 
and Ricca, B. (2005), which centered on ?three 
student teachers and eight other novice teachers? 
(p. 8), identified a trend that pre-service teachers? 
expectations of what secondary teaching is like are 
often discordant with their experiences once they 
have their own classrooms. The McCann et al. 
study offered various findings, including charges 
that beginning teachers often underestimate the 
workload and thus have difficulties with time 
management, they have less autonomy/control 
over their own classroom curriculum than they 
had imagined, and they find it challenging to form 
positive relationships (as opposed to mere crowd 

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GREINKE |  WHY DIDN?T ANYONE TELL US

control) with their students. Of particular interest 
is their treatment of what they term a ?teacher 
persona,? a ?public self,? or a ?public persona.? The 
study acknowledges the significant learning curve 
beginning teachers face in finding a comfortable fit 
with the role of teacher.

Met hods

Research Design, Researcher Role, and Assumptions

This qualitative study takes a phenomenological 
approach, because the study, as Creswell (1998) 
defined phenomenology, ?includes entering the 
field of perception of participants; seeing how they 
experience, live, and display the phenomenon; and 
looking for the meaning of the participants? 
experiences? (p. 31). It involves asking individuals 
about their lived experiences.

Participants

The interviews were conducted with fifteen 
experienced secondary teachers from multiple 
disciplines since the experience of being a 
secondary teacher was the focus of this study. As 
such I was ?identifying at least the initial elements 
of what will be the final sample? (Lincoln & Guba, 
1985, p. 234). The participants ranged in age from 
the latter 20s to the mid-60s. Most were from the 
humanities. Twelve were female; three were male.

The data was derived from interviews. Participants 
are given pseudonyms.

Data Sources

The data I drew on came from interviews with the 
participants, technical literature, and nontechnical 
literature. My own experience as a teacher gave 
me a grounding in terms of understanding the 
context of the data. Since I sought the lived 
experience of secondary teachers, observations 
were not a data source. I wanted the teachers to 
describe how they made sense of the job, not 
make conjectures based on what I saw.

Analysis Procedures

Seidman (1998) identified interviewing as the ideal 
vehicle for obtaining analyzable data in a 
phenomenological study because ?At the root of 
in-depth interviewing is an interest in 

understanding the experience of other people and 
the meaning they make of that experience? (p. 3). 
When patterns in the interviews became clear, I 
cross-referenced with the nontechnical literature. I 
used inductive analysis (see Hatch [2002]), ranging 
from reading the data to coding to rereading the 
data to triangulating categories with the data to 
searching for negative cases to identifying 
emergent themes within and across categories to 
mapping themes to pulling evidence to support 
findings.

Result s

The central hypothesis I find in my study is that 
secondary teachers who stay in the profession 
form a ?teacher identity? that blends who they are 
as individuals with their role as teachers. This 
?identity formation? has a number of aspects to it, 
and there are factors that help, and others that 
hinder, this creation of a professional identity.

Def in ing Teacher  Ident it y

A teacher identity is a self-image that successfully 
incorporates the job of teacher with the actual 
person who holds that job. It?s like wearing a suit 
of clothes that fits and one feels comfortable in. 
Here is how Jane described the process of realizing 
that being a secondary teacher was an integral 
part of who she is as a person:

That was a really cool transformation. When I 
first started teaching, I was basically a building 
sub for 3 1/2 years in ____ because you just 
couldn?t find a job and the more that I looked, it 
was just so disheartening because I couldn?t 
find anything. And that teacher identity was 
not really there? I was just the sub. You know, 
even though I was in a school that really liked 
me and I really liked them. But I still wasn?t 
full-fledged. You know, I was on the outskirts, 
on the cusp. So for the first couple of years, it 
was like I really couldn?t see myself that way. 
You know, it wasn?t just a job, but I didn?t 
identify myself, you know, as teacher.

Contrast that with Jane?s earlier work experience, 
when, to use my metaphor, she tried on suits of 
clothes that did not fit:

28



GREINKE |  WHY DIDN?T ANYONE TELL US

I spent 13 years in retail and a couple years in 
the military, and I never really looked at myself, 
well, I was in the Navy so I wasn?t really a 
soldier, but I never really, you know, thought of 
myself that way. As far as my identity as a retail 
person, I always knew there was something 
else out there. It didn?t really fit. Even though I 
was in management, it just didn?t fit. This 
[secondary teaching] fits for me, and it fits 
more and more every year.

Physical Presence

The way a teacher physically occupies a classroom 
is part of identity formation. In teaching, this 
physical presence includes the aspect of dress. 
Alsup (2006), part of my literature review, believed 
that oftentimes teachers underemphasize this 
factor because ?as academics, we are used to living 
lives in our heads? (p. 92). She cited Ginsburg?s 
1988 study, with its ?emphasis on ?socially 
constructing an image of professionalism? through 
clothing? (p. 93). Alsup cautioned that ?without 
such attention to the bodily, without admitting 
that the core identity is not only intellectual or 
ideological but also corporeal, the new teacher will 
have a difficult time developing a self-actualized 
professional identity? (p. 95). Her study offered a 
take-home message to teacher educators: ?This is 
where the teacher educator must step in with 
assignments and classroom activities that assist in 
the creation of a fully embodied teacher identity? 
(p. 105).

Survival

Another aspect of identity formation is the 
necessity to survive long enough in the profession 
to form an identity. During this study, it didn?t 
seem to me that I was uncovering any situations 
that could be labeled ?negative cases,? that is, 
participants who did not feel a ?teacher identity.? A 
random conversation offered an insight. All of my 
participants have at least five years of experience. 
In the course of talking to someone who turned 
out to be a former secondary teacher, who had 
taught three years before switching careers, I 
asked her about the concept of forming a teacher 
identity. She said she never felt she had a ?teacher 

identity.? That was revealing to me since it 
suggested that the lack of ?negative cases? was 
explained by the level of experience of my 
participants. Tremmel (1999) recalled his former 
student teacher ?Linda,? whom the teachers at the 
school where she ended up working remembered 
as ?the best teacher any of them had ever known? 
(p. 58). What made her so remarkable was that 
?When she first became a teacher she committed 
herself, body and soul together, to her students 
and their learning. She worked twelve-, sixteen-, 
eighteen-, twenty-hour days. She worked wonders 
of the sort that are too rarely worked in the 
schools? (p. 59). Unfortunately, she neglected to 
consider her own survival. ?The classes Linda 
taught were too large, the number of preparations 
she had was too many, the amount of work it took 
to do a good job was too great. Where other 
teachers would have pulled back and settled for 
less, this teacher pushed on, could not figure out a 
way to survive, and finally left? (p. 59). The lesson 
Tremmel learned from this was ?Survival is first. 
Survival is always first? (p. 42).

My own participants appeared to have learned the 
same lesson in their own unique ways. Chloe 
described her first year of teaching as ?Terrible. 
Awful. I wouldn?t wish it on my worst enemy. I 
learned that I need other people to survive. I 
learned that my survival is the most important 
thing.? Barbara warned that ?teachers are so over 
worked and underpaid, it 's pathetic. . . . We can't 
push teachers to give 150% right out of the gate, 
but that 's what we do.? Annette explained why she 
sees survival as such a crucial factor: ?We have too 
much to do on top of teaching students on a daily 
basis and too litt le time to do it. Teaching 
consumes our lives, and if we lose that, you know, 
the passion that called us to the profession in the 
first place, it will eat us alive. It will burn us out.? 
Angela remembered how this insight hit her:

My mentor teacher, one of the things he told 
us before we graduated was, ?Don?t try to be 
superteacher.? And he shared a story about 
one night after a chili supper, the school he 
was teaching at down in Alabama, and he?s 
mopping up chili. And of course, he had stacks 

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GREINKE |  WHY DIDN?T ANYONE TELL US

of papers to grade, lessons to plan, and he kind 
of came to that discovery that, ?If I am going to 
stay in this profession, in one way or another, I 
have got to, at moments, just let myself be and 
not worry about the things that aren?t getting 
done. Because I?ve got to mop up this stupid 
chili. So his message: Don?t worry about being 
superteacher. Be concerned with survival, and 
you?ll be able to do great things . . . And that 
helped me because there were so many years 
where, yeah, staying until 11:00 to clean up the 
concession stand and having to do all the other 
duties that pulled me out of, you know, what I 
really wanted to do. I just had to stop and say, 
this is part of it and make it through. And say 
sometimes, I don?t care, I?m not going to grade 
those papers right now. I?m just going to sit 
here and be a vegetable for a bit. And that has 
stayed with me all the way through, that I can 
only do so much, and then I need to take a litt le 
breather in there.

St udent s

Yet another important aspect of a teacher identity 
is the students, a factor that came up repeatedly 
during this study. Atwell (1998) offered her 
reflections on this dynamic, regarding her middle 
school students:

My kids pretty much look like adults. Most are 
taller than I am. When an eighth-grade girl lets 
me try on her shoes, often they?re too big. 
When the shoe does fit? when it?s even a style 
I?d buy for myself? I forget for a minute that 
although my students? worlds and my world 
intersect, they are different. I have to keep 
relearning the ways young adolescents are like 
me, and ways they aren?t. (p. 56)

The shoes in this case work as a metaphor for 
finding a teacher identity that fits.

Beyond t he Classroom

It is clear that teacher identity plays out while the 
teacher is in the classroom, as when McCourt 
(2005) noted that after eight years of secondary 
teaching, ?I was learning what was obvious: You 
have to make your own way in the classroom. You 

have to find yourself. You have to develop your 
own style, your own techniques? (p. 113). Yet this 
professional identity may also extend beyond the 
classroom. Jane is still her ?teacher self? when she 
shops:

Now when I go into Wal-mart and, you know, 
I?m starting to get the brothers and the sisters 
of kids that I had when I first got here and, you 
know, I know parents and they remember me. 
It?s like, ?Oh, yeah! You were so-and-so?s 
teacher,? and ?Hi, Miss ____, how you doing?? 
Usually there are big smiles and all that kind of 
stuff . . . That is part of who I am. You know, 
those kids are, in a way, a mirror identity of me 
because I am part of them . . . That is part of 
me there.

The consensus among the participants was that 
they saw themselves occupying a role that truly 
mattered.

Helping t he Creat ion of  an Ident it y

There are identifiable factors that aid in the 
formation of a teacher identity; one example is life 
experience. Those teachers who had ?other lives? 
before becoming teachers felt that impacted their 
identity. Jane explained, ?I do have a much 
different background than they [fellow teachers] 
do. And so, I can make connections, I can do things 
differently because I?ve been out there in a 
different world a lot longer than they have. I may 
not be valued for that quite yet [smiling], but I 
value that.? Diane, who noted she was ?45 before 
she chose this career,? stated, ?I went into my first 
classroom with the confidence to manage 
behaviors based on experience. Truth is, my 
college courses did very litt le to prepare me to 
successfully handle student behavior.?

Hinder ing t he Creat ion of  an Ident it y

There are also factors that hinder the formation of 
a teacher identity; one example is external 
demands on the classroom time of secondary 
teachers. Chloe complained that ?First you have to 
make sure no counselor wants to come in and use 
your class time to schedule classes for next year. 
Then you have to make sure there are no district 

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GREINKE |  WHY DIDN?T ANYONE TELL US

or state mandates that require you to teach 
certain things. Then, hopefully, you can finally 
teach some [content].? Diane commiserated about 
?government mandated rules that take way too 
much time away from teaching and make litt le if 
any difference in education.?

Can Help or  Hinder

Sometimes the same factor is identified by some 
participants as helping, and others as hindering, 
identity formation. It all depended on the 
situation. An example is administration. Karen 
happily recalled ?a principal who was really 
wonderful, and there was no reason that he 
should have been so nice to me as many mistakes 
as I made.? Angela proudly remembered working 
?in a school that hated standardized tests. The 
administrators would publicly make that 
comment? that they did not believe in every-year 
standardized testing. So they did them, but they 
saw them as just one litt le piece of the whole 
puzzle. We did online portfolios while I was there, 
so we were really progressive in the way we looked 
at assessment.? Jackie, however, identified the low 
point of her teaching career as ?not being able to 
order a program for three years in a row that cost 
$300 even after I clearly demonstrated to the 
principal my need. It cost more than that to outfit 
a football player, which I pointed out. The answer I 
got was that football is what passes bond issues.? 
Annette resented that ?our administration has a 
difficult time supporting us in matters concerning 
poor student conduct.? Edward had experience on 
both sides of this issue. He found ?the total, 
complete lack of support from administration? to 
be the ?most shocking? aspect of teaching. Early in 
his career, though, it was different: ?For two years, 
I had a principal who had my back, who supported 
me fully. After I left his care, I never found that 
again.?

Synt hesis

It seems that successful secondary teachers form 
a teacher identity that blends who they are as 
individuals with who they are as pedagogues. 
Edward described the transformation: ?I felt like 
that when I started, that I wasn't really a 

teacher.After ten years, however, I am completely 
comfortable in the role.? Diane defined the 
dynamic this way: ?I think it is important for 
students to realize you are a person with a regular 
life and not just a teacher who exists only within 
the confines of the classroom. It?s like, when they 
are able to see and hear bits of your life, positive 
relationships form as they make connections 
between their lives and yours.? Jane had emotion 
in her voice as she talked about how well the role 
of teacher fits who she is as a person:

I like being a teacher. I think it?s one of the best 
jobs around. I really do. Yeah, it can get to you. 
Yeah, the stress day to day can definitely get to 
you if you let it. There are those lucky 
individuals who know how to take care of it 
better than others. But I can?t imagine not 
being a teacher. I just can?t. There are days, 
most days, when I turn my lights off, I look 
around in my classroom, and it?s all dark and 
quiet. You know, there are lights coming in 
through the windows, of course, and it?s all 
cleaned up. And I look at the posters on the 
wall, and I check out the desks, and it?s so cool 
that that?s my classroom. And I feel so 
privileged, really, even though that may sound 
so cornball. I do. I feel so privileged to even 
have a classroom, to have kids sit there, and to 
want to teach, and to want to learn. . . . I think 
all of that is just fantastic.

Discussion

?I used to be like you. I wanted to mold young 
minds, stretch their imaginations, introduce them 
to the exciting world of words. Make the English 
language and literature come alive for them. 
Right??

?Exactly,? I agreed.

?You?ll get over it,? he said, abruptly.

-LouAnne Johnson, My Posse Don?t Do 
Homework

Sum m ary and conclusions. 

One appeal of teacher identity is that the concept 
makes such eminent sense. Protherough and 
Atkinson (1992) noted that in matters of education, 

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GREINKE |  WHY DIDN?T ANYONE TELL US

there is ?a marked ?variance? between professional 
and general public opinion? (p. 386). This study 
may shed new light on teachers? lived experiences 
so that this gap in understanding between those 
inside, and those outside, the profession, may be 
narrowed. And just as the participants in 
Protherough and Atkinson?s study found ?personal 
qualities? (p. 399) significant to their role as 
teachers (including establishing a personal 
relationship between teacher and student), my 
study appears to reinforce their results in finding 
that teacher identity must incorporate who the 
teacher is as a person and who the students are.

Although Alsup (2006) also looked at teacher 
identity formation in regard to secondary teachers, 
her study focused on pre-service teachers and 
their fledgling attempts to form an identity. My 
study may expand on her research in that I looked 
at highly experienced teachers reflecting back on 
identity formation. My participants had the added 
perspective that comes from long practice. They 
seemed to learn, for example, that the variables 
that enter into identity formation are multi-faceted 
and changing. Jane, for example, explained that:

We always change. You know, if we?re an 
effective teacher, an effective educator, we do 
change to meet whatever it is our kids are 
doing. If we have a group that needs to have 
more discipline, or needs to go slower, well, 
that?s part of our identity. We have to be 
patient. If we have a group that is definitely a 
lot more fun and can handle a lot more things, 
well, we respond to that too. That?s just good 
teaching. I think that whatever it is we teach is 
also part of our identity.

This is an epiphany that Alsup?s participants could 
not yet have articulated. Here, for example, is 
Alsup?s participant, Carrie, feeling quite unnerved 
by her lack of experience and how far she has to 
go to form a teacher identity:

I had a hard time viewing myself as a teacher, 
and as I?m getting closer to graduation I?m 
having a hard time viewing myself as an adult. 
Because it?s like I?m expected to go out there 
and get a job and they?re going to give me 

responsibility, and I just want to look at them 
and say, look, I?m just a kid! What am I doing 
here? I can?t do this stuff! So when I was in the 
classroom, I felt a whole lot more like a student 
than I did a teacher. (pp. 62-63)

Pre-service teachers stand to benefit from learning 
what the participants in my study revealed about 
how their professional identities evolved.

Personal Identity theory appeared in my literature 
review to account for the important role personal 
characteristics play in teacher identity formation. 
That helps explain Chloe?s comment that ?I use 
humor and story telling . . . as I teach ? that is who 
I am as a person.? And Cindy?s remark: ?I think 
your personality matters a lot more than your 
[content knowledge].? Jane cautioned that 
personal characteristics can ?make or break? a 
teacher: ?Just because you?re good at [your subject 
matter] doesn?t mean you?re going to have a 
relationship with the kid or a bunch of kids or that 
you?re going to find this, you know, somewhat fun. 
Because you have to find teaching fun.?

The nontechnical literature in my literature review, 
such as the published memoirs of secondary 
teachers, allowed me to triangulate the data and 
compare the oral accounts of my participants with 
the more carefully crafted remembrances of 
stories in print. The findings, in both cases, 
seemed to reinforce each other, as when McCourt 
(2005) stressed the need for secondary teachers to 
present an identity that incorporates their true 
selves in the classroom:

You can fool some of the kids some of the time, 
but they know when you?re wearing the mask, 
and you know they know. They force you into 
truth. If you contradict yourself they?ll call out, 
Hey, that?s not what you said last week. You 
face years of experience and their collective 
truth, and if you insist on hiding behind the 
teacher mask you lose them. Even if they lie to 
themselves and the world they look for 
honesty in the teacher. (p. 203)

Im plicat ions

The most significant implication is that formation 

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of a teacher identity can and should be taught in 
Methods classes. One way to facilitate this is to 
give preservice teachers room to grow an identity. 
Boxing them in by suggesting there is one correct 
way of doing things handicaps identity formation. 
Here, for example, is one supervising teacher?s 
published memory of how she learned to let 
teachers incorporate their own personalities into 
the classroom even if it does not match the 
prevailing orthodoxy of a teacher preparation 
program:

One day . . . I was assigned to observe the class 
of a young teaching assistant. He met me at 
the classroom door dressed in a three-piece 
suit, tie, and polished dress shoes. I assumed 
that he could not relate to the students and 
that I would endure a long and tedious hour.

He asked the students to move the chairs from 
the discussion circle in which they rested to 
straight rows from front to back. I considered 
that a mistake, like his formal attire and stance 
in front of the class. But as he talked, with very 
proper diction, his excitement about the 
material became increasingly apparent. I 
looked around and saw that students were 
paying close attention and taking notes. When 
he paused and requested questions, many 
hands went up. The students asked good 
questions, he responded well, and then 
returned to his lecture. . . .

As part of my job as observer, I asked the 
instructor, with about 15 minutes remaining in 
the period, to leave the room so I could discuss 
his teaching with the students. As soon as he 
left, the students spontaneously began to 
praise him. I was skeptical: "Wasn't he too 
formal? Do you really relate to someone like 
that in a three-piece suit?" But indeed they did . 
. . They truly liked and respected his 
enthusiasm for the material.

That experience overturned many of my 
prejudices about teaching. I decided to teach more 
in line with my personality. . . .

I had learned a crucial lesson: Most students 
possess superb radar that quickly locates 

phoniness . . . Thus, every teacher has to figure 
out who she or he is, how best to appear 
before a class, and what material to teach. And 
in long teaching careers, every instructor 
should have three-to five-year checkups and 
revise their dress, approach, and material as 
their personal values and circumstances 
change. Teaching is a highly individual 
endeavor, and each instructor should work 
according to what personally feels most 
comfortable. (Sperber, 2005, p. B20)

Lim it at ions

Regarding phenomenological studies, Moustakas 
(1994) warned that ?knowledge does not end with 
moments of connectedness, understanding, and 
meaning. Such journeys open vistas to new 
journeys for uncovering meaning, truth, and 
essence?
journeys within journeys, within journeys . . . each 
stopping place is but a pause in arriving at 
knowledge? (p. 65). I do not live under the illusion 
that this study is anything more substantial than a 
mere ?pause.?

There are ways in which my study had limitations. I 
could have sampled a more heterogeneous mix of 
participants. That would have allowed me to 
consider the impact of gender, ethnic, or age 
differences in the teachers I interviewed (or how 
those same differences play out when applied to 
the students who occupy their classrooms), and 
the possibility that urban versus rural schools, or 
private versus public schools, or well-funded 
versus financially strapped schools could reveal 
significant variables. Interviewing may have 
limitations. Do teachers necessarily ?walk their 
talk??

Final Thought s

The popular author C. S. Lewis coined the word 
?Shadowlands? to describe the belief that the earth 
is a mere reflection of a more perfect, and more 
real, world that lies beyond. Many teachers, I 
believe, begin their careers with the notion that 
their goal is to, as closely as possible, model the 
?ideal teacher? that they have envisioned from 
their Methods classes. What my participants 

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seemed to say, though, is that they do not live in a 
Platonic Shadowlands where teachers imitate an 
idealistic vision situated outside themselves, but in 
what Alsup (2006) called the ?Borderlands? where 
personal and professional spaces overlap.

References
Allen, J. (2000).  Yellow brick roads: Shared and 

guided paths to independent reading 4-12. 
Portland, OR: Stenhouse Publishers.

Allport, G. W. (1937).  Personality: A psychological 
interpretation. New York, NY: Holt.

Alsup, J. (2006).  Teacher identity discourses: 
Negotiating personal and professional spaces. 
Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of 
English.

Atwell, N. (1998).  In the middle; New understandings 
about writing, reading, and learning. (2nd ed.) 
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Boss, P. G., Doherty, W. J., LaRossa R., Schumm W. 
R., & Steinmetz, S. K. (1993).  Sourcebook of 
family theories and methods: A contextual 
approach. New York, NY: Plenum Press.

Creswell, J. W. (1998).  Qualitative inquiry and 
research design: Choosing among five traditions. 
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Fontana, A., & Frey, J. H. (2000). The interview: 
From structured questions to negotiated text. 
In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook 
of qualitative research (2nd ed). (pp. 645-672). 
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Hatch, J. A. (2002).  Doing qualitative research in 
education settings. Albany: SUNY Press.

Johnson, L. (1992).  My posse don?t do homework. 
New York, NY: St. Martin?s.

Kane, P. R., ed. (1992).  The first year of teaching: 
Real world stories from America?s teachers. New 
York, NY: Mentor.

Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985).  Naturalistic 
inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

McCann, T. M., Johannessen, L. R., & Ricca, B. P.  
Supporting beginning English teachers: Research 
and implications for teacher induction. Urbana, 

IL. National Council of Teachers of English.

McCourt, F. (2005).  Teacher man. New York, NY: 
Scribner.

Moustakas, C. (1994).  Phenomenological research 
methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 
Publications.

Protherough, R, & Atkinson, J. (1992). How English 
teachers see English teaching.Research in the 
teaching of English,26(4), 385-407.

Provenza, P. (Director). (2005).The 
Aristocrats[Motion picture]. United States: 
ThinkFilm.

Seidman, I. (1998).  Interviewing as qualitative 
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College Press.

Sperber, M. (2005, September 9). Notes from a 
career in teaching.The chronicle of higher 
education, B20.

Tajfel, H., and Turner, J. C. (1986). The social 
identity theory of inter-group behavior. In S. 
Worchel and L. W. Austin (eds.), Psychology of 
Intergroup Relations. Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall.

Tremmel, R. (1999).  Zen and the practice of teaching 
English.  Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Appendix A

Sam ple Int erview  Quest ions

* What is it about your life story that has you in a 
position to be able to talk about what it is like to be 
a secondary teacher?

* What journals/periodicals related to your job do 
you read regularly? Why?

* What is an example of a high and a low point in 
your secondary teaching career? What was learned 
from both?

* What is an example of an epiphany you had as a 
teacher, and what inspired it?

* Did your teacher preparation classes adequately 
prepare you to be a teacher? Why or why not?

* Why does the profession have a high dropout 
rate?

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GREINKE |  WHY DIDN?T ANYONE TELL US

* What are the three most important books, 
whether fiction or nonfiction, for a teacher to have 
on his or her bookshelf? Why?

* Of the attempts that have been made to depict 
what teaching is really like, whether in the form of 
a book or a film, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, 
which one do you believe comes closest to ?telling 
it like it is?? Why?

* What will the secondary classroom look like 10 
years from now?

* What conferences, if any, do you find most 
helpful to your job? Why?

* Would you recommend this profession to a 
young person who is considering it for a career? 
Why or why not? If you could start over, would you 
choose it again for a career?

* What is it really like for you to be a secondary 
teacher?* What does it mean to you to be a 
secondary teacher?

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