The Construction of Teacher Identity through Race,

Gender & Class

Images of the teacher in literature and media

“Why is the relationship between media and education important?”

“Teachers are often aware of the preconceptions and images others hold of them. This is important to teachers, for… it is one of the devices they use to help them site their sense of their own professional identity” (Saunders, 322).

“Over the past two decades, educational researchers have increasingly recognized the value of ‘story’ in understanding the lived experiences of teachers… both types of teachers—real and imagined—are similarly storied creations when they are represented through text…one’s identity is constructed through the self-formative power of narrative” (Muchmore, 2).

We see teachers everywhere.

Imagery and narrative also serve as a powerful tool in analyzing race, gender and class identity formation. In advertising, political cartoons, novels, film, posters, memoirs, etc., the American teacher has become a powerful symbol. As an examination of the identity formation of teachers and aspiring teachers, the history of teacher image in literature and other media is greatly deserving of exploration.

Teacher as public figure. “In teacher’s colleges, in professional journals and the public press, and in their very own school buildings, teachers were advised and admonished about their dress, way of speaking, and social habits. The teacher was nothing less than a public figure with public responsibilities, argued Herbert Hoover, who proclaimed that a teacher literally could not separate teaching from ‘daily walk and conversation.’ Constantly in the public arena, the teacher was ‘peculiarly a public character under the most searching scrutiny of watchful and critical eyes.’ The teacher’s life, Hoover concluded, was ‘an open book.’ …Some districts even admonished teachers to sleep regularly and eat carefully, to be cheerfully involved in Sunday School work, and generally to be a ‘willing servant’ of the school board and the townspeople.”

–from City Teachers by Kate Rousmaniere, page 38.

As teachers in public education, various sectors in society have a say in defining a ‘good teacher.’ As a public figure, the role of the teacher has various implications both in and outside of the classroom. How have teacher representations in the media influenced the identity formation of actual teachers?

Teacher as do-gooder.“Perhaps this kind of teacher is best exemplified by Ella in Miss Bishop (Streeter, 1933), a novel about the life and career of a college English teacher. Ella quickly establishes a reputation for being a friendly, hard-working, and gifted teacher who steers her students toward their passions. Her nurturing also extends to her personal life, as she cares for her sick mother for nine years, and also selflessly rears her cousin’s newborn orphaned daughter… Illustrating her eternally optimistic nature, Ella names the little girl Hope” (Muchmore, 4).

What about teacher–characters like Viola Swamp (see image) from the children’s book Miss Nelson is Missing, who aren’t seen as nurturers? How is education impacted by the dichotomy of the nurturer/villain fictionalized teacher?

Teacher as professional?Our Miss Brooks was a popular 1950s radio and then television sitcom, where episodes center on the life of an unmarried high school English teacher Connie Brooks (Eve Arden).

1. “Overworked and underpaid, Miss Brooks was ruled by her male principal. In highlighting this female teacher’s constant quest to find a husband, and through jokes about her financial instability, this radio program suggested that only marriage, with the implied end of her teaching, would complete her identity and allow upward social and economic mobility” (Ryan, abstract).

1.Click to hear a sample of an “Our Miss Brooks” episode.

Putting the pieces together“While men were praised as professionals, women teachers were

seen as merely fulfilling their ‘natural’ attribute of caring for children. Mid-nineteenth-century common school reformers had supported the feminization of the teaching force by arguing that the school should be an extension of the idealized middle-class family andhome, with the gentle female supervising a flock of children, all under the command of a male authority figure in the principal’s office… Economics and culture reinforced each other: That school boards could pay women less than men indicated that women were less interested in money than men and thus had less professional drive” (Rousmaniere, 40)

Media images of the do-gooder/nurturer, the teacher as public figure, and of the single, female semi-professional all play a role in how teachers position themselves in the world of education. Teaching is often looked at through the lens of the individual lifestyle or personality of the teacher, as well as his/her cultural role outside of the educational institution, and not enough valuable emphasis is placed on teaching as a professional career.

Becoming a white, female teacher.

“For them, teaching was a neutral and solitary act, individualized and removed from societal and cultural pressures. The participants’ vision of teaching centered around values, attitudes, expectations, ‘loving kids,’ and creating safe places where students could feel protected from the outside world. What was striking in this vision of teaching was the participants’ uncritical acceptance of their own sets of beliefs and values, attitudes and expectations, and their belief that teaching was an individualistic enterprise” (McIntire, 121).

Click here to view: Representations of Teachers in 60 Years of Films: A Database promoting Critical Analysis of Teacher Image with regard to Race, Class, and Gender

Teacher as anti-racist.

Teacher as “deconstructor…”

How to combat negative gender and sexuality imaging in both teacher identity formation, and in developing an anti-heternormativist pedagodgy. (Vavrus, 6)

Yay for big words!

Teacher as a human being.

How have media images and texts implicated teachers as responsible for social ills? Where are there literary and other examples of teachers whose role can be looked at as less symbolic and more human?

Bibliography