Katie Quackenbush

ED 101: Introduction to Teaching

September 18, 2014
Autobiography as a Learner:
A History of My Relationship to School and Learning
I have never questioned my capacity to be a successful learner. Everyone seemed to label
me as a good student and I always felt at ease doing school. A pattern developed in my
learner career where high achievement became a given, so that I began to see it as an integral
part of my identity. For this reason, I feel that it is important to examine how school shaped me
and why I became a high achiever. Due to my position in society, I have faced few institutional
barriers against approaching my full potential as a learner, which means that I will need to be
prudent and intentional as an educator. All of my students will encounter barriers, often more
significant than the ones I faced, and it is my aim to acknowledge their influence while
facilitating students development of distinct learner identities of which they can be proud.
I spent my K-12 education in the Framingham, Massachusetts public school system.
Framingham is a suburban town 20 miles outside Boston and is somewhat more diverse in terms
of race, ethnicity, language background, socioeconomic status, and other facets of identity than
many towns near it. There were English Language Learners in all of my schools, though I
remember them as being separate from me most of the time. My parents spoke with me about
how they wanted their children to learn to function in the real world, and not in a world where
everyone was the same. I always took pride in the experience of diversity that I was gaining
thanks to my parents. However, I realized later that institutionalized power and privilege of
course played significant roles in our schools: nearly all school authority figures were white, and
my classmates in upper level reading groups and Honors courses were majority white and of
comfortable economic means. I never felt policed, had almost exclusively positive relationships

with teachers, and found my culture to be reflected in the curriculum of my classes. In short, I
attended fairly diverse schools, but my sociocultural identity was still dominant.
My public school learner identity began in elementary school, which I remember as a
warm place that was like an extension of home. I learned more about cultural differences in this
school, before classes were tracked and students sorted, than at other schools. I remember
learning about Ramadan from a kindergarten classmates mother, discovering Brazilian food at
school events, and studying Portuguese after school. My school provided me with a cultural
richness that must have influenced my future interest in language learning and cultural exchange.
After fifth grade, I attended middle school, which was the least positive stage in my
schooling career, mostly because I struggled socially. I was teased for being shy and had no close
friends. In my development as a learner and as a person, the most positive outcome of middle
school was my involvement in school plays, which helped me to gain social confidence from
performing on stage and from having some sense of belonging in the school. Beyond the social
challenges, I also felt academically uninspired in middle school, and had some of my least
favorite teachers of my school career. One was was my sixth grade French teacher. I had been
excited to learn a new language, but her harsh teaching style made me anxious. I still vividly
remember the day when she compared my poster project to that of another student and told me
that mine was clearly inferior, so she gave me a low grade. Negative experiences with teachers
influence my own approaches and philosophies as an educator perhaps even more than the
positive ones, because they defined what makes a good teacher for me.
I was glad to finish middle school, but my transition to high school was also challenging.
In the first two years, I dreaded unstructured times like lunch in the enormous cafeteria. The high
school was large and served a varied population because it was the only traditional public high
school in town, but tracking into CP2, CP1, Honors, and AP courses meant that I did not interact

with many people who were much different from me. Tracked courses did mean I was able to
find an academically minded social group where I fit, but some of my most positive learning
memories are from the CP1 math courses I took. In those classes, I worked in groups with peers
who tended to be less grade-focused than Honors students, leaving us free to collaborate openly.
These are among the most successful cooperative learning experiences I have had to date, and I
aim to take inspiration from that focus on collaboration in my own foreign language classroom.
In high school, I developed into an independent learner and took ownership of my
academic decisions. I realized that languages were one of my primary academic interests, and
decided to take Latin and French simultaneously. In a system that so institutionalizes the content
of education, it is remarkable how little flexibility was required for me to feel excited about
independence: one schedule alteration and I felt in control. I grew to love the puzzle-like quality
of decoding and comparing languages, and the nature of language as a representation of
humanity. In spite of the dull grammar drills and repetitive teaching methods used in many of my
classes, languages fascinated me more and more. However, it wasnt until my college Arabic
courses that I discovered the wonderful combination of my passion for language learning and the
high-quality, innovative language instruction that now inspires me to teach.
As a teacher, my own relative ease with the academic and cultural aspects of school could
easily lead me to assume that all students will feel similar comfort in the classroom. However, as
I walked through the hallways of my high school and tutored students in our peer tutoring
program, I became more aware of the variety in how students experience school. I will maintain
a directed effort to keep variability of student experience at the front of my mind as a teacher, for
every student faces challenges, social, academic, or otherwise, though they may manifest
themselves differently.

I also aim to take inspiration from my positive learning experiences. When I had
exceptional teachers, like in fifth grade or in tenth grade Algebra II, school was inviting and
inspiring. Those teachers knew how to engage in the wild triangle of relations identified by
Joseph McDonald (1992): they valued their relationships with each individual student and with
students collectively, and they also valued the mutual relationship of student and teacher to the
subject, bringing academic learning to a place where it connected everyone in the classroom. The
institutional structures of school and society do not allow all students to experience the ease that
I did as a student, but as a teacher I hope that I can help all of my students feel belonging in a
community of learners. My constantly developing identity as a learner is inextricably tied to my
identity as an educator, and I will be sure to never lose sight of that connection.