Agency, shame, and identity: Digital stories of teaching

Abstract

In the digital stories that teachers author, I explore the social class positioning of teachers in low-income schools in the U.S. and the tensions between professional agency and shame in emerging teacher identities. I consider traces of teachers' own classed backgrounds, the hierarchies of power and class within which their work is surveilled, and the social interactions of daily life within which subordinate class status become embodied. This project attests to the potential of multimedia authoring as a way of knowing about the contradictions of teaching in schools structured against teachers' and students' success.