We undergo a certain type of “down-the-rabbit hole” experience, when we end our years as students and begin a new chapter as teachers. This process may be amplified when one is an ESL teacher, teaching English as a second language. As a Basic English instructor at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, facing new challenges, both as a graduate student and a college- level instructor, I have found the process to be similar to how Alice figures out how to fit into this new world called Wonderland, which is completely different to her home in England.
Beginning teachers are so busy and get caught up easily in their work. They rarely have time to reflect on themselves as educators. But, when teachers create spaces for themselves to reflect, they improve their teaching and create new spaces for students to reflect on themselves and their studying. In this presentation, then, I will be discussing my experience leading a workshop for teachers in which I used the metaphor of falling down the rabbit hole as a means of modeling pedagogical autoethnographic practices for teachers of English as a second language. I will use Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as a tool to explain my analogy of Alice entering the rabbit hole as a means of explaining the new teacher experience – including teachers who are new to teaching and teachers entering new academic situations. I will then demonstrate examples of the writing activities that I designed and led at the Puerto Rico Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (PRTESOL) workshop, in November 2016.
This project was created as a means of both supporting the school teachers of Puerto Rico and for studying the ways in which teachers self-reflect on the multiple attributes of their teaching environments within an ESL context
