“Who are we but the stories we tell about ourselves?â€
It is a question from the novel Ordinary Heroes. It is a good question. It’s also a very post-modern question. We invent ourselves, according to the book, through the stories we tell about ourselves.
And it makes me wonder what stories I tell about myself and how well I tell them.
My sisters and my sons both grew up on my alien stories. (I’m really an alien, I told them.) None of them believed me and it isn’t true. I didn’t socially construct myself into alienness through telling those stories. I did have a lot of fun though.
How well do we invent the professor persona who inhabits our classroom? Is our success in these stories the rubric by which our students understand education or listen to our advice?