Reflection and Refraction: A Reflexive Look at an Evolving Model for Methods Instruction.

I love teaching! I have loved teaching since Mrs. Suttles had me help Paul Morganton with his reading in the third grade and since Mrs. Pruett, my fourth grade teacher, asked me to be her voice on a day when she had laryngitis. Later she said, "Carol, you would make a good teacher." 1 started to build a teacher vision of myself on the spot. 1 played school at home with my imaginary companions: wrote their names and the assignment on the blackboard and lectured on important points from the old books I had in my room. In my neighborhood I, as the only girl and oldest kid, organized games and even set plays during touch football games. Twelve years after Mrs. Pruett made her suggestion, I did become a teacher, a high school English teacher, and 1 have loved teaching ever since. I even loved it through the tormenting days when 1 struggled to calm my high school Heroes and Heroines class and when I ran crying from my high school Stagecraft class. The African-American students, whose high school had been closed during integration, openly questioned the sincerity of my attempts to involve them in the school's upcoming musical production, and who could wonder why? 1 have loved teaching through struggles and accomplishments because it challenges me in ways nothing else does. Imagine my pleasure, after years of teaching English, serving as a cooperating teacher, student teacher supervisor and mentor, when I became a teacher educator. In 1983, accompanied by a renewed vision of teaching and a brand new doctorate, I entered my first university teaching position at the University of Houston as an English language arts