It gets inside you : mining, a metaphor for teaching : a narrative inquiry project

Abstract

This project is an endeavour into Narrative Inquiry as a form of educational research. In attempts to explain how and why I have become the teacher that I am I have compiled significant parts of my life history to explain the relationship between a life spent mining and one spent teaching. It is my assumption that I have become who I am as a teacher because of the life that I have led living, working and learning in three mining communities of Canada. My work as an educator, building community in my school setting, is a direct reflection of my life's experiences. I began with the premise that long before I was born my roots were established in mining through my grandparents and parents. The life they set for me was one of community. My own childhood, adolescence and adulthood have been shaped extensively by the towns in which I lived. Those influences enter my classroom and play a role in shaping my curriculum. The work is phenomenological in nature, narrative in style and from the perspective of the research subject. This multi-genre work utilizes poetry, narrative and exposition to present my life story. In writing through my life it became apparent that the communities I lived in not only shaped my character but also created in me the desire to replicate or create similar community in my classrooms. This is evident far more in "how" I teach than "what" I teach.