Negotiating What's at Stake in Informal Writing in the Writing Center

Constructing a Professional Identity: Nonnative English-Speaking Teachers in First-Year Writing Courses

“…For example, Ethna Dempsey Lay (2013) shared how her professional identity as a writing instructor was questioned by some colleagues who did not see her journey as legitimate because she was a Wall Street employee by day, graduate student by night, and part-time writing instructor before fully embracing academia. Kate Pantelides (2013), on the other hand, wrote about having a hyphenated identity where "mother" preceded her identity as teacher of writing, and Cruz Medina (2013) noted how welcoming his first child gave him a new understanding of the value of professionalism in the teaching of writing.…”

“…When read as a whole, this special issue highlights how the profession raises and complicates career expectations for its members (Hesse, 2013), and how our professional identities are always in contact with other subjectivities (Pantelides, 2013), but it does not address the concerns and issues related to NNESTs' construction of their professional identities. To expand our understanding of NNESTs identity construction, we draw on scholarship in the field of English language teaching.…”