The Story of Two Female Multilingual Teachers

Teacher Identity and Locality

Abstract

In this article, two female multilingual teachers engage in a critical and complicated conversation in which they reflect on the similar and different experiences that two of us went through in different parts of the world. In this collaborative autoethnography, we describe our experiences teaching English as a foreign language and how local social and cultural values formed our identities as teachers and teacher-scholars. Reflecting on prior perceptions and experiences, they realized multilingual teachers' identities are complicated and involve tensions and conflicts. These conflicting experiences have taught us resilience and what it means to be a multilingual teacher. To this end, the authors argue that local practices have to be recognized and implemented by English language instructors because they reflect cultural and social aspects of language learning, which is an essential part of being engaged with a foreign language.