Immigrant teachers: stories of self and place

Abstract

Teachers’ lives have been the focus of much recent research on teaching, and we now have rich, detailed understandings of how teachers develop a ‘teaching self,’ in the context of concrete details of biography, school settings, relationships and educational systems within which teachers work. What we lack is a sense of the teacher in a place—a specific location that holds meaning, that matters to those who inhabit it. The concept of ‘place’ has been neglected in contemporary education, yet it seems to be an important one for postmodern times. This article will examine the stories of immigrant teachers in Israel, people who have undertaken to teach in a culture different from the one in which they themselves were educated. Teachers who have made a transition from one cultural setting to another are likely to have developed an awareness of teaching and schooling in the new culture that other teachers may not have. Their stories reveal what it means in the chosen culture to tell one’s story and give an account of one’s career and work as a teacher. The stories of seven immigrant teachers, in dialogue with the researcher’s story, highlight losses and gains in the journey toward a new teaching self, and reveal something of what the process of finding or making a place for oneself—both in the new culture and as a teacher—is like.

Notes

* Corresponding author: Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. Email: [email protected]

For an illuminating personal account of the significance of place from a Palestinian perspective, see the autobiography of Edward Said (1999).

All of the teachers interviewed, and all those referred to in this article (as well as the students they teach), are Jewish with the possible exception of one teacher, Anita, an immigrant from Scandinavia. Anita originally came to Israel as a volunteer, and later returned to marry a Jewish Israeli. Most volunteers from Scandinavia are not Jewish, and Anita mentioned no details about her religious background.

This took place in the 1970s; the barriers against women in technical occupations have been lowered, though not eliminated entirely, in the meantime.

This passage is quoted in Casey (1993) from Keith Basso (1984), ‘Stalking with stories’: names, places and moral narratives among the Western Apache,’ in: E. Bruner (Ed.) Text, play, and story (New York, American Ethnological Society).

Development towns are relatively new towns, most of them founded in the wake of massive immigration in the 1950s, and located in various parts of the country inside the 1948 borders. Some towns, such as Arad and Ashdod, attracted veteran Israelis as well as new immigrants, prospered and are no longer considered ‘development towns.’ The designation ‘development town’ brings with it some economic benefits to residents and to business owners and investors, but many towns, especially those located in outlying areas like the Negev, continue to suffer from high unemployment and associated social problems.

The importance of power relations in the elaboration of the sense of place is given little attention in a phenomenological study such as Casey’s (1993).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Freema Elbaz‐Luwisch *

* Corresponding author: Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. Email: [email protected]