This article discusses the author's use personal experiences to teach and stimulate sociological imagination. In particular it explores the notion of teacher as text. In essence, teachers as text construct themselves heuristics, aiding students in their projects of discovery and recreation of their subjectivities. A teacher as text says that this is how it is for me, use my experiences as a guide to help figure out how it is for you. For my own, I used my personal experiences in class to illustrate theoretical concepts and encourage students to use my articulation to understand how power works both productively and destructively in their own lived experience. By sharing personal experiences in a class and voicing their own shortcoming and fears, teachers reduce the distance between themselves and their students and challenge traditional notions of teacher as infallible. By sharing ourselves, and opening up for critical reflection, we not only give students an additional text to read that facilitates understandings of course material, but we also help them practice critical pedagogy's project of deconstructing authority and resisting passive acceptance of knowledge/truth claims. By deconstructing our articulations with the class, we help students make pertinent re-articulations for their own lives.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/walter_jacobs/25/