Three Characters and Me(me): Positioning Popular Culture to Unpack Emerging Teacher Identity

In this article we narrate an instructional practice we implemented in two different teacher education courses that facilitated conversations about teacher identity through the use of fictional characters who were educators. This practice served two purposes in our course work: firstly, this activity presents students with an opportunity to demonstrate their media interests and career goals; secondly, this activity provides a quick, baseline assessment of how aspiring teachers view their profession and future practice. We detail student responses to this activity and consider how their choices of fictional educators fit into broader patterns we see in popular culture, specifically depictions of teachers within film and television. While our paper specifically centers teachers, there is significant possibility for this activity to be used in any professional-identity training program (e.g., nursing and medicine, social work and counseling, and law). We close the paper with additional questions for future lines of scholarly inquiry into teacher identity and media representation.