A Life Teaching Languages

Everyone faces crossroads. While not everyone meets at the same crossroads, we all juggle multiple identities. It is these roles—sometimes conflicting and other times fitting together seamlessly—that Linda Watkins-Goffman explores in A Life Teaching Languages: A Memoir from Mississippi to the Bronx.

In this memoir of an educator, Watkins-Goffman offers insights she has gained from her years of traveling, teaching, and writing and shares how her experiences have shaped her teaching philosophy. According to Watkins-Goffman, teachers must communicate authentically to teach effectively and, to accomplish this, they must connect their own experiences in some way with those of their students. The stories she tells are sure to resonate with pre-service and practicing teachers alike. Her reflections about her own experiences will be useful to readers who plan to become ESL educators, or those who simply seek inspiration about teaching.

Linda Watkins-Goffman teaches ESL writing, linguistics, and creative writing at Hostos Community College of the City University of New York. She has published five other books, including Lives in Two Languages: An Exploration of Identity and Culture (2001) and Understanding Cultural Narratives: Exploring Identity and the Multicultural Experience (2006), both by the University of Michigan Press. She is also the author of a novel,Taking Flight (2015).