Licensed to Transform: An Alphabet of Student Teaching: 2 (Liberating Education Liberating Educators)

Before becoming licensed educators student teachers often demonstrate a license to transform the lives of others. A recent cohort of teacher candidates created this student teaching alphabet highlighting their personal philosophical and ethical license to transform. Original artifacts (i.e. poems letters artwork) serve as entry-points through which to consider how life events aspirations challenges and beliefs contribute to ones emerging and evolving personal and professional identities. Readers are invited to contemplate their experiences interactions and lives in original and provocative ways. In educational psychology and teacher education/preparation courses this book is meaningful for pre-service early mid-career and veteran teachers as well as those considering a career in education. More than a curriculum of student teaching it challenges us to imagine a curriculum of transformation that reflects the gestalt of all dimensions of life. More broadly it can be useful for coursework in areas of the humanities liberal arts sociology and curriculum studies. Individuals from a variety of backgrounds can reflect on their work and their lives through phenomenological lenses that validate the richness and complexities of their lived experiences. As a teachers curriculum-as a curriculum of life-readers can ponder the ways they are being and becoming the educators-and the human beings-theyve aspired to be. These teacher candidates are teaching for more than a license; they are teaching for better more equitable futures. With the strength of their commitment and the audacity of their passion for change these student teachers have much to teach us.