Karen V. Lee

A Fugue About Grief

The following autoethnography reveals the authors personal struggle when informed about a suicide. The resulting emotional turmoil causes her to shift forward, backward, and sideways through memories of death during a summer beach outing with her daughter. The narrative demonstrates how she copes with her inner anguish while striving to preserve a happy union. She reveals the painful irony of living simultaneously in a culture of happiness and culture of grief. In doing so, her narrative implicates the stories that encourage parents to suppress emotions from their children. In the end, autoethnography becomes an epiphany that heals her from the tragedy as she gains a deeper understanding about the personal and cultural influences shaping her desire for pedagogical thoughtfulness.

Neuroticism: End of a Doctoral Dissertation

This autobiographical account of the author, a graduate student, reflects the end of her doctoral studies. She writes to the point of obsession. The author inscribes into the curriculum her process of becoming. More central, she desires to create a pedagogical context for others to identify the epistemological assumptions that underlie the phenomenon of writing as reflective practice. Autobiography was discovered as a way to make sense and transform the aesthetic and intellectual understandings of her inner life. Her journey for self-knowledge symbolizes the epistemological forms she contravenes. Autobiographical understanding lies in the porous boundaries between the self and knowledge and the power of self-reflexivity that intensifies the educative process.

Her Real Story

ABSTRACT The author reflects on her massage therapists suicide. Writing becomes a method of inquiry as she copes with the social influences of grief. She gains a deeper understanding of the emotional and intellectual turmoil as she reflects on the intimacy with her massage therapist. In the end, writing enables her to heal and move forward from the loss and trauma.

An Autoethnography: Music Therapy after Laser Eye Surgery

The following autoethnography reveals the author’s physical struggle with being confined in bed after laser eye surgery. She reflects on living simultaneously in a culture of temptation and a culture of control. The challenge causes her to shift back and forth within her personal experience while listening to music being played at her home. At a deeper level, she finds inner strength to resist using her eyes as the music therapeutically addresses her social, physical, emotional, and cognitive needs. In the end, writing the autoethnography transforms her self-experience as it sheds light on how the power of music heals her body after surgery.

A Neophyte About Online Teaching Almost Done

The following autoethnography reflects a neophyte instructors obsession with teaching an online graduate course. The experience forces her to move ethnographically forward and backward with students in a novel, and sometimes, more intimate fashion. She struggles to balance a serving of technology with a dollop of human interaction, but finds online teaching can be time consuming. Though students are physically dispersed and isolated, they sustain and bond in new and different ways in an online community. Her narrative reveals how technologies are created, apprehended, and used in everyday life. Online learning has become ubiquitous at all levels of education. Teachers and students need to question whether technology in their lives represents a force for good or evil. In the end, autoethnography becomes trans-formative as the author gains a heightened awareness of the social, cultural, and personal influences shaping her online teaching experience.

Caesar’s closure: terminating a practicum field experience

The author autobiographically reflects on supervising a pre‐service teacher during his supplemental teaching practicum. She struggles with the social and cultural aspects of failing him. The emotional turmoil causes her to shift back and forth through guilt and complicity while maintaining standards in the teaching profession. At a deeper level, she realizes the implications for teacher education practices if unsuited pre‐service teachers are passed and enrolled into the profession of teaching. In the end, writing the autobiography provides her a deeper understanding about how reflexive inquiry facilitates teacher learning and development surrounding the construction and assessment of teaching practica.

GEORGIE'S GIRL: LAST CONVERSATION WITH MY FATHER

The author auto‐ethnographically reflects on the emotional struggle with her fathers death. The haunting memory of their last conversation empowers her during the lengthy mourning process. She ‘reconstructs the event so that it can be integrated into her life story’ [J. H. Harvey (1996) Embracing Their Memory: Loss and Social Psychology of Storytelling, Allyn & Bacon, MA, p. 191]. Memories of their relationship resurface as the emotional landscape involves love, strength, denial, compassion, withdrawal and helplessness. The reflection explores the educative process of writing from the heart. It also shares multicultural funeral rites and how they differ from traditional North American funerals. At a deeper level, writing the auto‐ethnography becomes cathartic as it helps ‘break ties between the bereaved and the dead to achieve a good adjustment’ (Ibid., p. 138). It also explores theory, practice, and innovation that embed voices in health and education in order to enlighten practice. In the end, reflecting on the memory of her fathers last words becomes a transformative educational process as it provides a heightened awareness about grief, loss, bereavement and the importance of the father–daughter relationship.

Joseph Santini: Divided I Stand

This short story chronicles a professional jazz musician, Joseph Santini, in conflict about whether he should accept a full-time teaching position as a high school music educator. This story focuses, interprets, clarifies, and communicates Joseph’s conflict. It also demonstrates the use of stories for culturally relevant research. Joseph’s experience transcends impressions of musicians and teachers prevalent in the dominant cultural milieu. The story offers a deeper insight into Joseph’s life as he explores teacher education and is guided by his artistic and performative experience. The coda at the end briefly discusses the use of creative nonfiction in research and how it can be a powerful tool to help musicians resolve their conflicts.

Tommy’s Tune Autoethnographic Duet

The following autoethnographic duet by faculty advisor and professor creates a dramatic and evocative account of the personal and cultural experience about a disabled student teacher. They blend storytelling and music which fuses a theoretical analysis about storytelling and life. Although sociocultural issues draw deep reflection about the emotional turmoil, cultural influences of language and social interaction provide details that critique social structures. As musician becoming teacher is a passionate yet complex endeavor, the faculty advisor shares first-hand a poetic but painful story about a disabled teacher being inducted into the teaching profession. By making explicit the personal-cultural connection, they use the life-changing epiphany to critique cultural issues about teaching and disability. As the faculty advisor approaches the professor for advice, his musicianship shifts her forward, backward, and sideways through feelings that evoke, invoke, and provoke a curriculum that does not transfer knowledge from educational method classes. Instead, it embeds musical language as a metaphorical conduit to interrogate the pros, cons and both sides of the complicated issue of disability that influences the completion of his teaching practicum for his undergraduate bachelor of education degree. An epiphany from music and story reveals the irony of living in a culture of both uniformity and diversity. They explore the constructs of ideology, abnormality, marginalization, and secrecy. Thus, by blending story and music, the authors resolve a transformative autoethnographic aspect about the personal and cultural influences that provoke new deeper ways of thinking about curriculum.

Dixie: fallen diva

The following series of journal entries reflects a female pianist’s journey through her university teacher education degree. She is guided by her artistic and performing learning experiences as a professional musician when conflicted by her shift from performer to teacher identity. During writing, she suffers dilemmas around family, teaching, creativity, motherhood, performance, and musicianship. The trauma of being raped guides the direction of her life. In the end, she finds that journal writing becomes an active learning tool that heightens her awareness about her career decision to pursue teacher education.