The purpose of this study was to explore possible implicit models of reading that drive curriculum and instruction in adult and postsecondary developmental reading contexts. This qualitative investigation explored faculty conceptualizations of reading via linguistic metaphors. Forty-six reading education professionals completed an online survey that gave two options for describing "Reading" and "Teaching Reading": create an elicited metaphor through an open-ended statement or choose from a prescribed list of metaphors. Using metaphor analysis procedures, we identified conceptual metaphor categories. Results indicated interesting differences within the conceptualizations of these participants' readerly identities compared to their teacherly identities.