This book is an autobiographical effort to understand life as a person and as a high school English teacher, and how those two lives have intertwined. The text examines how the author, trained in certain ways, thinks of herself as a professional person. In addition to the subject of the teaching of reading and writing, the author explores how her common-sense and taken-for-granted knowledge about education, curriculum, and learning were constructed. She also examines a teacher's authority, both her own in classrooms where she has taught and that of her supervisors and professors. Chapters are titled: (1) "Languaging: Developing a Theory of Shared Experience and Authority"; (2) "A Beginning Teacher"; (3) "The Good Teacher"; (4) "Living in Books"; (5) "The First 15 Years, Alice in Wonderland"; (6) "Experiencing Literature and Theory, 1986-1990"; (7) "Reading Rosenblatt"; (8) "Theorizing the Reader, the Teacher, and Personal Knowledge"; (9) "The New York Stories, 1990-1992"; (10 "Educating the Spirit: Reflections on English Education"; and (11) "Beginnings in Retrospect: Self-Understanding and Education." (Contains 149 references.) (JLS)