English language teachers’ identities have been an important issue for understanding who we are, what we do, and the way we perceive our practices and roles in the educational context. In Colombia, teachers’ identities are influenced by social, economic, political, and cultural characteristics that we face day by day and which demand critical standings. That is why criticality is a constitutive part of our discourses and the way we perceive ourselves, and it defines our considerations when it comes to teaching the English language. Narratives constitute an important poststructural method to explore teachers’ identities, and I have narrated my life every time I have been asked to share my perceptions in relation to teaching and to education. For example, I find that there is a connection between my locus of enunciation and some events in my life that occurred in the educative context of Bogotá—not only as a teacher, but also as a student—that have defined me as a critical English language teacher.
That is why I am interested in problematizing how the critical standings and discourses that we expose and exercise as practices inside and outside the classroom unveil particularities in our identities, and how, by narrating our histories and stories, it is possible to understand the role of our subjectivities as constitutive in our critical identities. I am interested in moving from comparing who I am with what other teachers do, to making connections and appreciating differences, in order to build knowledge along with others. To understand what has been researched in this sense, I have found that little has been explored in relation to critical identities, and I have identified three trends: these types of studies have implemented critical reflections, some have observed criticality in the teaching practice as content in courses or programs for in-service and pre-service teachers, and others show that there is a connection with how language teachers embody a critical identity to confront power relations and exercise agency in our practice.