Like a Candle, Burning at Both Ends: The Cynicism of Teacher Erasure

Abstract This article builds from an exorbitant moment—the invocation of an inspirational quote on the eve of a new school year—to critically explore the larger, commonplace conceptual frame that the best teachers give all of themselves to their students, even to the point of self‐erasure, as it continues to manifest across various discourses in education, research, and policy. We find significant problems emerging from this rhetoric, ones that compromise both the efficacy and humanizing potential of pedagogical practices. Offering alternative ways forward for teachers that do not romanticize teacher martyrdom, we focus instead on approaches that affirm the relational complexities of work in classrooms and encourage constant transformation, versions of “a teaching life” we argue to be more life‐giving and sustaining.