Washing Our Students Clean

This article presents the nontraditional research of four teacher educators who used their own stories about teaching and their responses to those stories to problematize their work with preservice elementary education teachers. The data were analyzed using qualitative data methods of coding, categorizing, and interpreting. Among the themes that emerged from the analyses of their stories and responses to each other’s stories were profound emotional dimensions of their college teaching experiences. The conflicts underlying these emotions include issues of creating constructivist classrooms, the perceived dichotomy between the university and the “real world,” and educators’ desires to be both nurturing and instructive. The piece concludes with implications for other teacher educators.