Affects and emotions in memory: remembering children’s games and better teachers in autobiographical writings of Potosin teachers

Abstract

The autobiographical writings of teachers have been important documents to (re)construct the history and educational trajectory of teachers, and recognize their itineraries, first as students and, later, as active teachers. Within these narrative writings, full of subjectivity, we find embodied affections and emotions of the protagonists who inhabit the school. Thus, in this paper a first approach is made to two aspects that are documented in the autobiographical writings of teachers; one is the emotion caused by playing “the little school” and another is the memory of the teacher who was a role model and is mentioned with affection. Both aspects are part of the self-construction of the identity of a profession such as teaching but in the autobiographical writings of the teachers they acquire relevance by valuing these experiences as part of their “destiny” or “vocation” as constitutive elements of the social imaginary of teachers. This analysis is made with the recovery of a documentary base of 180 school novels located in three teacher training institutions in San Luis Potosí, these writings are part of an undergraduate and graduate thesis requirement in which teachers should relate their school experience from the past to their present. For its analysis, a crossover is made with the theoretical proposals of memory, biography, the history of emotions and gender. It is concluded that the recovery of affective aspects in narratives is part of a self-reflective process of experience to assess the significant burdens that their profession has for teachers.