Everyone faces crossroads. While not everyone meets at the same crossroads, we all juggle multiple identities. It is these roles--sometimes conflicting and other times fitting together seamlessly--that Linda Watkins-Goffman explores in A Life Teaching Languages: A Memoir from Mississippi to the Bronx.   
 
In this memoir of an educator, Watkins-Goffman offers insights she has gained from her years of traveling, teaching, and writing and shares how her experiences have shaped her teaching philosophy. According to Watkins-Goffman, teachers must communicate authentically to teach effectively and, to accomplish this, they must connect their own experiences in some way with those of their students. The stories she tells are sure to resonate with pre-service and practicing teachers alike. Her reflections about her own experiences will be useful to readers who plan to become ESL educators, or those who simply seek inspiration about teaching.
 

Lives in Two Languages explores identity and multiculturalism through readings that aim to help teachers-in-training gain better insight into their students' lives.
Lives in Two Languages focuses on the experience of multicultural authors--like Richard Rodriguez, Amy Tan, Eva Hoffman, Chang-rae Lee, and Julia Alvarez--whose experiences can be related to anyone who has moved from one culture or subculture to another. As such, this text is an excellent comprehensive introduction to the multicultural experience for teachers and educators in all disciplines, as well as of interest to anyone interested in language culture and psychological process of identity.