Becoming a TESOL Teacher Educator and a Leader: Facilitating The Learning Space and the Art of Letting Go

Teacher educators have been conceptualized as the missing link between researchers and practitioners and as arbiters who “forg[e] ties between researchers working within academic institutions and teachers who have access to their own classrooms” (p. 6). In this chapter, I present my trajectory of conceptualizing educational leadership as a language teacher educator. I reflect on how my leadership position in the TESOL’s Research Professional Council (2021–2024) as a centralized professional practice has reflexively impacted my decentralized practices of teacher education. I focus on my identity formation as a leader during two practices that include taking up the facilitator and arbiter role while giving up the conventional authoritative role. I explain how this trajectory of finding an equilibrium helped me become a more holistic TESOL professional (McKinley, 2019).