This paper explores my identity formation and the struggle to
establish voice as a non-native teacher working in the periphery. While
publication on non-native speakers? struggle into academia has been
growing in the West, such publication is rare in the periphery where I
have been working as an English language teacher for the last seven
years. My personal reflection has shown that similar to their non-native
colleagues working in the Center, non-native teachers also experienced
marginalization that have fostered a perception that their nononativeness
is a drawback. This leads to an identity of the non-native
teacher s into a producer of errors and second-rate citizens despite years
of learning English. From this personal narrative, I learned that it is
crucial for teacher education programs to address issues of native/nonnatives
as an attempt to unfasten destructive identity constructions that
non-native speakers are accustomed to.