This essay tells the story of one person's transformation from ineffective to effective teacher. While ostensibly a narrative of personal revelation and growth, the author reveals that re-envisioning who he is as a teacher required critical reflection on the social forces that shape people. He shows the link between his early discomforts and failures in the classroom and the basic messages about education and self-worth conveyed in the community that raised him. And he introduces us to remarkable students who taught him the real-world and classroom implications of abstractions like race and class. These experiences culminated in better teaching but, more importantly, in the recognition that we cannot know and reach our students unless we are willing to interrogate and transform the lens--the social self--that we bring to the classroom.