From case study ethnographies of new secondary teachers, it appears that the early trajectories of life as a teacher are characterised by emotional intensity and the development of relationships. In the time-space compression of the first few weeks, new teachers face the fundamental question of whether they can see themselves as teachers, not only in the reflections from colleagues and children in their schools, but also in the mirror they themselves hold up. Part of what begins to come in to focus is a range of personal qualities, rather than prescribed values, which will accommodate the demands of the job. The picture is of a search for a teaching identity that has a strong individual dimension: one beginner talks of recognising the emergence of 'humanity' and 'humility' within herself; for another the personal change surfaces in 'talking like a teacher' to family and friends. The paper will elaborate this position by drawing on early work in the ESRC sponsored 'Early Professional Learning' Project (2004 - 2007), the concepts of relational conditions (McNally et al, 1997) and relational self (Schibbye 2002) and a range of literature that argues for a more complex concept of identity in a changing professional context (e.g. Stronach et al 2002)