As promised (albeit a little late), I am going to ask you, in your first post on this blog, to think back to listening to your group members' social identity narratives in class on Thursday. Go to your notebook and look back over the jottings you made while people were reading (because those were the instructions, remember?). Think about how, all these days later, your classmates' social identity stories are still impacting you.
In a post that ranges from 300-400 words, please tell us what you took away from hearing others' stories and, especially, from hearing how others defined their social identities.
Some questions you may want to consider before you start writing your post:
- What were the details of peoples' lives that they chose to share with the group?
- What details from your life did you choose to share?
- What did you have in common? What are differences?
- What is a social identity, anyway?
- Why are stories about our lives important to the study of ELA?
- What function do stories (narratives) serve in a classroom?
To some degree, I knew the three people with whom I shared my Social Identity paper and who shared theirs with me. A lot of what I learned reinforced things I heard them share in other classes -- Nate's love for his job, Danielle's interest in video games, and Matt's affinity for crafting. While my classmates were sharing their pieces, I indicated which pieces I found particularly compelling, and I will share one of those pieces for each of those individuals:
ReplyDeleteIn discussing his favorite authors and movies, which we joked about as being dark and offputting, Nate said he liked them because they show that "there is beauty between the cracks".
Danielle shared that she used authors and video games as sources of inspiration for her, providing details about the storylines and character developments in the later.
Matt talked about his love for the book To Kill a Mockingbird, saying about Atticus Finch, "I want to be him."
We all shared a smiliar feeling of grasping at straws when trying to write so much about ourseveles. However, after reviewing mine and hearing theirs, I think it forced us to explicate things that may have otherwise been base statements. For example, I really delved into my love of theatre, something I had mentioned before but never in such detail.
I think a social identity is how we see ourselves in our world. It is how we situate ourselves in relation to ourselves and others. I consider myself creative, because I know others who do not feel that they are. It sounds bad, butt I don't think it's a negativee thing -- I conider myself compassionate because I have modeled my behavior based on other compassionate people.
I think an exercise like this has shown just how important storytelling is. I have learned a lot about my classmates and about myself. I have also learned not to take terms like "Social Identity" for granted.
Reading aloud is always a pleasant experience. I have always found it enjoyable to listen to others when they share something they worked on, especially something as lengthy as this. Right away, before we started reading, we were all under mutual agreement that this was something that was harder than we had originally intended. This helped with some tension, knowing that none of us at the table had, as far as we were concerned, contrasted a first daft masterpiece. Also, the four of us have had classes together in the past, making speaking and sharing with one another easier and familiar.
ReplyDeleteThere were instances where we noted what someone said in their essay and we began asking ourselves why we did not include that in our own. For me personally, I liked the quote, “stand out among the standouts” when she was discussing her education in middle school in high school. Most of us, as educators, were once high achievers in school, not all, but most of us are. We love school, we worked hard to get where we are, we were trying to be those stand outs. In my notebook, I made a side note during another essay stating “I wish I talked about this”. It was next to the quote “scared to take the risk”. There are a lot of risks we make as teachers; even being a teacher is a risk. It is a risk that requires us to have a “non-stop lifestyle”. I also loved the quote, “Boredom is something a person creates on their own”. As an educator, I think we need to take out the boredom, take a risk and make the classroom enjoyable. Both he and I had a teacher in our lives that helped our final decision, or, in my case, THE decision, to become a teacher. How cool would it be to be that teacher who influences a student to become a teacher?
Perhaps then, that is why we did not include some aspects in our assignments that the others did. We may think it is part of us; maybe, it does not influence us as much as we believe it does. We had different backgrounds and yet here we are: future English educators. We have similar passions, but different ways of getting there. If this assignment did not scream that, I am not sure what else will. As we transition from becoming students to educators, we begin to see where we come from and why we do what we do. We love English, and we know not everyone is going to coming into our classroom. We have to see that even the most similar people have different stands on the same subject, just imagine what it will be like when a student walks in with no love for literature, a home where no one read to them… they are not going to be as excited about the English language as we are.
Overall, I found this assignment pleasant; we did all agree though that the length of the assignment was the biggest obstacle. There is nothing more difficult, I believe, than writing about yourself, especially for 7 pages or more. By nature, we love to talk about ourselves; we are English majors, we love language, we love to talk. But when we finally get the chance, we freeze. We know we are sharing our personal selves. We ask questions pertaining to what we know we can share and what we really do want to share. We begin to limit ourselves, and then ramble on when we have disposed of all we were going to initially write. Before reading, we had all agreed that we started off alright, but as we progressed, we were unsure what to say. Was it time? Was it really the length? Still, this was a fun assignment and I am convinced that we all did enjoy it. I think a better length would be 1000 words.
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DeleteI think a social identity is what we take from our environment and apply it to ourselves. We take bits and pieces and use them as pieces to complete the puzzle that is us. By sharing our experiences, we take some of those excess pieces and share them with others. Perhaps they can keep passing the piece or maybe use it to help complete their own puzzle. In a sense, we share our thoughts, feelings, and personality through our identity. By sharing such details with other students, they hear how you describe yourself; they see you as a person and as their teacher. They begin to see the puzzle and learn to use it to help finish theirs, if that makes sense. (Apologies that this is so long, I did write it ahead of time expecting a bit of a longer response)
I see social identity as a person’s own self-concept within the society or social group they are a part of. It is how one sees themself within the framework of their life. Social identity is how all those little pieces of a person’s life come together to complete the puzzle of who they are.
ReplyDeleteIn my group everyone shared stories about their families. Cindy talked about her life growing up on the Jersey Shore, jumping fully clothed in to her siblings’ bath time, and how they all still remain close. Joey talked about his family’s love for the army and him not completely identifying with it, and his many travels to visit his family. Dr. Cook talked about her family tradition of making Hungarian stuffing with her pop, her mother’s peach pie, and making paper kites on Easter. I think what we all had in common was our families, and the way they shaped the people we are today. Whether we identify with our families or use our families as a guideline for what we do not want to be, the fact still remains the same—our families helped to shape our identities and our self-concept. I see the narratives as a way of building a new family—a family within the classroom.
The narratives serve as a community building task in a classroom. It is important that within a classroom you build a safe haven for your students, a place where they feel loved and accepted, and a place where they feel they can relate or belong. By having students share their story it allows others inside of their safety net. Students begin to see their similarities and differences and begin to see themselves in their peers. I know that by me sharing my story I allowed others inside my own little gated community and in return I was allowed into theirs. Within this exchange I was able to see myself at one point or another in everyone’s story, and I think that is the main point—we can relate to each other and have a sense of belonging. You are able to relate to one another in a different way, a more inner workings personal way, you see how a person is built and what makes them tick.
With the idea of social identity being as how someone perceives themselves fitting into the society, it is quite easy for one to sum up themselves in a single paragraph. For me, I’d say I am a highly motivated student of English and education. I love men’s fashion, fitness, sports, music, literature, etc. But what does this really mean? This social identity assignment allows us to trace back in our history to the people, places, and events that made us who we are today. For example, I said I’m motivated, but did you know that is because I was raised on the idea that “no matter how good you are at something, there is always someone better?” There’s truly no way for you to know that unless I said it.
ReplyDeleteThis brings me to the sharing part of our social identities. While I already knew Matt, Danielle, and Jess, I did not know who they thought they were, or what got them there. I did know we all love literature and want to make education fun, but what I did not know was that Matt identifies himself with The Penguin, that Danielle lived in California which inspired her to want to teach ELL and ELA students, or that Jess was inspired to be her own person because he mother was the only woman she knew who liked football. These are our stories, and sharing our personal image really puts out a new lens for others to look at and humanizes us.
I think this is what Christensen is getting at when she writes about sharing our narratives and the importance of showing people what made us who we are. Christensen shares her own stories of struggle and success, opening a whole new world for students to relate and know that they are not alone. And when the students in her class share out, they learn that they are among friends. I had a moment like that when Jess mentioned struggling with anything academic makes her feel “hopeless”. To be honest, I thought I was the only one who felt this way in higher level education. And even as this is my fourth attempt at this blog, I almost gave up and went to bed after the second, the feeling of hopelessness taking over.
To wrap it up, social identity is not something we should take for granted as a tool in the classroom, not only is it useful to really learn who students are, or perceive themselves to be, but also to allow students to connect to teachers.
Thank you for your thoughts so far, folks. Identity is a funny thing. Parts of our identity shift and change, and parts of it are fixed. Our social identity is both--the inner self we have nurtured all these years and the outer self that we adjust based on who's in front of us and where we are.
ReplyDeleteWhen you are in a classroom with 6 other English teacher candidates and your professor, who are you? Who do you want us to see you as? The manner in which we choose to articulate and share our identity with our colleagues and our students is significant.
What you chose to include in your social identity paper is just as interesting as what you chose to leave out. For example, I wrote a lot about my parents and the traditions they developed over time that now live inside of me, giving me a sense of home and family and identity. I wrote about my parents because the way that they raised me provided me with the sturdy foundation I now rest safely upon. My identity is directly linked to the choices they made when they were raising me. And, I deeply love my parents and would lie down in the road for them. So, I am grateful and thankful and feel their nurturing touch every day. They are wholly significant to me, even though they live 400 miles away from me.
I didn't choose to write about many things: being gay, trout fishing, needing a dog by my side, wandering in the woods, going to college at 16, living in Texas, living in Washington, DC, living in London, traveling Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall came down, being in college for 11 years, growing up in a house my father built with his own two hands. There are so many facets of life to mine.
As a teacher and a human being, what's interesting to me is WHY I chose to include the stories I did and WHY I chose not to include the stories I didn't.
Which identity do we show one another and why?
How is this relevant to the adolescents in our classrooms?
Panda, thank you for this comment, which captures the intent of this exercise:
"I see the narratives as a way of building a new family—a family within the classroom. The narratives serve as a community building task in a classroom. It is important that within a classroom you build a safe haven for your students, a place where they feel loved and accepted, and a place where they feel they can relate or belong. By having students share their story it allows others inside of their safety net. Students begin to see their similarities and differences and begin to see themselves in their peers. I know that by me sharing my story I allowed others inside my own little gated community and in return I was allowed into theirs. Within this exchange I was able to see myself at one point or another in everyone’s story..."
Keep writing; I'm reading!
Like the others in my group, I’ll start by saying that I had previously known the people I was sharing my Social Identity Paper with. And, overall, I thought I knew them pretty well. But what I did not know at the time was how much their social identity papers would reflect things about myself that I had not previously thought of. Danielle mentioned it above, that during the read-around, the phrase “I should have wrote that down” kept popping up in my head.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest thing that struck me overall was that there were many, many similarities that we found in common around the table. A lot of us identified strongly with Rhode Island, for example. Family was also something that seemed to have a massive impact, and I believe multiple people listed it as what they considered to be the most important factor in their social identity.
But, even though we previously knew each other, as Nate said, there were little details about everyone that sort of brought everything a little more sharply into focus. I did not know that Jessica enjoyed science fiction novels, nor that she loved Tina Fey. I was unaware of the important part Nature plays in Nate’s life, or how he feels that “misery can be beautiful too.” And I was ignorant of Danielle’s love of animation, or how she finds “novels” in everything, even video-games (something that I never thought of before.
I also learned that, while we all had similar influences, the way we looked at it tended to be a bit different. Fr example, we all had role-models, and they were all role-models for different reasons (From Jessica’s football-loving mother, to Danielle’s mother reading to her, to Nate’s coach), but that we looked in different places for it. I, personally, wrote more on how I was influenced by the stories and characters that I read about and, I guess you could say “consumed,” as a child.
In the ELA classroom, I see the use of narrative being very important, simply because the world is a narrative, if you think about it. Christensen used a lot of personal details, both on her part, and on the part of her students, to make assignments and activities more engaging. In a way, this assignment did that too. However, as has been previously mentioned by others in their own responses, the length of this assignment was a hurdle. I might be useful to use this very assignment in a high school classroom, I can see where it would be very useful and interesting (and probably very engaging). But it would have to be shorter. And possibly a bit clearer when written out (which was the note that we began our sharing on. Everyone had seemed to stumble a bit when it came to the length and to knowing exactly what was required, though I suppose that was probably the point, to look at it however we chose to look at it, and not be constrained by specific expectations when it came to content).
In the end, I think that we learned a bit about social identity, not just from writing it, but by hearing it, and sharing it. The way I went about the assignment, in essence how I looked at social identity, was a bit different from everyone else, as I believe everyone found there’s to be. So, though I can only speak for myself, I think our definitions expanded as we heard others speak. It was eye-opening, and I enjoyed it.
Amanda Hart was fascinating, truly! I was amazed at how well she has used pain to learn, to grow. I loved her “colored brick” inserts in her narrative. It was well thought-out to use the light and dark colors to represent the happier and more difficult times of her life. The image of her baby’s birth was powerful, but the power quadrupled when she related it to herself as a teacher, seeing her students as the great love of their parents! I noticed my own reaction to her reading, particularly at first. I looked down a lot, for two reasons. I was concerned about writing enough notes to make my reflection productive, and I was trying to show respect for her, as she divulged private details of her life. As she progressed, I looked up more and more.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed my own reading, strange as that may seem. I noticed when I was done, however, that I was shaking quite hard!! I have a desire to act, so performing is something I feel comfortable with, and therefore audience is a term I love.
Joey did an excellent job, I thought. The food/cooking descriptions were courageous, honest, and well tied to his teaching goals. The honesty he showed about fear of failing was refreshing. I also deeply appreciated when he spoke of the reasons to explore language with his students. Perhaps it will serve as a good reminder to me (I hope)that the reason to explore language is not necessarily to ascertain the reasons the author wrote it, but to play with the language and maybe even develop a love of language in a student.
I enjoyed listening to your narrative on the four topics you wrote about. The rich detail helped me to conjure up the images of you and your family members as you all studied and honed your gifts. I felt that the workers and the worker bees were engrossed in activities which gave them a sense of purpose. My take-away feeling was that I was watching a play about the life of a family, one that left me feeling satisfied as I left the theatre! It was equally as effective to me as a listener of the story which contained private details. This tells me that authenticity matters, not content.
I think that it almost didn’t matter how private our sharing was or wasn’t. It was varied. The fact that we got into a storytelling mode was what mattered, and what will matter in class with students. I will probably be comfortable sharing some private things with students, in an appropriate manner, so I feel I’ll be able to set a ambiance of trust, where they will feel safe. I have looked at a lot of my dark twists and this is helpful in that I plan to use them in effective ways.
One thing I noticed about each of our narratives is that one thing could never shape our lives. That’s why I loved Amanda’s imagery of the lego tower and how each brick represents another plot in her life. I think what makes that work so well is that that imagery doesn’t just work for her life but can be applied to anyone’s.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Amanda I really admired her honesty in her narrative. Those were very difficult things to admit to a room of people she doesn’t know particularly well. I’m not sure I could have done something like that with my first writing piece. I was truly impressed not only with her honesty but her ability to take all the bad things that happened in her life and use them to empower her rather than get her down.
What struck me about Cindy’s life is how multifaceted it was. It was really interesting to see about all the twists and turns in her life, her adopting, her moving, her work in advertising. In some ways she seemed to have lived multiple lives and that’s really cool. I respect anyone who refuses a static life and chooses instead to change things up.
Lastly with Professor Cook’s narrative it occurred to me how differently two people could react to what amounted to the same situation. She spoke of her love of making stuffed cabbage with her family, it was a family tradition they did every year. That’s what I loved about her narratives, each one seemed to have the connecting theme of crafting/building something and how it brought her closer to her family. My family would make stuffed cabbage, or haluki as we called it (we were of Czech decent) and I hated it. The smell was disgusting and stuck to you even if you were only in the room for a moment. When I heard it was being made I’d make any excuse to leave the house for the entirety of the day rather than be around it. It’s was really interesting to see her perspective on this.