IDENTITY: HOW WE SEE OURSELVES AND OTHERS Lara Sniffin December 7, 2004 ELAN 7408 Dr. SmagorinskyRATIONALE FOR IDENTITY UNIT High school is a crucial time for young people. They are in the process of forming their identities amidst a barrage of influences. These influences range from familial to societal. Growing up in a culturally diverse nation, today’s youth is constantly interacting with people of different backgrounds. Combined with a wide exposure to different mediums of information, students deal with multiple factors that influence the development of their identity. I believe that when one recognizes his/her own identity, he/she is able to acknowledge and learn about others. I have constructed a unit that deals with the formation of identity. My unit will tackle these important questions: What is identity? What defines me? How do I define others? How do others define me? At this critical stage of adolescence, I also believe that students must be aware of who they are, what they value and how they see others. By examining issues concerning gender, race, class and religion and how they define a person, the student will be able to understand more fully how their own concept of self influences the way they view the world. A student develops his/her identity throughout the years of secondary education. Anita Woolfolk says that Children’s understandings of themselves are concrete at first, and then become more abstract. In time, children are able to think abstractly about internal processes—beliefs, intentions, values, motivations. With these developments, knowledge of self, others and situations can incorporate more abstract qualities. (Woolfolk, 73) Early childhood identity focuses on the obvious appearances that make us unique from one another. However, as students get older and enter high school, the differences aremuch more complicated. Two African American students may look similar, but they may be from two completely different backgrounds. Their differences are not clear cut. At this stage of education, students are learning more about themselves and how that makes them different from others. Penelope Eckert says, “The function of adolescent society in moving the individual’s identity into the societal sphere is enhanced by the extent to which the individual can perceive himself or herself in relation to those values.” (74) The concept of self constantly changes depending on the situation. It “evolves through constant self-evaluation in different situations.” (Woolfolk, 75) A Language Arts classroom provides a great opportunity for students to define themselves by examining literature and evaluating themselves in response. An important aspect of identity development is perspective taking. In high school, students are extremely concerned with what others think about them. At times, they are “morbidly preoccupied with what they appear to be in the eyes of others as compared with what they feel they are.” (Erickson, 128) This unit on identity provides the opportunity to deal with this issue by allowing the student to understand his/her own perspective and as well as those around them. As children mature, “they develop the ability to analyze the perspectives of several people involved in a situation from the viewpoint of an objective bystander, and they can even imagine how different cultural or social values would influence the perceptions of the bystander.” (Woolfolk, 80) This is my main focus of the unit—for the student to not only recognize his/her own uniqueness, but also see the factors that influence it. I want the students to take the perspective of the characters they encounter in the literature as a means of understanding themselves. My goal is not to persuade the students to one particular conclusion, but acknowledgedifferences among cultures, genders, religions, etc. My desire is for them to see that there is no correct way to view a situation. However, I want them to see that our identity and what we hold true influences how we read, how we think and how we interpret a situation. Some might say that helping a student find his/her identity is a form of values clarification. I am not advocating teaching a student a set of values to live by. I would not presume to tell another person what they should or should not believe in. Rather, I seek to encourage students to think about their own values and how it influences their developing identity. My goal is to help students “clarify their own values, learn higher levels of moral reasoning, and learn the skills of value analysis.” (Woolfolk, 87) I will employ an inquiry based approach to instruction as a means for students to critically think about the literature and how it relates to their own lives. Marsha Pincus says that high school students “often explain their lack on interest or engagement in school by saying what is happening in their classrooms has little relevance to their lives.” (Hull, 162) Richard Beach and Jamie Myers further this claim when they say that, “Students are more engaged with English when they connect it to their own lives.” (4) These statements drive the concept of my unit plan. I believe that literature can function as a mirror for self-reflection and a window into the world of others. The students can take away so much more from the unit if they connect it to their own lives. My culminating text will be a personal anthology where the student will compile different activities into a larger portfolio. The student will describe an autobiographical incident, which will help him/her explore their past experiences and how they contribute to the present. This autobiographical incident will be presented to the class at the end ofthe unit in a format such as artwork, poetry, video presentation, etc. I will leave this up to the student to decide. However, regardless of which form of presentation the student chooses, I will also expect the student to write a personal narrative explaining who they are and where they came from. This anthology will also contain a song, a piece of artwork and a poem that represents the student in some way. The student will also select a novel by an author with a background different from him/her and write a biography of the author and a critical essay about the literature that relates it to in class texts and/or personal experiences. The critical essay will involve the student taking the perspective of a