After just lurking last year, I’m
back to participating in #CyberPD. This
year’s selections is Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies for Teach Social
Comprehension by Sara Ahmed. If you are interested in joining the study, check out our amazing facilitators, Cathy's post here or Michelle's post here. Here is the
information for the rest of the book study:
Throughout the first chapters, Sara
Ahmed emphasized making connections – between teachers and students and
students amongst themselves. These connections erase the boundaries between “us”
and “them”. I almost immediately found
many connections to Sara Ahmed. Like
her, I’ve taught in public, private, and international classrooms. My international experiences highlighted the
importance of student identity work and finding common ground to work through
differences.
As I was reading, I was taken back
to my classrooms in Brazil, Lithuania, and Aruba where we completed “Where I’m
From” poems, found poems of personal culture on top of cornmeal painted flags
of students’ home countries, and Personal Identity and Culture collage. For my third-culture kids (TCK), exploring language,
identity, and culture was personally relevant and important as many of them
were born in one country, lived in another, and had parents from two other
countries.
Yet, as I was reading, I was
reminded of how important this identity work is for students in the
States. Each student comes to the
classroom with their own story, and too often I’ve assumed I knew their story
from looking at them. As I’ve moved into
teaching at the higher ed level, I used some of the same techniques with my
undergraduate students – the identity web that Sara Ahmed suggested and a
collage. But, that was in the multicultural
class, where is seemed to fit. I would
like to see how I can weave this into my literacy classes, as our identities
influence how and what we read and write and how we teach literacy.
Dr. Roberts, in the Forward,
highlights Sara’s suggestion of “muddling through these [instruments] with your
peers before you engage with your students.”
Identity work is risky work.
Right now I’m at a stage of life where I’ve lost many of my former
identities and I’m struggling to redefine myself.
