Identity Prompts

Week 2
In the Dewey workshop you discussed traditional education, progressive education, and a problematic implementation of progressive education. In your identity journals, reflect on your own schooling. How has it influenced your identity as a learner in schools and out of schools? How has it shaped your conceptions of the purpose, organization, and curriculum in schools? How were your ideas challenged by Dewey and your seminar discussion?

Week 3
In light of your identity autobiography and first identity prompt, articulate the values you have and the filters you have that are generated by your experiences. How do you anticipate they will affect your interactions (as a teacher) with a range of students in school classrooms?

Week 4
Last week we asked you to consider your life experiences in light of Dewey. This week we would like you to delve into more specifics in light of Kohl.

At the bottom of p. 77 Kohl (1994) writes,

We also have to understand ourselves as victims of the same system we are imposing on our students. That means accepting responsibility for the double task of protecting students form being defined in terms of external criteria and examining how that sorting system has affected our feelings.

What might you be a victim of that shapes your feelings and actions as a teacher? Are your anticipated practices replications of your experience? Are your anticipated practices reactions to your experience? Are your anticipated practices well reasoned?

Week 5

Look through pages 25-32. Johnson's lists were inspired by the work of Peggy McIntosh who described the need for us to Unpack our Invisible Knapsacks . Our knapsacks of privilege contain our experiences, attitudes, and beliefs. Going through each item on pages 25-32, write down what is in your knapsack. Recall, you do not have to show us what you write, so we ask you to be as honest about what is in there as possible.

Week 6

Look back on what you found in your invisible knapsack from last week's prompt. How might what is in your knapsack affect your experiences and decision making with other people in the school system.

Week 7

Consider the readings and conversations we have had over the past few weeks and reflect back to Johnson. If you want to challenge yourself to work against your own unearned privilege, what might you do? (This is not about changing others but reducing the ways in which you experience unearned privilege.)

Week 9

During your student teaching, one area of evaluation is on your “Cultural Encapsulation.” This is basically a concept that describes the degree to which you act from your own cultural knowledge and orientation that normalizes your perspectives and marginalizes others. As you have read Payne, Ehrenreich, Brice-Heath and Carreon, how are you coming to understand your own cultural encapsulation as a developing teacher? If your encapsulation is not challenged or better understood, in what ways do you think your expectations for students' participation and performance, and parent engagement and support might cause difficulties for oppressed or marginalized students/parents?