So yesterday marked, I think, a real turn around for me. I led a lesson that worked amazingly well and had the students really engaged. Yesterday I dumped the Wordly Wise vocabulary and the AP Prep and just talked about Ellison's Invisible Man and did an activity that really connected to the students' own lives.
We did an activity I first did up at Marlboro, where you write down your Name, Gender, Race, Social Class and Hobby on a piece of paper. You then gather in groups or four or five and discard one identity into the central pile. You then do so twice more. After that, the person to your left selects one of the two remaining identity items and discards it for you. Now left with only one part of who you are, you are allowed to go back into the pile and reclaim one item.
The choices of who we are and how we identify ourselves really show a lot about us. I then transitioned from this activity into one about the nature of names, the importance of names and the importance of those who lack names in the context of Invisible Man. I can safely say, based on student response, that this was my most successful day so far. My new task will be not looking at this day and weighing all others based upon it. Not every day is going to be a huge success, but not every day is going to bomb like Wednesday either.
My goals for myself now are to ride some of this success and engage with students about the text this morning and then over the weekend devise a more engaging system for vocabulary. I think I am onto something, so we will see.
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That's a fascinating exercise. Did one particular aspect of identity recur more often among your students?
ReplyDeleteAnd I hope you sleep well tonight!
I found that most held onto their names. It made the discussion about names really interesting, since who we are is so wrapped up in all four of the other identifiers, yet it is the name which most people feel best represents themselves.
ReplyDelete~ Bryon ~