
Exploring Where I'm From
Overview
About this Lesson
In An Inspector Calls, playwright J. B. Priestley explores our interdependence and interconnectedness as human beings, highlighting how our behaviour can have consequences that reach far beyond our own lives. To prepare students to read the play, it, therefore, makes sense that they first reflect on the relationship between the individual and society, and how that relationship is both influenced by and influences our identity: Societal institutions, our experiences within them, and other people’s perceptions of who we are directly impact our identity, while at the same time our experiences and our identity directly impact our behaviour and how we relate to those in the world around us. Gaining an understanding of the complex relationship between the individual and society will help prepare students for in-depth analysis of the characters and setting of the play, and for thoughtful exploration of the play’s themes of social responsibility, inequality, growth, justice, and power.
This lesson uses a poem to introduce the concept of identity. Students will read a poem by Melanie Poonai, winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2007, entitled ‘Where I’m From’ and consider the many different factors that make up who she is, both those factors that are influenced by external forces and those that she chooses herself. Students will then have the opportunity to develop their own understanding of identity and its multifaceted nature further through the creation of personal identity charts and poems.
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