Exploring Identity

About This Lesson

The question “Who am I?” is especially critical for students during adolescence. The goal of this lesson is to prompt students to consider how the answer to this question arises from the relationship between the individual and society, the topic explored in the first stage of Facing History & Ourselves’ scope and sequence.

Understanding identity is not only valuable for students’ own social, moral, and intellectual development, it also serves as a foundation for examining the choices made by individuals and groups in the historical case study later in the unit. In this lesson, students will learn to create visual representations of their own identities, and then they will repeat the process for the identities of several individuals they read about. In the process, they will analyze the variety of ways we define ourselves and are defined by others.

The factors that influence our identities are too numerous to capture in a single class period. The resources suggested in this lesson include some of these influences—such as race, sexual orientation, and personal interests—but not others. Chapter 1 of Holocaust and Human Behavior includes additional resources that address a larger variety of factors that influence identity, most of which can easily be added or swapped into the activities of this lesson.  

In some environments, it might be especially important to address one specific identity: Jewish identity. Because Jews were a primary target of malicious stereotyping, discrimination, and horrible violence in the historical period explored later in this unit, it is important for students to have a basic understanding of the faith, culture, diversity, and dignity inherent in Jewish identity. In some schools and communities, students may not know anyone who identifies as Jewish, or they might not have had any exposure to Jewish faith, culture, and diversity. This lesson’s first extension is designed to help students start to recognize that identifying as Jewish implies membership in a rich and diverse set of beliefs and cultural practices.

Essential Questions

Unit Essential Question: How can learning about the choices people made during past episodes of injustice, mass violence, or genocide help guide our choices today?

Guiding Questions

• What factors shape our identities? What dilemmas arise when others view us differently than we view ourselves?
• How do our identities influence our choices?

Learning Objectives

Students will identify social and cultural factors that help shape our identities by analyzing firsthand reflections and creating their own personal identity charts.

Activities

Activity 1: Introduce Identity

Explain to students that today they will be thinking about what makes up their identities and reading firsthand accounts of how various individuals have grappled with the different ways they define themselves and are defined by others.

Tell students to write a response to the question “Who am I?” in a quick journal entry. They might list, or write in complete sentences, the first five to seven ideas that come to mind when they think about this question.

Now ask students to use the information from their journals to create an identity chart. You might start an identity chart for yourself on the board to help your students understand the format. Make sure that students create their identity charts on a new page in their journals, because they will be adding to them throughout the lesson and later in the unit.

Activity 2: Explore the Complexity of Identity

Next, have students read five personal reflections on identity using the Jigsaw teaching strategy. Begin by dividing the class into four “expert” groups, and pass out one of the following readings to each group:

• Words Matter
• Finding Confidence
• Finding One’s Voice
• Gender and Identity
• Navigating Multiple Identities

Explain to students that each “expert” group will read together the group’s assigned reading, briefly discuss the connection questions on the handout, and then create an identity chart representing the person featured in that reading.

Then divide the class into new “teaching” groups. The members of each “teaching” group should have read a different reading in their “expert” groups.

Instruct each student to summarize his or her “expert” group’s reading for the new “teaching” group and share the identity chart they created. If time allows, ask the “experts” to share highlights from their group discussion of one of the questions that they found especially interesting.

After each student has shared, ask each “teaching” group to make a list of the different categories of identity (such as race, gender, nationality, and religion) that came up in their discussion, and have them share their lists with the class. You might record this list on the board or on chart paper.

Ask students to add information to their personal identity charts if new categories emerged through the Jigsaw activity that they hadn’t previously considered.

Activity 3: Identity Chart Journal Reflection

Ask students to reflect on their own identity charts in their journals by selecting from the following questions:

• What parts of your identity do you choose for yourself? What parts of your identity do you think are determined by others, by society, or by chance?
• Whose opinions and beliefs have the greatest effect on how you think about your own identity?
• What dilemmas arise when others view you differently than you view yourself?
• What aspects of your identity do you keep private in order to be accepted? What aspects of your identity are you willing to change to fit in?

You might ask a few students to volunteer to share from their responses. Because students are writing about a personal topic in this reflection, it is important that they not be required to share.