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 course.

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 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 course, 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.

Course 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 Objective

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

Lesson Plan

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 course.

Activity 2: View/Read The Bear That Wasn’t

Next, play the video The Bear That Wasn’t (5:32) for your students and then pass out copies of the text version so they can refer to it for the discussion. Alternatively, you might choose a Read Aloud strategy and read The Bear That Wasn’t.

Then ask students to work with a partner to create an identity chart for the Bear, thinking about which labels on the chart represent how he sees his own identity and which ones represent how others in the story see him.

Give students a few minutes to share their identity charts for the Bear with another pair, and encourage them to add words and phrases from the other pair’s charts to their own.

Next, divide the class into small groups so they can discuss the following questions: 

• Why do you think Frank Tashlin titled this story The Bear That Wasn’t? 
• Why didn’t the factory officials recognize the Bear for what he was? 
• Why did it become harder and harder for the Bear to maintain his identity as he moved through the bureaucracy of the factory?
• What were the consequences for the Bear of the way others defined his identity?
• Whose opinions and beliefs have the greatest effect on how you think about your own identity?
• How does our need to be part of a group affect our actions? 
• Why is it so difficult for a person to go against the group?

Finally, debrief the activity by leading a short class discussion and inviting students to share how The Bear That Wasn’t has challenged or confirmed their understanding of the factors that can influence identity (which parts we choose for ourselves and which parts are determined by others or society).

Activity 3: 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 
• 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, 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 4: 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