Identity Unit Rationale

Valerie Guzman

Developing Identity Unit Rationale

For this unit, 10th grade students will be exploring their own identities through

Identifying the major components that contribute and influence one’s identity. During

the elementary years, much of who we are comes from our families. Parents or

guardians teach children what is right and wrong, how to speak, their values, and their

goals. Much of who children are is based off of what their parents want them to be.

However, during the formative years, teens tend to move away from their families

influence and attempt to carve out their own identities. We see the emphasis that the

family once put on their identity begin to transfer to their peers. Teens look to their

peers to determine what will make them successful in the highly social highschool

world. Students will explore this theme of developing identity by analyzing characters

in the units three major texts; Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming, J.K.

Rowling’s The Cursed Child, and Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You. The goal of

this unit is to help students identify the multiple components of their immensely divers

selves as well as equip them with a multitude of ways to approach/ relate to literary

characters and texts.

The unit will begin with a journal prompt, one of many that will be used to guide

the students thinking on the theme and through the various texts. This first prompt will

ask the students to define identity in their own words and then describe their own

identity. This general, open ended question will allow me to gauge the class’s view on

identity as well as get a better feel for each student’s personality. This will help me to,
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not only better understand my students, but also to know which lessons to approach

with caution and where I should tweak lessons to better reach the majority of students.

We will delve into thinking about identity with Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl

Dreaming. Through this text we will examine how one’s home can determine certain

aspects of who they are. The protagonist grows up during the 1960’s, when the Civil

Rights movement was a current event. She is a colored girl caught between contrasting

ideas of how she should act and look. Her mother, who grew up in South Carolina,

embodies the submissive attitude that colored people of the south were forced to adopt

in order to evade violence. Her father, who grew up in Ohio, was a proud man who

believed his family deserved a seat at the front of the bus just as much as a white family.

Jackie, who belonged to both Ohio and South Carolina struggled to develop her own

sense of self while being pulled in both directions by her sense of home and her family

members.

Students will appreciate Jackie’s struggle to find her place within her multiple

homes. I think students will identify with Jackie because although she doesn’t come

from one distinct place, each of her “homes” place a significant part in who she is and

who she becomes. Many of the students come from a variety of cultures and regions. At

the end of Brown Girl Dreaming, Jackie says “And all the world you are/ gather into

one world/ called You/ where You decide/ what each world/ and each story/ and each

ending/ will finally be.” Through her epiphany that “home” can exist within herself and

that she defines who she is and who she becomes, students will learn that their own

sense of self does not have to be limited to one place or a place and that it is ultimately

defined by them.
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Throughout the unit I have broken up the reading with classroom activities such

as, “Just Like Me Bingo,” where students will fill in blank bingo card with their own

identity components. I will then pull quotes from the book where Jackie describes

herself. When one of her traits matches a student’s trait, they will mark it on their bingo

card. Activities such as this help students find things they can relate to in a character or

a text. It creates a greater personal and enjoyable reading experience for the student

and the class as a whole.

The second book we will explore is J.K. Rowling’s The Cursed Child. This book is

written in the form of a play script and will expose the students to a different text

format. I will have a student’s choose a character part to read aloud as we read the book

in class. Having them do this will allow them to take on the character’s persona and

better relate to the character as well as the story as a whole. Also, having different

students take on different characters will ensure that all students participate in the class

readings and therefore have something to offer in the discussions of the text.

The main character, Albus Potter, is tormented by his father’s reputation and the

fear that he won’t live up to the “Potter” name. He represents how many teens struggle

to live up to their family’s expectations. Although his father expresses his willingness to

accept and love Albus no matter his achievements, he still feels he is the black sheep of

the family for not getting into Gryffindor house like his entire family. Students will

relate to Albus because many of them have felt the sting of not fitting in. They will

empathize with him as a fellow teen trying to live up to self-imposed expectations. To

further allow students to delve into the text and relate to the characters, they will

perform different parts of the play for the class. Different interpretations of a particular

scene will enable students to think about the text in new ways. Seeing how a character
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would react will also drive home the importance of certain events for those students who

are more visual learners.

The Cursed Child also shows students how changing one seemingly unimportant

detail or event in one’s life can drastically change a person. When Albus and Scorpius

travel through time in order to save Cedric Diggory, who was killed in Harry’s fourth

year. They cause a ripple in time that leads to Albus no longer existing. In humiliating

Cedric during the Triwizard tournament, they altered his identity, causing him to turn

dark and become a follower of Voldemort. A miniscule event that lasted about 2

minutes caused Cedric to change from a kind and friendly boy to a spiteful and devious

one, willing to do anything to erase the humiliation he endured.

At the end of the book Harry is witnessing his parent’s death and says,

“Voldemort is going to kill my mum and dad -- and there’s nothing I can do to stop

him.” His son doesn’t understand why Harry won’t save his parents, but the adults in

the scene know that in saving his parents Harry would drastically alter who he is and the

the wizarding world he knows. His restraint at the end of the book give me an

opportunity to teach students that, even the worst moments of our lives have a great

impact on who we become. Through analyzing all the ways in which Albus and Scorpius

change their future through small details and events, students will learn that it is those

small things that construct their identities. It will enable them to take a closer look at

their own pasts and find the small seemingly unimportant moments that lead to them

becoming who they are.

The last major text being used in this unit is Everything I Never Told You by

Celeste Ng. I chose this book because it is written from the perspective of family

members who thought they knew their sister and daughter well. However, through her
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death, they learn they barely knew her at all. With this novel I will tackle aspect of

Identity in this unit. Through the main character, Lydia, and her family students will

discover the concept of different personalities in differing circumstances. Lydia’s family

learn that, while at home, Lydia embodied the ideal daughter image they put forth.

When she is at school, however, she imitates the actions of her peers, smoking, drinking,

and flirting, in order to fit in. This book tackles the influence that friends or peers have

over one’s identity. As a child, Lydia became the ideal daughter her parents constantly

pushed her to be. When she entered middle and high school she had a sense of freedom

she had previously not known. Instead of looking to her parents for what she should

wear, do, or say, she instead looked to her peers. Lydia, however, can not carve out her

own identity. She instead becomes two extreme versions of what the two major groups

on her life want her to be. This text will allow students to evaluate the dangers of losing

oneself to fit in as well as reveal to them that identities are multifaceted and not

singular.

The two minor text sets will serve as introductory pieces to the major three texts.

The first are a set of comic illustrations, one depicting the correlation between social

media and identity in our society, the other depicting the reality faced when you change

yourself so much that your own reflection becomes unrecognizable. Students will

respond to these two illustrations in a journal entry they will later refer back to when

writing their final essay. The second minor text is a set of poems which will be analyzed

in class. The poems tell of the consequences faced when you shrink or hide who you are

to fit in or accommodate others. They will be used as introductory pieces to Everything

I Never Told You, as it tells the story of a girl who ultimately dies because she can’t be

herself.
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I chose the theme of Identity because during our formative years figuring out who

we are is all too important. Teens often lose themselves while trying to fit in because

they don’t value their own individuality. I hope to teach them that it is okay to be a

different version of yourself depending on the circumstances and the company. I hope

to show them that it is up to them who they are and who they become. Most

importantly I want to give them a space where it is okay that they are still figuring their

lives out. Like each character in the books they will cover in this unit, they will go

through great moments and horrible ones, but each is essential to who they are or will

be.
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References

Ng, C. (2014). Everything I Never Told You. USA. Penguin Publishing Group.

Rowling, J.K. Tiffany, J. Thorne, J. (2016). Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Crawfordsville, IN. Scholastic Inc.

Woodson, J. (2016). Brown Girl Dreaming. New York, NY. Penguin Young Readers

Group.