All posts by Hossannah Asuncion

Social and Personal Identity Wheel

Classroom Activities/Lessons, , , , ,
Source: https://sites.northwestern.edu/msaatnu/2020/07/09/the-i-in-identity-series-identity-wheel-self-reflection/

From https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/inclusive-teaching/social-identity-wheel/:

“The Social Identity Wheel worksheet is an activity that encourages students to identify social identities and reflect on the various ways those identities become visible or more keenly felt at different times, and how those identities impact the ways others perceive or treat them. The worksheet prompts students to fill in various social identities (such as race, gender, sex, ability disability, sexual orientation, etc.) and further categorize those identities based on which matter most in their self-perception and which matter most in others’ perception of them. The Social Identity Wheel can be used in conjunction with the Personal Identity Wheel to encourage students to reflect on the relationships and dissonances between their personal and social identities. The wheels can be used as a prompt for small or large group discussion or reflective writing on identity by using the Spectrum Activity, Questions of Identity.”

I’ve used the Social and Personal Identity Wheel exercises at the start of the semester to help invite our identities into the classroom spaces. I stress that our identities inform our perspectives and interpretations and are what provide the unique ways we will perceive and write about the essays and stories we read.

How To Create Community

Creating Community

Check-In Questions

Check-in questions have helped me learn student names and I’ve also received feedback from students who’ve said that it has made them feel like I’ve wanted to get to know who they are. It’s a low-stakes way to start dialogue in the classroom to get them comfortable with speaking to each other.

Small-Group Or Pairs Work At Least Once a Class

At one point in the class, the students are talking to each other. It wakes them up, for one thing, but it helps them to get to know each other and I don’t mind them digressing once they’ve tackled the questions I’ve assigned.

Let Them Be Experts

They know more than you about a lot of things. Every now and then they take the lead and teach me. Every year there’s a new slang term that makes me looketh the fool and every year the students enjoy trying to get me learn how to use it. Or it’s letting them compare and contrast the dialects of Puerto Rican and Dominican Spanish after we’ve read Gloria Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.”