Hope for Courage and Have Honour: Seeking Identity in Crisis

Hope for Courage and Have Honour: Seeking Identity in Crisis

 Presentation Agenda: Shelby & Shirley Saturday, June 12, 2010

Have on the board: Honour & Courage: How might we as teachers use literacy to help our own students through their personal crisis or chaos that shapes their identities?

Blind Side Trailer

Give handout

Quotes From Sources

Matilda:  I suppose it is possible to be all of these things. To sort of fall out of who you are into another, as well as to journey back to some essential sense of self.

Shannon: (Write about me so) other people “can know my feelings”.

Michael:  Courage is a hard thing to figure… It all depends on who you are, where you have come from... Any fool can have courage but honour, that is the real reason you do something or you don’t. You should hope for courage and have honour.

Have you ever considered the turning points in your life? Those times of utter joy or desperate chaos that are often thrust upon us. Theses cataclysmic events impact us in ways that transform our worlds, even our very identities. In the article, No Friends Barely, the novel, Mister Pip, and the movie, The Blind Side, we see a framework for each main character’s response to chaos.  Shannon, Matilda, and Michael attempt to exert control over their chaotic circumstance lest they lose their very sense of being.

This exercise will reveal the structure of a framework following this pattern:

·       a critical event which through no fault of their own the characters have thrust upon them,

·       a clarification and a turning away from their former notions of identities and

·       the choosing of new identity through the influence of literature.

Switchfoot Video: This is Your Life playing during Artifact Dig: 4 min

Finding Identity in our Purse/Briefcase/Pocket!
Find three items or less that will tell your partner through the interview process/story, who you are? 

1.    How do these artifacts define you or how do they reveal something about your identity?

2.     In what way might this item represent a chaotic time in your life?

3.     Can you also recall a literacy connection to this time of chaos? A novel, song, letter, movie, video, email, etc that helped you through this time?

4.     In what ways was your identity changed during this time?

5.     Be prepared to share your partner’s findings with the class.  Present your partner as if we were meeting for the first time.  Be sure to use the items as you weave a story about the artefacts.

Artifact Findings Sharing: 10 min

In 3 groups pick one literary selection. Use our notes to help you determine:

·       a critical event which through no fault of their own the characters have thrust upon them,

·       a clarification and a turning away from their former notions of identities and

·       the choosing of new identity through the influence of literature.

Group 1 reports back from No Friends: 3 min

Group 2 reports back from Mister Pip: 3 min

Group 3 reports back from Blind Side: video: 5 min

Come back to guiding question:

“Honour & Courage: How might we as teachers use literacy to help our own students through their personal crisis or chaos that shapes their identities?”

Think about this question as you watch the Ferdinand clip from The Blind Side.