Training Day 1: Character as Identity

To prepare for our first training day, students watched Malala Yousafzai's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and asked themselves "What's her identity/identities?"

After everyone introduced themselves, we created a master list of Malala's hyphenated identities: girl-daughter-Pakistani-leader-champion of literacy-and so on. We wondered together which of these identities was the most essential to Malala's identity, which she would embrace and which others labeled her as. With such a strong example of a young individual who was easily recognizable and an authentic "I," we moved on to the more difficult task of inquiring about our own identities.

character = having an identity

In order to define others and understand our relationship to them, we first need to define ourselves

Using earlier C.L.A.S.S. representatives' definition of "character," students explored their own multiple identities, first listing as many as they could, then choosing one to share a story about with a partner. We encouraged conversation over a scripted one-way speech, so that partners could ask questions to deepen each others' stories. (The photos in our C.L.A.S.S. gallery on the main page, incidentally, were taken mid-story in the hopes of capturing the students in authentic poses as they related stories of themselves.)

The next step was to inquire about where students got these identities--from themselves or others. Which of these identities did they believe about themselves? Which of them would they like to change? How do their different identities influnce or affect how they see the world and what they believe?

We ended the afternoon at school by reading various NPR This I Believe essays to discover how others (we always want to look at/for models for our thinking and behavior) have chosen to identify themselves and their beliefs.

After school, many students were able to visit HALO and the food bank, where the leaders there identified specific needs/problems . . . which we will begin to alleviate in small ways, practice ways, etc., until next year when the full launch of something like this will happen.

Until then . . .