Promoting Healthy Identity Development at PCCS

[Trina Eichel]

The students that I work with at Prairie Creek Elementary are in Erickson’s fourth stage of psychosocial development – Industry versus Inferiority. Educators need to be careful in this stage to make sure not to shame students for their failures in the classroom as this can make them feel inferior and lead to feelings of incompetence later in life. At Prairie Creek, Molly does a great job of making sure every child feels supported and successful in her classroom. On Wednesday morning, I was able to observe the children write short stories. Molly asked which of her students would like to share a part of their story out loud. Molly read one student’s writing aloud and although it was not the best story, Molly told her how interested she was in hearing what would happen to the main character next. This interest in the girl’s story gave her the confidence to keep developing her story and practicing her writing as she went.

Molly also helps her students feel competent by making sure that she gives them tasks that are within their abilities. During silent reading time, I noticed that a couple of the students were working on something other than reading a book. Molly told me that these students were not yet at grade level in their reading and did not have all their site words. This meant that they needed a little extra support before they could read full books like the other students. She showed me the fun activity sheets that she put together for them to make their learning more engaging and interesting for them. She customized each of their task lists to be “challenges” for each of the student’s favorite tv or video game characters. As they completed their site word activities, they earned things for their characters such as “make a new friend” or “build some muscle”. All of the character achievements are fake of course and merely to make it fun for them to learn and feel like they are making small achievements as they complete activities. Molly puts in a lot of effort to make sure that her students feel competent and successful in the tasks that she gives them. I am unsure that many other teachers put as much time and effort into making sure that none of their students feel inferior or like failures.

I have decided that I am indeed in the Moratorium stage of Marcia’s four identity statuses. In class on Tuesday, I had thought that I was in Foreclosure, but after careful thought I have decided that I am indeed in crisis. I do feel that in some aspects I am identity achieved. I am pretty settled on my gender/sexual orientation and my religious values. I am still exploring parts of my political identity even though it is largely figured out. The thing that I am most in conflict over is my occupation. I came into Carleton knowing that I was going to be an ENTS major and an educational studies minor. I have not strayed from this. I have aspirations to become a teacher, but I do worry that I am doing it because my mom is a teacher and it is what I have always thought I was going to do. I am working in an agroecology lab this term and have found an interest in regenerative agriculture that I had never considered before. I think it would be really cool to do more research in this field and maybe start my own RA farm one day. However, I already have post-Carleton plans to start my career in education, so it would be silly to pursue something else at this point. Hence, the crises and MORATORIUM.

I feel very grateful to be able to tutor at Prairie Creek. It is such an incredible community and Molly is such a wonderful teacher to her students and super helpful to me. She answers all of my questions and takes the time to stop and explain why she makes the decisions that she does or why she teaches a certain way. Prairie Creek is the kind of school that I would hope to teach at one day and getting to be there and see the teaching happen has really sparked my passion for teaching all over again. I had always thought that I would teach high school life sciences and environmental science, but Prairie Creek combines pro-environmental curriculum into their regular school day. It gives the students a passion for the outdoors and gives the teachers the ability to largely shape their curriculum to their own education goals and lessons. I hope to one day get to teach at a school like Prairie Creek.

[Shaw Qin]

Hi Trina,

I enjoyed reading your post!

First, it’s refreshing to read about how dedicated the teacher you observe encourages every student and does not make them feel like a failure. This might be a universal principle for all teachers, but unfortunately, I have never seen or had experience with any teacher like that. I love that Molly modifies the tasks to spark each student’s interest and motivations as much as possible. Since motivation must play a significant role in students’ willingness to persist when facing challenges and their eventual success, I can see how those individualized tasks can help her students achieve industry instead of inferiority. However, I wonder to what extent those students not reading at grade level understand that they are doing tasks at lower levels than their classmates because their works are obviously different (activity sheets instead of full books). If the students know that they haven’t achieved grade-level reading skills, will this deter their feeling of competence? I am very interested in how Molly explained their different tasks to those students.

Also, I totally understand your occupational moratorium, Trina! I didn’t put it into my blog post, but I had a similar experience in my sophomore year. I always thought I was interested in education (I still am), but I suddenly found that I am also very interested in urban planning during OCS. However, I felt uncomfortable exploring a brand new occupational potential that has little to do with my familiar area of education. I applied to a related externship the following fall but didn’t get into it. Eventually, I just “forgot” about this interest. Therefore, although I am still in moratorium regarding which direction I will go under the umbrella of education, I am relatively foreclosed in terms of not being willing to put much effort into exploring other occupational categories. I hope you the best in considering regenerative architecture, though. It definitely sounds fantastic!

Shaw

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