WHERE AM I AHHHHHHH

[Chris O’Mara]

According to Erikson, the students I am working with, who are in 10th grade, should be in the stage of identity vs. role confusion, which means they are trying to figure out what kind of people they are while still going through all the regular toils and troubles of school. According to Piaget, they are cognitively developed enough to approach anything that they may face, yet the question now becomes how they are going to face it, given that they are in a social environment surrounded by a bunch of other people their age. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I have witnessed some kind of perfect evidence of the fact that my students are in this stage, though it seems true to me given how I was feeling when i was in high school and what I can generally tell from the students about what is important to them and what they want to get out of school.

I am sure that Mr. DuBe does his best to foster positive identity development through the structure of his classes and the layout of his classrooms, but in general I don’t think his class does a great job of accomplishing this goal. The desks, for example, are organized in 5 rows of perhaps 6 across, and all the students face forward during class, looking up at Mr. DuBe while he teaches something or looking at their ipads and doing work on their own. There have been some components where Mr. DuBe has made time for group work or group discussion, but the room feels like each student has a relationship with Mr. DuBe and perhaps a relationship with the students around them; there is very little sense of a relationship that includes Mr. DuBe and the students as a whole.

School feels like the center of Mr. DuBe’s class rather than development, which is challenging because I know Mr. DuBe is very passionate about fostering development and does his absolute best with the situation he has been given. He gives time for students to read on their own and lets them read whatever they want to, he has them write in an interest journal once a week for 15 minutes (again, about whatever they are interested in) and he asks them questions at the beginning and end of class about how things are going. He is constrained, however, by the fact that many of his students are behind on their learning and unable to do homework outside of class, so there is very little class time to devote to helping students discover and pursue things they may be passionate about. The photo I took isn’t the best, but you can see some of the library in the back of the classroom in the bottom right of the photo:

I would say that I am a combination of identity achieved and moratorium, and I think I may be moving out of some foreclosure. I think I am identity achieved in many of the things that are important to me and that I value: my family, my relationships with others, bettering myself, and trying to do good. I know those are super broad, but I think there are some more minute things nestled in there that I have come to realize matter deeply to me like good communication, empathy, honesty; these are things that I want to strive to have in all aspects of my life and, in that sense, I feel identity achieved around them. My relationship with my significant other, for example, helped me realize how important good communication and empathy are in forming a deep connection — I would say that the ‘crisis’ that I’ve faced hasn’t been one specific instance, but generally being in a relationship and kind of jumping into that aspect of my life has brought about a lot of growth. Moratorium wise, there are many things that I am still unsure about: what I want to do for a career, whether I am spending my time well, whether I have “found my people” or am still looking, and many other classic college age questions. My friendships with my high school friends, for example, is waning and I am not sure how I feel about it: I don’t know that I really feel we have much in common any more, but I also don’t know if that is a good reason to not be as interested in maintaining our friendship or not. It seems moratorium is marked by questions not having a right answer, so I’d say that has been a very challenging aspect of that situation.

Regarding foreclosure, I think during high school I just kind of operated on a day to day basis and had a great time pretty much all of the time. I was mostly locked in on what I was interested in, I had a lot of friends who I got along with really well, and I was very happy to be at school, etc. While I am certainly glad that I enjoyed being in high school, COVID and other related crises last year at school have caused me to move towards moratorium in a lot of different ways. While I certainly miss foreclosure a bit (think ignorance is bliss), I do think I am happy with where I’m at.

One thing that has been interesting for me to note and that I see as a pro of Erikson’s theory is how adolescents can continue moving through the stages even if, in one stage or another, they were forced by circumstance to take the less ideal “route.” Many students in the class, for example, seem to have been left behind during the industry vs. inferiority stage of their lives from an educational perspective, which now leads them to have doubts about their own abilities and with a lack of desire to learn and enjoy school. It is hard to make progress helping someone when they don’t really want to be helped and when they aren’t very interested in being there in the first place, which is what I have experienced to a small degree and what Mr. DuBe has told me has been a large part of his experience.

[Author]

Posts