Youth Work is... Identity!

While reading "Locating Yourself for Your Students", one thing that really stuck out to me was when it said: "Particularly when White educators name their identities in conversations with students and disclose how they view their knowledge in relation to the curriculum they teach, students feel freer to discuss how they view not only the educator, but also themselves and the world". I think this is very important to think about because identity definitely isn't talked about enough in schools. If you don't talk about identities, it can cause things like more racism to occur in schools. Sharing your identity with people could be as simple as just having a conversation with them as long as you are comfortable to do so. Sometimes it just takes someone saying it out loud for it to become a topic of conversation. I believe that it's important to ensure students that it is okay to share their identities and to assure them that you should be proud of who you are. I think that your identities are affirmed by saying that to people and feeling confident about those identities and who you are as a person. There are some identities that you can't change, for example, your race. Therefore, it is important to own those identities and show others that they can talk about their identities too and that they can ultimately be proud of the person that they are.

While watching the Ted Talk, Jamila Lyiscott talks about her experience with identities in a school setting. One thing that she talked about that I really liked was the five A's.

The 5 A's:

1. 
   Awareness
   
2. Agency & Access
3. Actualization
4. Achievement
5. Alteration & Action

All of these are very important and each play their own roles when it comes to identity. I didn't know that there was such thing when it came to talking about identity. I also really liked how Jamila talked about colleges and how some are still structured the way they were during the time of slavery and how those colleges need to do more than bring diversity to their campus to make a real change. She explains that they need to re-design the colleges to make it so that people of all identities feel welcome and safe on campus. Overall, I think that identity is definitely something that needs to be addressed in schools way more than it is now in order to educate our students about the importance of being able to openly talk about their identities.