Today I modeled my identity web, using the brilliant lessons from @SaraKAhmed’s book BEING THE CHANGE and as a part of my rewrite of the SEL curriculum we use. Let me just say what this gave me the opportunity to do:

Sharing my identity web with my students built community and allowed me to be vulnerable in sharing all parts of who I with my students before asking them to trust me enough to do the same.

It allowed me to introduce and explain language for us all to use to navigate conversations around identity. I was able to make aspects of race and ethnicity and religion and gender. I was able to introduce and define terms like cisgender and transgender and gay and straight.

I was able to model asking questions in a safe and respectful way about a person’s identity and also model language to use when someone asks a question you don’t feel comfortable answering.

I was able to show that identity is complex and there are parts of who we are that are hard to talk about but NOT because something is wrong with who we are but because something is wrong with the world we are living in.

All of this while also allowing my students into my world and identity in a way that humanizes all of us. So all of this is to say thank you, @SaraKAhmed. For this gift you’ve given us.