FRJ #3 - Erikson

*3. In what psychosocial stage did Erikson say most children in the grade level you observed are functioning? What specific teacher behaviors do you oberve that either help or hinder the students to successfully navigate through this stage? What more could or should be done?

Erikson says that adolescences are in the psychosocial stage of Identity vs. Role Confusion. During the identity vs. role confusion adolescence are influenced heavily by their own personal internal state as well as the environment around them. The adolescence need the opportunity to explore different roles that they want to partake of during their lives. They also need a psychosocial moratorium; they need to be actively involved in the exploration process. Ms. B helped her students with finding their identity by allowing her students to do hands on activities to explore historical events and by having them explore current events.

It is very important to Ms. B that her students have hands on activities to learn. She wants to allow for creativity in their learning. I observed them doing an activity in their U.S. Honors class they took butcher paper and created life-size scale drawings of people from the Western Frontier. In one of her classes she allowed them to choose which person they wanted to learn about and draw. The students had a great time doing the drawings.

Ms. B also finds it important that her students learn about the world that they are living in now. She has a current event to tell her students every day; she then haves them discuss what they had learned about the current event. I observed five different days and her current events ranged from political current events to artistic current events. She would have them read news paper articles, watch news clips, or have them read magazine articles to gain their information on the current events.

Role confusion is a lack of clear goals and aspirations for self where as identity means a sense of self. I believe that Ms. B does a good job creating an environment where her students are able to be creative. She really pushes them to know what is going on in the world around them. There are examples of this around her room; she posts laminated articles of current events around the room. I was later told that they are used as extra credit for her students. They bring in the articles that they are interested in and present them to the class for extra credit; she then laminates them and hangs them on the wall.

Although Ms. B does a great job helping her students connect what they are learning to what they already know, I believe that Ms. B could do a better job making the connections with areas that her students are interested in. She has them do these extra credit current events that she has them tell the class about but she does not have them express why they are interested in it. I think that would be one more way to help them explore their identity.