Challenges: Individual Identity

Essential Question

Who am I and who do I want to be?

Overview

Are you equipped for the journey through high school? Do you have the tools you need to succeed? As with any expedition or journey, careful thought needs to go into the tools and resources you place in your backpack. We challenge you to identify your inspirations, examine your challenges, explore passions and goals, and create a virtual backpack of resources that will help you become successful.

The Challenge

Create a virtual backpack (portfolio) for success.

Guiding Questions

Guiding questions direct the research of the challenge topic.

Examples
  • Who am I?
  • What is my passion?
  • What are my challenges?
  • What are my goals?
  • How do I solve problems?
  • How do I learn?
  • What resources do I have?
  • What resources do I need?
  • What talents/skills do I have/need to develop?

Guiding Activities

These activities assist students with answering the guiding questions and set the foundation for them to develop insightful and realistic solutions. They can be student or teacher directed. The student teams may begin with these activities but will need to seek out new ones to answer their questions. The goal is not to create a prescribed path to a solution but to provide guidance when needed.

Examples
  • Students view the movie Blindsight and discuss the individual characters and how they interacted. What are the characters’ passions and goals?
  • Students mind map themselves. They can start with their name in the middle and brainstorm everything they are interested in.
  • Students identify the things they are passionate about, take a photograph of them, and create a photo essay in Pages.
  • Students identify their goals for this year, three years, and five years.
  • Each student does an inventory of what they are carrying around in their physical backpacks. They rank the importance of the items as “essential”, “trivial”, or “unnecessary.” The students discuss what each essential item says about them.
  • Students research, interview, and create a short film about a person who inspires them.
  • Students identify inspirational and passionate individuals in their community and invite them into class to speak. They can be recorded and archived.

Guiding Resources

This is focused content that supports the activities and assists students with developing a solution. The ingredients include websites, videos, podcasts, experts, and other resources.

Examples