Jackie Kim 1 Context This semester, I am student teaching at Henry C. Lea Elementary School in a middle school literacy classroom.

Throughout the day, I work with approximately 80 students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades in seventy-one minute periods. Lea is a K-8 school with approximately 400 students, 95.7% of who come from an economically disadvantaged background. In regards to ethnicity, the breakdown for the year 2012-2013 was as follow: 81% African American, 9.3% Asian, 6.5% other, 1.8% white, 1.3% Latino and 0.3% American Indian. While the majority of the students are considered African American, there is also a large population of English Language Learners (20%), many of who are from Africa and may have been grouped together with African American students. The diverse population represented at the school reflects the large immigrant population in the constantly neighborhood of West Philadelphia that Lea is located in. For my integrated unit, I will be focusing specifically on the two eighth grade classes I teach and have chosen the topic of identity exploration. My students have been working from a Glencoe Literature textbook and have completed units centered around the following questions: How do you stay true to yourself, Reading: Whats in it for you, and Whats more important, the journey or the destination. Rather than focusing on specific skills for each unit, the selections are centered on the aforementioned questions and incorporate various genres of text and a variety of skills. In adherence with the scope and sequence curriculum used by the School District of Philadelphia, my classroom mentor teaches a variety of skills dependent on the text and continues to reinforce them later on, rather than teaching a skill in isolation and moving on to the next one. Through my unit, I plan to draw from all three of the previous units, as my students will be exploring who their true self is, how they can benefit from and learn more about

Jackie Kim 2 themselves by reading, and where they are in their developmental journey. I will be focusing specifically on figurative language, characterization and drawing inferences but will be referring to previous texts and emphasizing related skills to tie together my unit with their previous coursework. In regards to their lives outside of school, many of the students experience a lot of unpredictability in their lives both in and out of school and are faced with many obstacles and negative influences. Several of my students come from nontraditional families and experience constant movement of people in and our of their lives or spend time with different family members across the city during the weekend. In addition, many students have switched schools numerous times during the past eight years and must continuously adjust to new situations and environments. Therefore, I believe it is extremely important for them to develop a strong sense of identity and learn self-reliance in order to achieve success amidst the potential instability of factors outside of their control. In addition, I believe that middle school is the perfect time for students to really begin to reflect on their identities and develop a strong sense of self as they are entering the stage when they really begin to seriously contemplate these ideas and are old enough to make conscious decisions about their identities that they can act upon. Furthermore, my curriculum is directly centered on the students, and it is not only a means of self-reflection and self-expression, but it also requires higher-level analytical and critical thinking skills. Having had many years of scripted curriculum, the students have been passive recipients of information that is taught to them for the sake of a test. In this environment, it is difficult for students to see how their education is related or worthwhile to them personally, and they are put at a disadvantage, as they are not pushed to develop higher-level skills that will help them to work towards future success. By teaching a unit that is centered on the students

Jackie Kim 3 themselves and challenges them to think critically, I hope to actively engage the students in their education by making the content relevant to them and helping them develop critical thinking skills that will benefit them both in and out of school. I believe that a unit on identity will be especially appealing to the eight grade students as they come from a diverse range of backgrounds. In addition to a large population of African immigrants, there are also students from Turkey, China, Vietnam, Laos, and Bangladesh. This unit will give them a chance to explore issues they have growing up as a minority and/or immigrant in the United States, which I myself struggled with and began to explore in middle school. Moreover, this will be an opportunity for students to share about themselves, come to a better understanding of each others backgrounds and perspectives, and hopefully grow closer as a community.