4. Situating Ourselves

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What do we need to know about ourselves in order to teach and interact thoughtfully, sensitively, and effectively with students/participants and the broader communities and institutions in which we teach?

All of us experience and respond to classrooms and organizations differently based on our various personal, place-based, and social identities. 

In this section, you will explore how your own personal, place-based, and social identities, and dominant and subordinated statuses affect the way you engage with learners. You will reflect on the many factors that affect your classroom facilitation. How your particular and unique personalities, relationships to place, family backgrounds, life histories, and educational training, to name a few, all impact who you are and how you are in the classroom. 

In order to better understand what you need to know about yourself to be a more effective educator, you may consider how you are situated in the classroom and broader community, using the lenses of place-based, social, and personal identities. While your approaches as educators cannot be reduced to these factors, you are asked to consider their significant and complex role in shaping your senses of self, responses and experiences as educators.