EXPLORING CULTURE

I really enjoyed the way From Ordinary to Extraordinary contained a lesson in which encouraged students to explore their heritage and take three weeks before the project even began to collect stories, pictures, and icons that represent the information they gathered. This emphasis allows students to understand that their family, no matter how different from their peers’, has a history that is important to symbolically portray to others. Students should be inspired by cultural icons to make their own representations and versions tailored to the stories they obtained about their particular family. These images are extremely important paths leading to an informative and interpretive representation about our students’ backgrounds. If a student wants to include an image that is culturally significant but deemed inappropriate, then I would encourage them to use an aspect of that symbol to be portrayed in that work. For example, in one of our past experiences in class a student wanted to make a stain glass window of the confederate flag. We had to encourage her to recognize that the recreation would be offensive therefore she could make a star from the flag, but not the flag itself.