TRAUMAS AND TRIUMPHS: GEODIZED IDENTITIES IN STUDENT-CREATED ARTIFACTS

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore what happens when student identities are seen and validated in the classroom environment. To that end, sixty-five students in a Language Arts II course in a rural high school were tasked with creating Personality Islands for display in a classroom museum; these Islands, and the accompanying audio/video reflections were then analyzed according to the thematic analysis principles of Clark and Braun. The classroom at the center of this project places the concepts of trauma-informed practice and Funds of Knowledge at the heart of its pedagogical approach, and so these concepts must be, and are, addressed consistently throughout this text. That said, the design of the project itself is rooted primarily in the theory of artifactual critical literacy as described by Pahl and Rowsell. The findings suggest that identity, an inherently tricky concept, can certainly be sedimented within a text, as further work by Pahl and Rowsell contends—but also, that identity can be geodized within a text; in other words, various aspects of a student’s identity can become so entangled within a text that separation is impossible. This discovery is ripe for additional study and highlights the value of exploring student identity as related to classrooms texts and spaces.