There is a fine line between succeeding or failing when it comes to presenting personal material. I found this especially relevant during my practicum. I never wanted to impose my own concerns, values, judgement on my students, however I knew that I would be most engaged and most passionate when I was teaching topics I found important. I experimented with sharing my own experiences in a narrative format with students in one of my units and found it incredibly effective!
My SA was incredibly open and allowed me to experiment with new ideas, especially with the new English course: New Media. Since I had no experience with the course and limited resources to turn to, personal interests and experiences became incredibly important. So I created a unit concerned with misrepresentation and lack of representation in the media.
These past few years I have been branching out and seeking and thoroughly enjoying content that wouldn’t be canonical in books, movies, and television shows. As well as seeking out content in which I could identify aspects of myself in, which in high school I often found tough. This led me to believe that I was not made of a correct mold or felt my life experiences didn’t have the same value as the characters in the novels.
I wanted my students to understand that the canonical texts that they may have engaged with in high school so far was not an accurate representation of the reality they lived in. My concern of being over imposing quickly vanished with the engagement and interest that students showed throughout the unit. They were excited to challenge, question, and share their experiences through the unit and it was the most fun I had teaching as well!