My name is Megan, and I’m currently a 4th-year teacher in the West Vancouver school district. My subject area is secondary English, and the bag I have selected for this task is my most commonly used work bag. Within it, I keep the daily essentials that I bring to work each day, and these items do not vary much.
The most essential item in my bag is my laptop. I use it daily to post assignments, plan lessons, assess student work, communicate with colleagues and families, and complete academic tasks in the MET program. It’s the primary tool through which my teaching and learning, and much of my communication takes place. On it, I’ve placed a Taylor Swift Eras tour sticker, from attending the tour two summers ago, as it’s a personal memory to me that I like to have a reminder of, even in my workspaces.
Alongside my laptop is my wallet, which contains my driver’s license, credit cards, debit card, and health card. These items allow me to present legal identification, access money, health care, and be mobile within the world around me. They depend on both their physical presence and the digital systems and databases they’re linked to, allowing me to digitally identify myself at any time from any place. Additionally, various sets of keys are also included in my bag, such as my car keys, a FOB to enter my apartment building, and work keys that are on a West Vancouver Schools lanyard. These keys represent the spaces I’m present and active in, and allow me to enter them freely. Lastly, I have a pen, eraser, lip balm, and lipstick in my bag, representing some daily essentials that I often need, whether I am at work or on the go. The pen allows me to take notes on the go, and the eraser comes in handy often when I’m at work and have loaned mine to my students. The lip balm and lipstick demonstrate the personal side of my daily routine, specifically, self-care and presentation. Together, these items demonstrate a balance between work and personal life. Although I don’t have many items in my bag, I also feel that this is reflective of my personality and values. I like to be organized, relatively light when I’m on the go, and let go of things that aren’t necessary to me and could potentially weigh me down.
Although there are no “texts” in the form of papers and books, these items can still be viewed as “texts” because they tell a story of who I am in my day-to-day life, including the places I move through, people I communicate with, and things I enjoy. The laptop demonstrates my role as a teacher and student, working within digital education systems, and encompasses the materials and information that I need in order to perform each role. In addition, the Taylor Swift sticker that I’ve added reveals a story about my personal life, things that matter to me, memories I’ve experienced, and interests I have beyond learning spaces. My keys, wallet, and other small items further contribute to this narrative by emphasizing mobility, access, and participation in institutional spaces. They reflect the routines and responsibilities that structure my days, as well as the systems I navigate to move between work and home. Together, these objects suggest that my daily life is largely shaped by the institutions I work and study in, along with my living space.
When considering the idea of text technologies, the most significant example in my bag is my laptop and the digital platforms it provides access to. The keyboard itself acts as a literacy tool, as I physically translate my thoughts into written language in real time, pressing individual keys that send electrical signals to the screen, where words appear instantly and can be revised or shared with others. This connection between myself, the keyboard, and the screen acts as a text technology as it becomes the primary space where reading, writing, and communication occur. Additionally, I regularly access platforms like Google Classroom through my laptop, which functions as the primary hub for my teaching and students’ learning. Assignments are created, distributed, submitted, commented on, graded, and shared within this platform. Communication also occurs through Microsoft email, which is also bookmarked on my laptop, as it allows me to correspond with students, families, and colleagues. I use these platforms cohesively with one another to communicate with people around me in formal and informal ways, enhancing my ability to maintain connections.
Furthermore, the Taylor Swift Eras Tour sticker on my laptop is reflective of digital text technologies, as it originated from a digitally designed image that was reproduced and printed into a physical object that I now carry with me. The sticker functions as a visual text that communicates meaning through images, demonstrating my participation in this event and reflecting my personal values.
The other items in my bag are also connected to digital systems. The cards in my wallet contain magnetic strips and chips that store information, and when tapped or inserted, they communicate with card readers that access banking and identification information and authorize access. Furthermore, the FOB on my keychain uses radio frequency identification signals to communicate a specific code to a receiver outside of my apartment building, granting me access each day. Even my West Vancouver Schools lanyard is a result of digital design and printing processes, visually communicating institutional belonging.
The items in my bag suggest that I have multiple literacies, such as digital, institutional, and cultural. My laptop signifies strong digital literacy, as it is the only physical “text” within my bag; there are no books or papers, only my device. The lanyard and keys reflect institutional literacy, demonstrating my presence and activity in institutions like the school where I work. Lastly, the sticker on my laptop indicates cultural literacy, demonstrating engagement with pop culture and associating a sense of personal importance to visual, printed texts.
The narrative of the private contents of my bag emphasizes the routines and tools that make my life functional. The contents of this bag act as a snapshot into my life, but they do not give away too much detail at the same time. If one were simply looking at these objects, they might presume I was female, possibly in my early to mid 20s, attending school or work, and having life largely center around those facets. While this is mostly true, the bag does exclude a large part of my identity and personality, as it doesn’t include books I enjoy, tickets or receipts from restaurants or places I frequent, photographs of close friends and family that I interact with the most. By looking at me on a day-to-day basis, one might get a better sense of who I am based on how I may dress, the accessories I carry with me, and the people I’m with, so this bag offers a limited view of who I am personally, but it does capture the important institutions of my life. Therefore, the private narrative and the public image don’t fully align because more layers of my personality may not be entirely visible from the contents of the bag.
If I were to go back 15 or 20 years, this bag would look a lot different. If I subtracted 15 years, I would just be starting middle school, and digital devices were not the norm in classroom spaces. My bag would instead have textbooks for each subject, a pencil case filled with spare pencils, pencil crayons, erasers, and several notebooks and duo-tangs for each subject. I would likely have more of my personal belongings in it as well, such as movie tickets from outings with friends, snacks that I enjoyed, stickers, beauty products, and books that I read in my spare time. The most “digital” object that I may have had would’ve been an iPod that I listened to music on when I rode the bus to and from school. Therefore, my bag would overall be more paper-based, personal, and less institutionally focused than it is in my present-day life.
If an archaeologist were examining this bag in the future, they might view it as evidence of a digital era, since there is a lack of print content within it. They would see the bag and gather from the lanyard and the presence of a laptop that I worked in a school setting, and that the laptop was likely my primary tool for work. Also, much of my life is shaped by digital technologies, from the laptop to the entry FOB, showing that technology impacts professional and personal life. They might also note how physical objects reflected a digitally-centred society, especially by examining the bank cards and the quantity of them, in addition to the lack of physical money present within the bag. Overall, the bag would likely be viewed as a snapshot of everyday life through a digitally driven society. The contents of a bag are no longer overflowing with papers and physical texts, but forms of digital texts and systems that demonstrate a technologically driven world.