Teacher's guide to In My Heart, I Am a Dancer
by Debora Kodish and Deborah Wei
Part Three: Lesson 9 (K-4): All The Things You Are
Objectives: To help students to understand that everyone has multiple roles in their lives, and also areas of specialization. To help students understand that all territories have rules of competence.
Activity
Start the lesson by getting the children to talk about all the different roles Chamroeun has in each section of the book. (Ex: brother, son, teacher, students, etc.) Ask students which roles are the same for them and which ones are different.
Tell students to discuss in small groups which role Chamroeun has which look like they require special skills or talents. How do they know? Ask students to share with each other what they think their own special skills are and how they know what is "good" performance in terms of that skill. Students can ask themselves "What makes a good son or daughter?" and then talk about how they make up "the rules" for that role. They can also ask each other "What makes a good soccer player? a good pianist? etc. "(Note to teacher: Some of those rules are "culturally defined," as in answering the questions: What makes a good son or daughter? The idea is not to have students agree necessarily with each other, but to have them think about the fact that they do have standards in these areas, and to consider where the standards come from. How do they learn them? Who sets the rules?)
Ask students to consider for themselves what roles they would put down if they were writing a book about themselves. Have them write a list of sentences starting with "I am a..."
Have students create their own books. For each of their "I am a..." statements, they should write a paragraph or two, and illustrate each page either with drawings, or with pictures they may bring from home.
