Flash forward to the beginning of year two: I assigned my new class to present and write about their personal culture. I have decided that since I asked them to do this assignment that I am going to do it as well. I am also going to try and do every assignment that I assign them, for numerous reasons but ultimately to see if it helps me create better curriculum.
This assignment was much more difficult than I anticipated and has got me thinking about my past and that giant that question that swims in everyone's head, "what is the point of life?" Here is a link to the prezi (https://prezi.com/2wszdh6w8h1r/my-personal-culture/) that I used to explain my culture but I will be editing the presentation as I am reflecting on it here.
I asked the class to first rank a set of values, read some example cultural essays, and give their personal culture a title. It was interesting when I first assigned this and one of my hispanic girls said, "we are all working together on this assignment," talking about her and all the other hispanic girls in the class. My reply, "Even though you are hispanic do you want to be grouped into one group with all hispanics? That is just a part of you." This was a great point to make to begin the assignment but it still is a hard thing to pinpoint.
To begin I called my culture the Ami "i.e." culture in order to explain the spelling of my name. I was raised spelling my name Amie but my parents did not notice that the 'e' was forgotten on my birth certificate. It wasn't until I was applying for college that I noticed my legal name was Ami. I went through a mini identity crisis when this was discovered but I am over it now. I think in the future my personal culture will be titled, "Eo Ipso" like my blog, I mean the definition is "is or of itself," and how much more personal can I get?
