Identity TIPR

I think that in my field work class the children in the class are facing a few psychological crises. Trust vs. Mistrust being the biggest one. The kids are 3-5 years old mostly functioning well below that age level in a lot of areas of their life. The come to school everyday and have to leave their parents, who they trust the most to stay with us for multiple hours at a time. If the students weren’t able to trust the teachers in the classroom, they wouldn’t be able to learn. As teachers they have to teach the students trust by having them stick to a schedule so that the kids always know what is happening next. In my classroom, the teacher uses visual schedules, and we always do the same activity at the end of the day while we wait for parents to pick them up. And same with at drop off, the kids know the schedule and know right what they will start doing as soon as they are dropped off in class.

I would say that we have a good mix of students in the identity diffusion and foreclosure stages. A lot of our students don’t care about their identities or their decisions, they are not at the cognitive functioning level to be able to do that. Then we have the students who are a little higher cognitive functioning, and they care a little more, (and have echolalia) they try to be what we want them to be and do the things we want them to, because they get positive attention out of it.

I don’t thing that there is really anything else that the teacher needs to do to helps students form identities, maybe focus even more on the things that the students do like? But really she does well with that already, she is great with giving the students choices and giving then autonomy. I think that in this class the students have a lot of their identity needs met. I think that the hardest part for them is their autism, which makes it difficult for them to think through and find their identity anyways.

In a mini lesson, I would make sure to focus on the students interests to help them to be able to further find their identity. I would continue to do what the classroom teacher is already doing every day. I would want to help the students to gain more autonomy in their lives also. I would give them a lot of choice of doing “this or that” and “now or later” to help them learn this skill. I would also focus a lot on guilt, teaching kids to feel empathy for others. “if I hit this kid he will be sad” “I took his toy, I should give it back, he is crying.” Type feelings.