Sandra Foy
Participant Project: The work of the partipants was to produce a document that reflected the ethical questions confronted by adolescents, the curricular connections or opportunities to address these questions and strategies that other teachers might find helpful in addressing these questions. Each participant gave thoughtful input to the compilation of these questions. As we reflected on the questions it became clear that all of the questions seemed to revolve around common themes. The theme that seemed to best express the overall sense of the questions was--the process of forming a moral identity. This theme included questions related to responsibility--growing in the ability to take more responsibility and to assume the consequences for one's actions. There was a strong sense that this is a process of formation that occurs in the context of redemption. The questions dealing with identity formation seemed to fall into four broad categories:
a. relationships: with parents (parents are the source of ideals but also a source of confusion of their behavior is hypocritical or contrary to the ideals they espouse. Also--kids respect these ideals but want to achieve autonomy from parental control)
with teachers (what kind of person the teacher is makes a tremendous difference. We teach by
what we do and who we are).
with peers (issues around how to maintain integrity and identity in the face of peer pressure;