"What a talented young poet you are!"

I have once worked with a class of students where we decided that we will refer to ourselves as champions. We defined for ourselves who champions are, what they do and what is expected of them. So, anytime one or all of them fall short of those expectations, we simply remind ourselves who we are meant to be.

From my last post, I explained building an identity to mean, "coming to see in ourselves the characteristics of particular categories (and roles) of people developing a sense of what it feels like to be that sort of person and belonging in certain social spaces".

A teacher's response to a student after a poem writing exercise, "what a great poet you are" and a family of responses like that address children's developing identities. This includes invitations such as, "As scientists, how do we handle this?" To answer the question, the child, at least temporarily, has to imagine herself in that identity and might choose to maintain the possibility of wearing that mantle.

In one particular classroom, the teachers refer to themselves as "senior researchers," and the children sometimes as, for instance, "researcher Tom", and began lessons reiterating that "We are researchers, let us do research". I will note here that teachers, through their word choices, can motivate students into assuming certain roles and responsibilities through the labels the students are attached to.

But it is important to note that the labels don't just work on their own, it requires developing a collective understanding of what poets (or scientists, researchers, champions) do, and the students construct these understandings and ways of thinking and acting in the classroom.