Performing the Stories We Tell: Using Personal Narrative to Inspire Writing, Identity Development, and Consciousness

• In Event: Performing Self: Tracing Art and Identity as Method

Abstract

This paper provides an insight into the use of performed narratives in classroom settings by demonstrating how three educators from different backgrounds bring to life their own lived experiences and use them as tools to analyze dominant discourses about gender, race, class, sexuality, and culture in our society. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate how the performance of personal narrative serve as a pedagogical strategy to promote language arts instruction as a semiotic process by: (1) encouraging students to use writing as a tool for fostering increased awareness, construction, and transformation of their individual and cultural identities (2) developing and supporting social justice awareness for all students, and (3) promoting teacher scaffolding strategies to identify, examine, and treat issues of social justice.

Authors

• Romina A. Pacheco, New Mexico State University

• Nancy Wasser, New Mexico State University

• Veronica Gallegos, El Paso Independent School District