Welcome to Learning Event #3 (#LE3) for #WalkMyWorld 2021. In this journey we’ll think about the story of you…told from past, present, and future.
#WalkMyWorld #LE3 –
Where I’m From
Consider your own culture & where you’ve been. How are these people, values, practices, & places a part of you?
Culture can have multiple definitions and layers.
Culture can include the following contexts: national, ethnic, familial, academic, vocational, avocational, religious, communal.
Read Where I’m From, a poem by George Ella Lyon. You can watch a dramatic reading of this below.
As you read Lyon’s words, consider your own culture and where you’ve been. How are these people, values, practices, and places a part of you?
As you consider culture, be aware of the larger role of labels and perspectives sometimes embedded in societal narratives.
As Anthony Hamilton says in the piece below, we tried to be our best, but sometimes it was much too hard.
Sometimes it gets rough
Coming from where I’m from, I’m from
Times have got hard
Coming from where I’m from, I’m from
Some times you gotta walk to work
Coming from where I’m from, I’m from
Sometimes you gotta do a little dirt
Coming from where I’m from, I’m from
WRITE
Write a poem that expresses your culture, or where you’ve been.
Don’t just write a poem, use this as an opportunity to celebrate where you’re from. As suggested by Digable Planets in their piece below.
We live to love and we love to rock mics
We speak in ghetto tongue ’cause ghetto’s the life
Food for thought so get a buffet plate
The lyrics are so fat you might gain weight
Share an image (or mixture of images) of your culture. Write about your culture and perhaps your interpretation of culture itself.
Remember that no one knows you as you know yourself. You are the expert on you. Trust your perspectives.
CONNECT
After you finish your poem…share this out with others.
You should share this out on Twitter as Write.As using the hashtag #WalkMyWorld. You should also include the hashtag #LE3 to indicate your response to this second learning event.
If you’re interested, we do have a semi-private group in Flipgrid for sharing and discussing this year. Send me an email and I’ll bring you in.
Enjoy…and let’s connect with each other online.
Graffiti flickr photo by feder77 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
