Lesson 6 — The Story Keeps Growing

Summary

Learners predict ways their identity may keep growing, and discover that the future is not a single fixed endpoint but a set of open directions they can help author. They sketch several “possible selves,” name the values that tie them together, and connect growth to a growth mindset that is honest about both effort and uncertainty.

Objectives

• Predict ways their identity may keep growing. (D01.S2.07.01)

Connection

The person you are at thirteen is not the person you will be at twenty or forty — but you are not a passenger either. You are the author. You can name the directions you hope to grow toward: the maker, the caretaker, the leader, the lifelong learner. These are not boxes to be sorted into; they are branches of a path that stays open. A seed does not know its exact shape, but it grows toward the light it is given. So do you — in a fishing port, a mountain farm, or anywhere people dream.

Materials

• Growing-arrow poster
• Possible-selves page
• Pencils and crayons

Preparation

• Print or draw the growing-arrow poster (one “me now” arrow branching into several open directions).
• Copy a possible-selves page for each learner.
• Arrange a circle for sharing.

Facilitator note

This lesson is written to the learner (“you”). The idea to land: the future self is open, not fixed — and the learner is its author, not its audience. This builds directly on Lesson 5’s “identity changes” to reach the objective’s second half (“predict ways it may keep growing”). Frame prediction as direction (values and skills to grow toward), never as a single destiny that would pressure or narrow a learner — a learner’s possible selves are many, and none is a verdict. The growth-mindset framing (Dweck, 2006) is real but should be held honestly: the research shows modest effects, and effort alone is not a guarantee, so do not teach “you can be anything if you just try” as a promise. Say instead: your self can keep growing, and what you practice shapes the direction of that growth. Model the growing-arrow as a worked example (Kirschner, Sweller & Clark, 2006). Distinguish evidence from values: that identity can keep developing is observable; that every learner’s open future deserves to be honored equally is a value this curriculum holds — name it as one. See docs/facilitation.md and docs/art-style.md.

Procedure

1. Gather (5 min). Last time you mapped how you have already changed. Now look the other way: who might you become next? (Pause.) The future is not one fixed box.
2. Meet the growing arrow (10 min). Look at the poster: an arrow starts at “me now” and branches into several possible selves — a maker, a caretaker, a leader, a learner. Worked example: I am becoming a person who writes things that help people think — and also a person who can fix a machine, and a person who keeps learning new languages. These are directions, not a single destiny.
3. Sketch your branches (15 min). On your page, write “me now” on the left. Then draw three or four branches — possible selves you can imagine growing toward. They can be practical (a mechanic, a nurse, a farmer) or qualities (kinder, braver, more curious). There is no wrong branch.
4. Find the through-line (10 min). Look at your branches. What value ties them together — helping others? making things? understanding the world? Write it under the arrow. This is the direction that stays the same no matter which branch grows.
5. Share and close (10 min). Share one branch and the value under it with a partner. Close by remembering: your story is not finished, and you hold the pen.

Differentiation

• Support: Provide branch starters (“a person who helps ___, a person who makes ___, a person who learns ___”) and a list of values to choose from.
• Extension: Write a short “next chapter” naming one possible self, a first small step toward it, and the value that would guide the choices along the way.

Assessment

• Formative (observation): Can the learner name at least one way their identity may keep growing, as a direction rather than a fixed fate?
• Portfolio (artifact): The possible-selves page, kept for the unit’s “my changing identity” reflection.

Home connection

Ask someone at home what they once thought they would become and what they actually became — and notice together that the story stayed open.

Resources

• On identity as a developing, lifelong process: Erikson, Childhood and Society (1950) — cited for the framing that identity keeps forming across the life.
• On the growth-mindset idea that the self can keep developing (held with the research’s own cautions about modest effects): Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006).
• On modeling a new skill before independent practice: Kirschner, Sweller & Clark (2006), https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1