This week’s readings focusing on identity, and identity within teaching in urban contexts, proves particularly relevant to me as a white teacher who teaches a demographic composed mainly of African American and Latinx students. Kirk and Okazawa’s chapter provides a clear way of understanding the many complexities surrounding identity. They argue that “identity formation is the result of a complex interplay among individual decisions and choices, particular life events, community recognition and expectations, and societal categorization, classification, and socialization” which they further analyze on three levels: the micro, the meso, and the macro/global levels. The “micro” level of identity that the chapter discusses is one that seemed the most obvious to me throughout my whole life; it is where we “feel most comfortable as ourselves”, for this identity is does not come with the added complexity of others’ expectations or preconceived notions. I have always identified, at this level...