ABSTRACT
If you teach middle school or high school, you have students who are in the process of searching for their identity. One year when I was teaching tenth grade, one of my students, Janice, came in one day dressed entirely in black with thick black eyeliner; the next week she wore a stylish skirt and top; and then the following week she had on baggy pants, shirt, a hemp necklace, and blue hair. Janice was not being indecisive but was in the process of exploration (Marcia, 1966), a time when adolescents investigate many “identity domains” (Meeus, 2011, p. 75). Particularly during adolescence, searching for one’s identity can be like trying on different outfits.
