Alexandra Weinholtz

Alexandra Weinholtz
EDU431: Tattoos

Tattoos act as a blank living canvas that represent and communicate an individual’s hopes, values or beliefs. After reading this article, tattoos are not different today in comparison to before, they convey important rites of passage, indicate group membership, and sometimes declare love. “Teenagers explore their identity through experimentation with their outward appearances.”
As future teachers we can utilize the desire of our students to investigate tattoos, to create meaningful lessons. As Blair discuses, we must offer multiple ways to include identity development, diversity issues such as class, oppression, privilege, since this teen-age stage is primarily about the construction of identity. We can use tattoos in the classroom and create opportunity to think “critically about their own and their group’s actions and who they are empowering or disenfranchising through their personal lives, actions, and work…” Tattoos can allow students to study and understand the significance of history. They must also learn the responsibility of obtaining a tattoo since multiple messages can be derived from them. Tattoos are not simply an image; they carry social responsibility, culture, and the reflection of self image.
Our job is to educate students using multiple effective learning styles that will appeal most. Tattoos offer a different approach to understanding history and other subject areas using modern culture, while educating them on the impacts of tattoos. We are not supporting tattoos but dealing with this established part of youth culture by bringing them into the classroom and instructing our students about the responsibility, health risks, and deeper meanings of tattooing.