Inner Self-Portrait

Topic: Know Yourself

Empowerment Video: Build Your Personal Brand

Basic Supplies:

Blank paper
Basic art supplies such as pencils, markers, colored pencils, and crayons

Video Discussion:

Ask, “What is a brand? Can you think of any examples?”

Direct students to turn and talk to a partner.

After a few minutes of discussion, bring the class back together and ask students to share their ideas.

After a minute of discussion, bring the class back together and ask students to share their ideas. Ensure that students understand that a brand is a unique, recognizable identity that sets a product or company apart from other similar products or companies.

Ask, “What is a personal brand?”

Direct students to turn and talk to a partner.

After a minute of discussion, bring the class back together and ask students to share their ideas.

Work together to come to a class definition of the term “personal brand”. For example, “Others’ view of the image or personality that you present to the world through your actions, behavior, and words.”

After watching the video Build Your Personal Brand, ask your students the following questions:

What is a personal brand?
How can your personal brand help you?
What might happen if you didn’t think about or cultivate your personal brand?
Why is it important to be yourself or to have an authentic personal brand?

Activity Instructions:

An important part of building a personal brand is being authentic. To be authentic, students must know themselves and their desires.

In this activity, students will reflect on themselves, their likes, and their goals. They will use this self-knowledge to create an inner self-portrait.

Get a piece of blank paper and whatever drawing supplies you like best.
Using the whole sheet of paper in the portrait position, draw a large oval.
Fold your paper in half so the two sides meet. This fold is often called the “hotdog” fold.
On the left side of the paper, use the half-oval to draw a self-portrait. Select the correct colors for your hair, eye, skin, and mouth. Try to make the left-side of the oval look as much like you as possible!
Now, on the other half of the paper you will be working to draw an inner self-portrait. An inner self-portrait should represent the parts of yourself that aren’t necessarily obvious when someone looks at you. These could be attributes like the things you love in life, your thoughts, feelings, and plans for the future. To help identify these attributes, you could ask yourself these questions:
- What do you love to do in your free time?
- Who do you like spending time with?
- What are the most important things in your life?
- Is there anything you’ve been thinking about a lot?
- How do you feel? Happy? Excited? Angry? Why?
- What goals do you have for yourself now? For the future?
Using the right side of the oval, draw your inner self-portrait. It should represent the things you love, your thoughts, feelings, values, dreams, and beliefs.
As time allows, conduct a gallery walk around the room to view others’ work.
Remember that in order to build a positive personal brand, you must be authentic. Knowing yourself and identifying your goals is a great step towards building an authentic personal brand.