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Grades level iconsGrades 9–12
Session time icon60+ Minutes
Genre information iconMemoir
Video resource type iconVideos

Write With. . . Life Stories: The Names We Carry with Katie Couric

by 826 National and Life Stories
How do the names we carry affect our identity? In this lesson, you will explore the names you carry and the impact they have on your self-image.
About the Author

TV host and journalist Katie Couric anchored The CBS Evening News from 2006 through 2011. She previously was the host of the NBC morning program The Today Show from 1991 through 2006. With her optimistic attitude and no-holds-barred interviewing style, Katie Couric boosted the show’s sagging ratings and became one of morning TV’s most popular personalities. Her first husband, Jay Monahan, died in 1998 of colon cancer, and in 1999 Couric co-founded a non-profit organization for cancer research and education.

About Life Stories 

Life Stories is a 501(c)(3) non-profit media organization that creates and distributes documentaries, interviews, and educational resources about people whose lives inspire meaningful change. These stories address issues of civics, history, politics, the arts and culture by shining the spotlight on relatable human stories of purpose and meaning in times of change. We provide open access to all our content for communities and classrooms through our curated website and YouTube channel.

About The Thread 

The Thread is a new documentary interview series exploring what it means to live a purpose-driven life through conversations with multi-faceted people who have helped shape our society. Each 30-minute episode takes viewers on a personal journey into the life of extraordinary people who candidly share their triumphs and failures. The Thread is available on the Life Stories website and YouTube channel, and as a podcast across all major platforms. Teaching The Thread brings the series  into the classroom with episode lessons designed to strengthen social emotional learning and media literacy skills and expand the scope of subject matter in Social Studies and English Language Arts. Future seasons of The Thread will include similar curricular support.

What You Will Do

Introduction:

In this video, Katie Couric touches on her competitive nature from childhood and explores her trailblazing experience as the first female anchor of a network evening newscast. Please visit “Katie Couric: From Tragedies to Triumphs” to see the full lesson created by Life Stories.

STEP 1

This lesson invites you to consider a driving question related to identity: 

  • Throughout our lives, others bestow us with names: abbreviations of our full name, nicknames, pet names, names based off our personality traits.  Sometimes these names describe us perfectly, and sometimes they are based on how the other person perceives us. How do the  names that others give us influence our sense of self? 

To begin, watch a clip from Katie Couric’s The Thread video: 6:32–8:31. In this clip, she reflects on a character trait that her dad first observed in her as a child—moxie. 

After...

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