Change the Classroom!

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About this Lesson-

•     The environment in which one learns is as seminal to their intellectual development as more active approaches to education. Classroom reinforcements of gender expectations may include: having children perform tasks in order of gender, using distinctive pronouns when describing hypotheticals, hosting gender distinctive awards (ie. most improved boy vs. most improved girl), posters of harmful gender roles, and using the dreaded “he/she” on activities rather than the gender neutral pronoun “they”.

Goal-

• Create a gender neutral classroom environment that represents all students.

• Procedure-

• Replace all methods of separating children by gender with other identifiers:

  • By order of birth month/birth season.

  • By order of last name.

• Have children play in all stations through rotation, as opposed to having children choose stations freely.

  • Girls often time group in stations that cater to female expectations (ie. the dolls corner, the baking set, etc.) and vice versa for boys. By having the children spend time in each station, traditionally gendered toys begin to be enjoyed by all rather than a few.

• Correct all usage of the conjoined “he/she” to “they”

• Post posters that have genders assuming roles that clash with the stereotypes.

  • When the teacher presents of careers and roles in society, have images of female doctors and male makeup artists.

Intended results-

By crafting a classroom environment that is gender neutral as well as gender representative, children have more freedom to utilize the classroom as a place to learn regardless of social pressures, as opposed to less of an incentive to expand past gender expectations due to classroom reinforcements of such.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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