Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Gender

A few semesters back, I was fortunate enough to work on a project that centered around gender identity in schools. Specifically looking at the early elementary years, how to arrange your classroom centers in a non-gender biased manner. 
How can I as a teacher stress that it is encouraged and acceptable for boys to play in the kitchen area just as girls can play with the trucks? Not an easy this to accomplish! 
How to sort your students in alternative ways than boys on the left - girls on the right?  We should be focusing more on methods such as, 'anyone wearing jeans over here and shorts over there' to help show our students from a young age that gender does not always serve as the boundary. 
This is a topic that I find beyond interesting which made researching it for 3 months, writing a 15 page paper on the topic, and presenting on it quite enjoyable and painless. 

Since we found out the genders of our bambinos, we have planned on amending a few choices on our registry to reflect more gender specific items. Nothing major - a few pacifiers, pacifier clips, receiving blankets, and a few outfits. 

While I do think kids should pick whatever style they want, I totally am gender type-casting my bambinos already!  But with all these damn clothes that are so freakin cute - how could I not?? 
Once they are older and have their own opinions, of course they can wear whatever they like, within reason, but for now, I'll indulge in the adorable-ness of gender specific clothes for our bambinos.

But I'll be sure to remember....



2 comments:

  1. I'm totally going to indulge in buying them some gender specific clothes! I can't wait to shop!!!

    ReplyDelete