Blog Post #4- Gender and Sexual Orientation

I really enjoyed the presentation last night. I thought it was well organized and thoughtfully presented. I especially loved the yummy snacks they provided! I found it interesting when we began talking about the issue of same sex parents and how to approach this with children. Personally, I have been in this situation as a teacher and found that with young children, five and six year olds, a simple explanation will suffice. But, with the older age kids, I feel like the teacher needs to get more in depth about choices when one gets married. All in all, it’s about supporting the child and reinforcing the fact that everyone is different and has different family structures.

The media plays a huge role in how children of different gender view themselves. Girls are expected to play dress up with Barbie’s and boys are expected to build structures with Lego’s. They learn this from commercials, magazines, movies, TV shows, and other marketing tools. Men are displayed as the tough moneymaker and women are the weak homemakers. As educators, what can we do to show children that this is not always the case? On the same topic, we have come so far with women’s equality but men and women are still not paid equally in the work place. Do you think this will ever resolve? Will men and women EVER be EQUAL? And how do you prove to our students that they are equal when their salaries don’t show that?

When the topic of single sex education came up in discussion last night my ears perked up. This has come up a lot for me as a teacher in a school that only goes to fourth grade. Parents always ask my advice about sending their kids to St. Marks, an all boys school or Hockaday, an all girls school. I always tell the parents that what matters most is where the child feels most comfortable. Some personalities are not cut out for single sex schools. It is only a fit for certain kids.