A wonderful story about gender non-conformity, and a teacher who cared [View all]
http://bit.ly/t88tOh
I didnt want to assume I knew how Allie wanted me to respond to the continual gender mistakes, so I made a phone call home and Allies mom put me on speakerphone.
Allie, she said, Ms. Melissa is on the phone. She would like to know if you want her to correct your classmates when they say you are a boy, or if you would rather that she just doesnt say anything.
Allie was shy on the phone. Um
tell them that I am a girl, she whispered.
The next day when I corrected classmates and told them that Allie was a girl, they asked her a lot of questions that she wasnt prepared for: Why do you look like a boy? If youre a girl, why do you always wear boys clothes? Some even told her that she wasnt supposed to wear boys clothes if she was a girl. It became evident that I would have to address gender directly in order to make the classroom environment more comfortable for Allie and to squash the gender stereotypes that my 1st graders had absorbed in their short lives.