Just Like Mom

Well, I’ve survived another Christmas. Our house is currently bursting at the seams, both from the load of loot I’ve hauled home from school (God, you gotta love being a primary teacher) and from the RIDICULOUS amount of gifts my two daughters got. My oldest is 2 and a half, and my youngest is 10 months old - I say that because both are really happy getting a box and some noisy paper to play with. Instead, they had to be bribed and cajoled into opening all their gifts. In fact, there are still two gifts that aren’t opened yet.... yet my offense over our opulence is neither here nor there.

One memorable gift my oldest got from a friend was a set called "Just Like Mom". It has an apron and a series of cleaning utensils (booms, mops, sponges, "cleaning bottles, etc.). Ironically, it isn’t mom who cleans in our house - it is dad.

This got me thinking (a phrase which makes my administrator nervous): how do I address gender stereotypes in my class?

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately on Boy’s Literacy - reading David Booth’s book "Even Hockey Players Read" - not incredible, but has some interesting points. The biggest point that stands out for me (and I’m not even sure it is his point) is that when we, as teachers, complain amongst our colleagues about our classes, we would never say: "I’ve got lots of black kids", but we so easily say that we’ve got a class full of boys, and immediately we get knowing and empathetic reassurances not to worry, as it too will pass.

One of my most hated host-teachers (the person who let me teach their class while I will doing my B. Ed) saw herself as the epitome of progressive/feminist/new wave thinking - but dismissed her as being weird (not because of her "feminist" thinking, but because she was weird - she thought she was very cool for having a sand centre in her grade 2 class...). One thing she did leave me with was when picking people to move furniture, she made me think about who I was picking, not always and only boys.

This came back to haunt me on the last day of class. We were showing "The Polar Express" to the entire Primary Division (gr. 1 - 3) and I was bringing my stereo system to hook up to the movie. I picked people sitting close to the stereo to move it and the speakers - and before I caught myself, I had picked 3 boys to carry the system. Not to be sexist, I chose a girl (who was sitting far away) to carry the last piece - the cord. In the end, I felt cheap and a promoter of tokenism at its best.

It is funny how these beliefs and values can (mis)inform our practice, and despite our best efforts we just end up re-affirming all that we dread.