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| People/Families |
Teaching is a learning curve that never really ends. I am thinking a lot about stereotypes these days, looking at my bias, where do I fall into the trap of stereotype. I make an effort to make space for conversations when stereotypes come up. I realized that one of my go to props for engaging play was causing me to fall in to the trap of stereotyping. My People/Families set is a great prop for engaging play because all children relate to family. We are all the product of and all function in a family unit of one kind or another. It promotes stereotypes in that is made up of Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, baby, and Cat. I had a shift of thinking a few weeks back when I decided to label the characters differently as I handed out sets. Partly because I purchased some new figures that are wooden and I could only afford to buy three figures each to make up six sets. So I decided to not buy the larger figure that was curvy (feminine?) and only one large and one small figure that were the same shape and added a baby that was a slightly different shape but did not specify gender. When I handed out the new figures to the children I labelled them as Adult, Child, and Baby because it caused me to realize the Adult could be a Mom, Aunt, Dad, Grandpa, etc and the child could be Boy (Son, Brother, etc) or Girl (Daughter, Sister, etc). So the next time I shared my People/Families I labelled them like this, Adult with pants, Adult with skirt, Child with pants, Child with skirt, Baby, and Cat. When the talk of gender came up, calling the one with a skirt the sister, I remarked, "Well what about when he wears the princess dress, and look she is wearing pants, and so am I." We had a big chat about clothing and girls clothes and boys clothes and who can wear what. In the end there was a general conciseness that clothing does not decide gender, the person wearing the clothing does. We have visited this topic almost ever day, but now I have one more tool in my teachers tool kit. I am doing my best help shift preconceived notions of gender stereotypes and I hope it is helping to firm up the self confidence of some of the children with wobbly self images and give others the freedom to accept people as they are.
Here is an article that is worth the read:
why-all-parents-should-care-about-kids-and-gender
