the femiwriter

I love this article because it resonates so much with my personal goals in my work with children. Toddlers are always asking ‘Why?’ but for some reason, once grade school hits, this constant curiousity is no longer fostered. It’s important to create spaces for critical examination at all ages, and particularly important to have children and youth destablize the assumptions that become naturalized by dominant value systems earlier in life.

It’s can be as simple as using “students” or “friends” instead of “boys and girls.”

It’s asking the grade 3 what they are actually saying when they call something “so gay.”

It’s asking the children to question their meaning when they ask for the “skin-coloured” beige marker.

It’s striving for inclusion, rather than further division, of the preschooler who likes to wear his hair long and paint his toenails.

These aren’t idealistic scenerios built for PSAs but actual situations I’ve come up against in my nine years working with kids from ages 2-18. Our actions and words matter and perhaps they matter most to the youngest ears.

togetherforjacksoncountykids:

“It’s Okay to be Neither,” By Melissa Bollow Tempel

Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I said: “Allie, I’m not playing. It’s time for art. The rule is no hoods or hats in school.”

She looked up with tears in her eyes and I realized there was something wrong. Her classmates went into the art room and we moved to the art storage area so her classmates wouldn’t hear our conversation. I softened my tone and asked her if she’d like to tell me what was wrong.

“My ponytail,” she cried.

“Can I see?” I asked.

She nodded and pulled down her hood. Allie’s braids had come undone overnight and there hadn’t been time to redo them in the morning, so they had to be put back in a ponytail. It was high up on the back of her head like those of many girls in our class, but I could see that to Allie it just felt wrong. With Allie’s permission, I took the elastic out and re-braided her hair so it could hang down.

“How’s that?” I asked.

She smiled. “Good,” she said and skipped off to join her friends in art.

‘Why Do You Look Like a Boy?’

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