I love discussion forums! This was my first time experiencing this type of forum with fellow want-a-be teachers! It was also my first discussion about these heavy topics and how it relates to our classroom. I think it is important to talk about these things and to hear different peoples views on the topics. I had a class on Gender last semester so I was very familiar with this topic and how it affects the daily life of our society. Because of that I feel like I had a slight deeper understanding of how much we are segmented into binary genders than that of my other classmates. I had actually done an activity that was mentioned in the article of placing adjectives of male and female. I wish our discussion could have had more time. It is such a heavy topic because it causes you to think very abstractly. I felt like the majority of the class was on the same page about wanting to create equality with gender in our classroom. I didn't agree with the overwhelming sense that the class thought gender association wasn't that bad of a problem. I personally think that we are inherently unaware of the large affect that society norms have placed on gender. From my class in the spring I was able to open my eyes to how much my actions and habits have been shaped unknowingly by society. I don't think many other people have had this opportunity. So I think I disagreed with the class in that I think it is a stronger issue than we recognize. Although I did agree that I think gender is a bigger issue for older children versus elementary ages. I was really surprised by the vast depth and abstract thought that goes with gender. Even the class I had taken in the spring didn't go as far this article. The article described the idea that even the he and she pronouns are boxing people into binary gender terms. Then it went on to talk about how some want to be referred to as pronouns like "ze" or "zir". I'd never heard anything about this. Unfortunately we ran out of time to bring up this in the discussion I think it would have been really interesting to see my classmates opinions. I wish our whole class had been able to read these articles because they are so intense and deep that it was really difficult to sum up in five minutes. I thought that we were only able to skim the top of the subject just because it is that hard to wrap your cognitive thought around. Yet, I'm not sure if we'd had an hour to talk about the deeper issues of gender we would have been able to discover the mountain underneath!
Group Differences are going to affect my classroom a lot. I plan on working in Urban/multicultural and low SES. Because of this I am going to face a lot of the issues that we discussed in this forum poverty, different cultures, ELL, and religion. Its going to be a world very different from what I have grown up with. I'm going to have to be really conscious of how I plan my classroom activities. I will also need to look to outsides sources and research on the best ways to tackle these differences. I know it will be a challenge but I'm excited to take on this puzzle!
