One of my favourite parts of working with kids is like… Very Gently subverting their idea of gendered topics… Like if a girl goes ‘no, sharks are a boy thing’ and you go “UM ACTUALLY THATS STUPID AND INCORRECT” they get freaked out, but if instead u go “Are you sure? Cause I think sharks are awesome, here’s a scale picture of a Megalodon” it’ll blow their tiny mind and they’ll be shitting themselves over it for days. 100% effective, 10/10 recommend
Good example of this happened in a class I taught recently. Kids were making predictions about a text we’d be studying based on an illustration of the character: boy with spiky blonde hair wearing a pink football kit.
The first kid to respond said, “I think this is a girl that likes to play football.” I said “what gave you the idea that the character is a girl?” Obviously they pointed out the pink, to which I replied how pink was one of my fave colours and they just looked at me wide-eyed. Then the next said, “No it’s got to be a boy. He’s got short spiky hair.” Of course, I then listed all the female people they might’ve heard of who also have short spiky hair and, honestly, the puzzled looks on their little faces were priceless.
Anyway, they continued to debate which gender the character was using phrases like: “but he … and look at his …” or “so why is she … and maybe her …” which was the point I decided to stop them and ask: “If we can’t be sure whether the character is a he or she, should we really be using those pronouns?” And I kid you not, without any persuasion from me and after only the briefest of discussions, these children unanimously agreed that the best pronoun to use would be “they” until they knew their gender for certain. They then continued their discussion using gender neutral terms throughout without any fuss whatsoever. And these are 6 and 7 year olds.
Hey the message of this post is great and all but ‘a scale picture of a meglodon’ what the f u CK
Honestly my seven year old neice screamed once I told her that girls can have short hair and now shes pestering her mum for short and also blue hair
By the way here’s a scale picture of a Megalodon
“Who cares about rules?” And things to that effect are great ones to use on kids. I’ve had many a young child insist I have to be a girl because I have tits, I just hit em with the old “I dont care I do what I want!” And it always works.
