Understanding Gender Diversity. By: Daniel O'Connell
Understanding Gender Diversity
For this week we have been tasked with gaining a better understanding on the ways in which us as teachers should address our students. With the world making huge strides in being excepting of others its important that as educators we have a warm and safe environment for our students to grow and be confident in there own body.
When looking over this weeks information 2 articles really stood out to me as being valuable sources in which a future educator should take notes from in order to make all there students feel comfortable while in the class room. The first article being "Student Exploring Gender Identity" which was published by the American Psychological Association other wise known as APA. While reading this article they address the do's and don'ts of how to best tackle being inclusive to your students. While going through a couple specifics stuck out to me,
Do's
"Maintain an open mind that gender identity is complex and each student’s identity is unique." (APA 2) This is important to pay attention to as each student is a unique person and that they all may have different thoughts on what they want to be known as.
"Be aware of your own biases or assumptions that might send mixed messages to students." (APA 2) For me in my life so far I have not been very exposed to people who seek a new gender identity and I feel taking note of this point will help me in not mistakenly miss gendering someone.
Don'ts
"Attempt to categorize students or draw conclusions about other qualities based on their gender expression." (APA 2) I feel this is just a very obvious, bad thing to do as it makes you think differently about a person with even getting to know them. My parents always told me when growing up to never judge a book by its cover, a fairly common saying but I do feel it is important to get to know someone before making judgements.
"Require that they use the name with which they are registered for school" (APA 2) I feel this should never be required in any learning environment, as you want to make sure that the student is comfortable.
After analyzing the valuable information provided by the American Psychological Association, I would like to move on to the other article I believe to be highly important in understanding gender diversity which is "The Trevor Project 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Mental Health.". The reason why I decided to analyze the Trevor Project is due to the immense struggles I believe someone seeking a new gender identity has to go through on a daily basis.
The main point I want to focus on that was brought up by the Trevor Project is the thoughts of suicide and suicide attempts that have effected LGBTQ youth. According to the article LGBTQ youth ages 13-17 50% considered suicide while 18% actually attempted it (Trevor Project). These numbers are just terrible to see. In my opinion when I look at these numbers I see the cause being lack of understanding from other people. If everyone could just make it socially acceptable and not hard on the LGBTQ youth it will make them not feel the need to take such drastic actions such as suicide. Another reason this statistic also effected me is the 13-17 age range is the age in which I expect to be teaching one day and I hope to never feel what its like to lose a student to suicide.
(Phys.org article by Astrid Galvin above)
Next I wanna take some time to address the information presented to us in the documentary film "The Laramie Project". In this documentary they discuss the events of a gay college student Matthew Shepard who was brutally murdered due to his sexual identity. When analyzing the film we are exposed to the struggles and discrimination that effects people seeking gender diversity. This whole story I believe highly relates to what we learned in module 2 "Anti-Racism". My reasoning behind this is because Matthew Shepard was discriminated against due to him being gay which is similar to how ethnic minorities have been discriminated against due to the way they look. It's important for us as future educators to address these discriminatory actions and make sure our students understand that everyone is equal. Considering I am studying to be a history teacher I will be the person teaching the youth about the struggles that many minority groups have had to go through and I believe it is important to make sure the students understand that we are all equal.
Another article that I managed to find on my own that I believe brings valuable information on the topic of gender diversity is from North Central University titled "Gender Diversity in Today's Classroom and Workplace" in this article they address some topics that were not really brought up in the other articles I mentioned, and that is the privilege's that most men receive in the classroom. According to the article they found that
- "Teachers are more likely to call on male students
- Teachers give male students longer to formulate an answer
- Teachers provide more eye contact to male students
- Teachers remember the names of male students better
- Teachers call on male students more often for questions that require “higher order” critical thinking" (North Central University)
I feel this is something that must be eliminated from the classroom as it effects the engagement from other students directly effecting the way in which they will remember the information being presented in class. I feel its important to randomly call on students as it makes it so they feel the need to pay attention in case they are called on next. Therefore it is important to make sure students are all getting the attention they deserve and not have it be dependent on there physical characteristics.
References
Blog. (n.d.). Northcentral University.
https://www.ncu.edu/blog/gender-diversity-today%E2%80%99s-classroom-and-workplace
Kaufman, M. (Director). (2002). The laramie project [film]. Good Machine, HBO Films.
Sexual, gender minorities much likelier to be crime victims. (n.d.). Phys.org.
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-sexual-gender-minorities-likelier-crime.html
Students Exploring Gender Identity (2021, October). American Psychological Association.
https://www.apa.org/ed/schools/primer/gender-identity
The Trevor Project. 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Mental Health.
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/
Good day Daniel!
ReplyDeleteI read your blog and I just wanted to say that it was very well done and well put together. Most notably, was your use of the Do and Don'ts quotes. To use the quotes in such a way that breaks each one down and how you see each one was a very instructive use of space and information within the post. However, the piece of information that I found the most instructive and most interesting, was your chart that you found from Phys.org, that showed the crime disparity of victims among the LGBT community. I find it very important to show statistics when speaking of such important topics, especially alongside the Trevor Project that showed the statistics of mental illness along LBGT peoples. I actually found this so important and well done, that I may have stolen that chart and its contents for my own blog post, hope you don't mind!(don't worry I gave you credit).