Pretty has nothing to do with it.

Recently JCPenney took the above shirt off of their shelves after parent complaints that it fed into the stereotype that young girls should be more worried about their looks rather than focusing on their education.  My husband was the one to actually see this article and point it out to me.  Now that we have a daughter our radars beep whenever something like this arises.  JCPenney was also marketing a shirt that read, "I'm too pretty to do Math."  Again this fed the stereotype that girls were not as good as boys in Mathematics.  

We brought this article to school and it sparked some anger in most of the teachers that we work with and I decided to address it in class.  Today in class the students wrote about their morning routine and then they re-wrote it as the opposite gender.  This writing exercise  reveals many gender stereotypes.  (examples: boys smell bad, girls take too long to pick clothes, boys are not sensitive, girls gossip, boys eat a lot, girls text all the time, etc.) We then listed these stereotypes on large post it notes and will save them to use next week.

Next week we are going to read the article about JcPenney and their t-shirt issue (http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/epic-t-shirt-fail-quot-im-too-pretty-to-do-my-homework-so-my-brother-has-to-do-it-for-me-quot-2537106/)  and ask the question, "Does pretty have anything to do with it?"  We'll also look at how media affects our opinions and reinforces many stereotypes about gender, age, religion, cultural background, etc. Additionally we'll explore the Pink vs. Blue world that begins at birth and discuss whether or not toys can affect a child as he or she is growing. 

This is a hot topic and the students are really interested in discussing it.  If you get a chance talk to them about it at home! 

Self Awareness - Who are you?

Our first unit is entitled Self Awareness.  During the month of September we are exploring who we are, where we come from, and who we want to be when we grow up.  Students will be reading articles on nature vs. nurture and birth order. They will start to form opinions that may differ from those of their parents and I will encourage them to use facts to reach an opinion of their own. 

Since school started the students have completed an Oval with pictures that represents who they are and what they love, they have chosen and played a song that represented themselves, and created a wordle (www.wordle.net) about themselves.  I have encouraged them to talk to their parents about nature vs. nurture and to get outside opinions to bring back to class discussions.

So far the students are excited and enthusiastic in class and have participated wonderfully!  I think this is going to be a great year!

Scrapblog

In the next day or two the students will start working on Scrapblog to create their final project for our Self Awareness unit.  Scrapblog is a great website where students can upload photos and add borders,stickers, backgrounds, etc to their pages.  It's scrap booking online. 

PARENTS- Just so you know there is an option on Scrapblog to purchase some of their packages. Your children should NOT have to purchase anything to do this!  Scrapblog offers hundreds of free items and those will be plenty for you kids to complete their assignment.

They will have time in class to work on this but it should also be worked on at home if needed.  Visit my website or moodle page for specifics on the assignment.  The scrapblog website is www.scrapblog.com . 

I'm excited to see how these turn out! If any of you are interested in the website or scrap booking you will love this site.  You can create books, postcards, calendars, etc.  I've used it for personal use and their products are reasonable and neat.  In case you're interested :) .

Back in the swing of things!

We've officially been in school for the last two weeks and things are going really well!  My students are now really into their "self awareness" unit and have already started contributing to discussions and asking some really great questions.

This week the students did a few quick writes where they reflected on how their parents and families influenced them as well as which songs represent their individual personalities.  We also read two interesting articles this week that discussed the scientific idea of nature vs. nurture.  The students were forced to look at their lives and try to determine how much of who they are has come from genetics and how much has come from how they are being raised and experiences that they have had.  The second article we read was called "Identical Strangers" and it was about a set of identical twins who were adopted at birth and were separated on purpose so that scientists could study the effects on nature vs. nurture.  The twins discovered each other at age 35.  A man named Neubaurer, the scientist in charge of this study knew that it would be controversial so he locked the results in a vault at Yale University until 2066!  So when my students are 70 they are going to check the news to see if the vault has been opened.

Next the kids will be using a fun computer site called wordle to create a great word map of themselves.

Overall the students were interested in the topics discussed in class and I already see them coming out of their shells and becoming part of our class!  It was a great week!