Tips to Create Classrooms That Support... Children As They Are

1. Allow children to define themselves. Use student’s preferred name and pronoun when addressing them and encourage their classmates to do the same.

2. Create an atmosphere where you become approachable. Model openness and acceptance, and intervene when children are gender-policing each other…’girls can’t do that… that’s a boys toy.”

3. Celebrate diversity. Be expansive regarding gender choices in your classroom and curriculum materials. Incorporate stories, both fictional and non-fictional, that show boys and girls challenging traditional gender stereotypes.

4. Talk with parents about students’ freedom of gender expression in your classroom. Students are with us for 1,260 hours a year – and with their families for 7,500 hours a year. What we do in the classroom comes quickly undone unless students' families support it.

5. Encourage administrators and colleagues to address gender-based bullying and harassment as avidly as other forms of discrimination and violence.

6. Don’t create groups or assign tasks according to gender. Boys’ lines and girls’ lines, and classroom jobs specifically for boys or girls have no place in today’s classroom. Use creative methods – like drawing names from a jar – or establish a cycle to create groups and assign tasks.

7. Support all interests that children display, regardless of whether these conform to gender expectations. All children need to be active, creative, and sensitive. Don’t react negatively to a child’s gender choice, comment, or behavior. For example, when a boy decides to play dress-up during recess.

8. Address name-calling and other incidents of harassment when they occur. Don’t let “boys be boys!” Bullying and harassment, gender-based or otherwise, should not ignored.
 

Have a great resource in your library that's not listed above? 
Share it with us at cata@childrenastheyare.org.