EDUC 6357 - Family's Influence in Child's Life

Homophobic Remarks in the Classroom - Adult to Child:

During my first bout of teaching, I really didn't know what I was doing. I was student teaching so I had the guidance of my cooperating teacher, but other than that, it was definitely trial and error. In my program, I run a preschool in my high school classroom, so I have a number of high school students in the room. It happened to be a day when everything was going smoothly... you know, one of those days where too many things were going "right". This all quickly ended with a simple remark from one of my high school male students.

It was clean-up time, which then means it's circle time. Many of the children were still cleaning up, but this male student and his preschool student were done a bit early so they headed to find a seat in circle. The male student sat down, and the preschool student sat near him, but then got up and walked to sit with someone else. The male high school student, upset by his change of seat said, "Come here, you little faggot."

My jaw dropped. I had never heard such a derogatory term used in front of children. To this day I still wonder if anyone heard his response... I kind of don't think anyone did because not even the other high school students reacted to this (and I know they would have). He did say it under his breath...but I just was not sure. Also, the child seemed to be far enough away that he didn't hear either... But I will never be sure.

However, if this child (and ALL the children) would have heard, this could be highly influential in a most negative way. Children easily pick up on tones and words - especially words that they know they should never say. It also opens children up to stereotypical and heterosexist terms and slang that children should not be exposed to. Even hearing one word can influence children to feel a particular way about certain people.

An area of insight that I gained this week is regarding sexism and the traditional gender roles that many children hold. In the video "Start Seeing Diversity: Gender" the narrator spoke of an activity to perform that I would really like to complete (n.d.). She talks about reading a story without using the pictures... Also, while reading the story, the teacher should switch out the names of the characters with new names that are gender nonspecific, such as "Alex" or "Chris" (n.d.). Then, have the children draw and talk about the characters they envisioned throughout the story. By performing this activity, teachers will be able to see the stereotypical views that the children hold in regards to gender roles.

Personally, I look forward to seeing what my students will show. I feel as though this will also give much insight into who does what in their own family household. By doing this, we could also discuss that even though their moms may do this, and their dads may do that, it's not like that in every household. This will give us a chance to open the conversation of differences among our families and our culture.


References:
Laureate Media, Inc. (n.d.). Start seeing diversity: Gender.