All of the work in my portfolio has provided me with the opportunity to create a classroom that is conducive to inquiry. My inquiry question, which was conceived of because of the small number of women on the faculty at an all-boys' school, required my students to engage critically with feminist pedagogy, accept women as experts and leaders in fields of study, and think critically about their role and position within the greater gender debate. I knew I was going to receive some pushback, especially when asking them to engage with feminism and specific lessons on gender inequality simply because "feminism" is considered a dirty word, with some nasty connotations from today's society. 9th grade boys are boys in transition--they are beginning to explore their identities in deep and meaningful ways, particularly in relation to their peers and teachers (Nakkula and Toshalis, 2011). They need to explore emotional literacy and to make meaningful and lasting connections to others, even if society pushes back against that notion (Kindlon and Thompson, 2000). Understanding feminist frameworks and how they relate to empathy and emotional health is an important piece of dismantling the culture of toxic masculinity. A boys' school proves both a unique challenge and opportunity to challenge existing frameworks and to help them begin to expand their worldviews. The question is not does teaching history through feminist lenses affect the way that boys think about others, but fundamentally how it changes the way that they live, work, think, and interact with those that are different from them.
|
"But we do boys no favor by ignoring the underlying absence of awareness. Boys' emotional ignorance clearly imposes on others, but it costs them dearly, too. Lacking an emotional education, a boy meets the pressures of adolescence and that singularly cruel peer culture with the only responses he has learned and practiced--and that he knows are socially acceptable--that typically 'manly' responses of anger, aggression, and emotional withdrawal."--Kindlon and Thompson, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, 2000. |