Promising Practices

The two sessions I signed up for were Girls Gone Wired and Creating a Bully-Free Classroom. Girls Gone Wired was a session about including women to pursue STEM related professions. The percentage of women in STEM programs is very low in comparison to men due to the stigma and social prejudices against women participating in these fields. Society perceives women as incapable of understanding difficult machinery of technology and many are not given the opportunity to participate fully in any of the programs readily available to men. This issue was brought up in the Johnson piece we read earlier in the semester, "Power and Privilege", which spoke about how culturally disadvantaged females are in comparison to men. Just a few weeks ago, President Barack Obama gave a remarkable speech on gender equality at Rhode Island College. He seeks to place executive orders to ensure that women are equal participants in our economy and they receive equal pay.

Emma Watson has also given a speech at the UN and was named the Goodwill Ambassador as she lauches her #HeForShe campaign. She made remarks about the feminist movement and claims that gender equality is an issue for men as well, but unfortunately, the term feminism is too often associated with man-hating. This is an article reviewing Emma Watson's speech and speaking about her previous role at Hermione in Harry Potter. After watching her speech, I became increasingly interested in researching gender roles and gender equality and what are some ways we could combat these issues. I specifically chose this session to attend because of how much Emma Watson's speech moved me. As a future teacher in the realm of mathematics, I feel it is necessary to promote STEM programs in my students and set myself as a prime example for those young girls that are too afraid to pursue male dominant fields. It's about time that our economy reflects the country that it serves.

In the second session I attended, the speaker addressed the issue of bullying and tried to show us strategies on how to eliminate these issues within our classrooms.

Books are a great way to educate children and the book Llama Llama and the Bully Goat teaches children what is bullying and how bad it feels to get bullied. Most bullying occurs when children don't understand how embrace diversity such as children with disabilities or children of different ethnic backgrounds. Through books, we can teach children how to provide a welcoming environment and how to be accepting of others. This relates to the reading by Meier "Why Can't She Remember That" which addresses the importance of introducing books to children. The speaker also touched upon transgender or LGBT students that are severely bullied in school. This relates to the reading "Speaking the Unspeakable in Forbidden Places" that touched upon how to educate children about LGBT. Many teachers are reluctant to bring up the topic because they either feel the students are not ready for it or they fear they might offend the parents, but in all reality these kids are very curious and many frequently ask their parents what does that word "gay" mean. With the media and the social prejudices associated with homosexuality, it is important to educate these students about it as early as possible to be able to provide a safe space and a bully-free environment for those who fall under LGBT. This video is a cartoon video used to educate children about LGBT which is similar to how books educate children.