“It time that we all see Gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals.” Everyone has heard this quote or something like this but no one really applies this into their lives; we took this session hoping that if children learn this matter at an early age they can make this society a better and equal place for everyone. Kids were of a government school of the grade 6. 7, and 8. Aiming to make this session interesting and engaging we added a few activities such as demonstrating different styles of sittings and asking them to label which gender sits which way and thus trying to break the stereotype imposed in their heads. Then we also did an activity where we made connections with occupations and relating them with gender. This was a different experience for me; how other cultures, backgrounds or religion can create an impact on our lives.
LO 1 & 2: Helping kids or people, in general, is something I’m always looking forward to doing; following the mantra “Give to those who don’t have anything to give to you” and because of this I did not want my weakness of being an introvert create a barrier here. I tried making weakness my strength here, I pushed myself more and more to not stay shut while the session is going on and try and find opportunities to speak where ever possible; I did so. I realized how easy and fun it is to speak I just needed a little push from my side. As mentioned above trying to find opportunities to speak, that too on my own was what I found challenging as my total opposite self would do something like that but in the end, finding that opposite self in me was a very crucial learning moment for me.
LO 5: Working in teams collaboratively speeded things up, we got solutions to problems in less time. We wasted less time if one idea didn’t work another idea popped up. Working in teams helped me know my strengths, I learned I’m quite good with creating activities from scratch and they are sensible and logical as well.
LO 6: The issue of global significance that we focused on was gender discrimination. Women are given less power in society and they are known to be the weaker gender. Personally, I look at a person from the point of view of their personality and not gender. I don’t believe in the halo effect (judging a person overall just on the basis of one of their traits; in this case gender). I look at them as a human, and not a puppet tied to the rules of nature or society, I respect them the way they are, knowing that the issue of gender discrimination has been rooted in the children’s minds since past couple of centuries made me feel awful and thus through this session, we aimed to break the passage of this wrong belief.
All in all this session was very much fun and I hope I transferred my thoughts and believes into the kids as well; they learned something new that they will apply in their and others lives as well. #EquALLity
