This article originally appeared in the November-December 1997 Children's Advocate newsmagazine, published by Action Alliance for Children.

Dolls, Trucks, and Identity

By Sehba Zhumkhawala

Last June, a multicultural group of second graders surprised their teacher with their daring rewrite of the traditional end-of-the-year class play. "The girls and boys decided to switch roles" -- gender roles that is, reports their teacher, Janice Lillard of Glenview Elementary School in Oakland. The boys would act the girl parts; the girls would act the boy parts. The remarkable thing, says Lillard, "is they came up with the idea of switching roles completely on their own." To the children, this was a good way to learn about and accept each other.

The gender-bending play was just one result of Lillard's efforts to make her students more aware of gender equity. Those efforts began last year, Lillard explains, when she and other teachers from Glenview attended a workshop, presented by Linda Kekelis and Barbara Buswell, called "Raising Competent Girls and Caring Boys."

Competent girls and caring boys

Prompted by a 1992 study, How Schools Shortchange Girls, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), Kekelis and Buswell, both parents and educators, developed workshops to educate parents and teachers on promoting gender equity in the classroom and at home. Funded by an AAUW grant, Kekelis and Buswell began four years ago with workshops for parents in twenty Bay Area preschool cooperatives. Their ninety-minute workshop focuses on research, stereotypes, and the ways parents and teachers can encourage children to move beyond the limitations of gender-specific learning and play.

Children start to define their gender identities in their preschool years, Kekelis points out. In most preschools, you find mainly girls playing with dolls in the houskeeping and dress-up corner, while boys build with blocks and play with trucks. Teachers and parents unconsciously promote these stereotypes. One study asked children to make a wish list of toys they wanted, then compared that list with the toys children actually received. Researchers found that, no matter what the children requested, they received only gender-specific toys from their lists. According to Kekelis, researchers have found that "girls are praised when they play with dolls while boys are likely to be ignored by their parents when displaying nurturing behavior."

How important is it for boys to play with dolls and for girls to play with blocks? Kekelis says boys who engage in stereotypical "girl" activities develop nurturing skills and refine their fine motor coordination, which can later help them with such skills as handwriting. Similarly, by playing with blocks, girls gain experience and confidence in their math and science skills

Expanding possiblities

Kekelis relates common responses from parents who attend her workshops: "My son started holding a carrot like a gun at a very young age, and certainly I did not model that," and "I bought my daughters a dump truck, but it just sat in the corner of the playroom forever."

She gives tips on introducing gender-typed toys like trucks and dolls in a manner that interests children. She says, "Set up the playroom or outside area in a new way with blocks and stuffed animals, as a veterinary hospital or an underwater world, to encourage girls and boys to play in new ways and with new toys or activities." She advises teachers to stock the housekeeping corner with an assortment of female and male dolls, add dolls and toy animals to the block center, and encourage parents to dress children for active, outdoor play.

Beth Brandon, the parent of a seven-year-old girl and three-year-old boy, attended Buswell and Kekelis's workshop two years ago. "Every teacher should hear this," she says. "Every parent with a child -- boy or girl -- should hear this."

Teachers often encourage gender biases without even being aware of it, Brandon points out. For example, teachers may ask children to build a snowman. "Why not say snowperson?" Brandon says the workshop helped her realize that "there is a lot of subtle stuff that an observer who is not educated [in gender equity] wouldn't notice." Even a habit of complimenting girls on the way they look can contribute to girls being obsessed with their appearance when they grow up.

In her own parenting, Brandon has made some changes. Her daughter used to choose party shoes and cute dresses to wear to school, but now Brandon buys her "good sturdy shoes to run around." She also makes sure her son has lots of stuffed toys and dolls to encourage him to be nurturing. Because of the workshop, she says, "I now understand the psychology" behind the importance of gender equity for young children.

Changing school culture

Glenview teacher Janice Lillard has seen real changes in children's behavior as a result of her greater attention to gender equity. Last year, for the first time since her teaching career began, she saw girls and boys in her class play together. "The boys helped the girls play kickball and basketball, and the girls helped the boys learn how to jump rope," she explains. "They respected and supported each other."

This year, after only the fourth week of school, Lillard can see a difference. "The line leaders and jump-rope leaders are both boys and girls." The students, she says, "play games across gender lines."

Glenview School is also a site of Buswell and Kekelis's new project, started with another grant from the AAUW. Their "Building Bridges" project at Lincoln and Glenview elementary schools in Oakland trains teachers in "family math." A couple of times a year, Glenview and Lincoln invite parents, siblings, and students to a night of cooperative hands-on problem-solving activitites, to experience math as fun. According to Kekelis, "girls love math and science in early elementary school, but get scared of it later on." This new program is an attempt to provide girls with an environment that helps them feel confident in their math skills and retain interest in the subject. This year, Glenview will add a night of family science.

At Lincoln School, Kekelis has also initiated a support group for fourth grade girls. "We get together at lunch," she says, to discuss issues such as diversity and the glamour images of women in magazines. "It provides girls with a safe haven," explains Kekelis. "This is very important for girls."

Great expectations

Also bringing awareness of equality issues to elementary schools is a program called Generating Expectations for Student Achievement (GESA), "one of the most effective programs for increasing achievement for all students," according to the Los Angeles Unified School District. GESA, founded by teacher-educator Dolores Grayson, trains trainers from school districts, who then give workshops for their teachers.

The training highlights subtle ways teachers unintentionally enforce racial and gender inequality in the classroom. For example, says Judith Moses, multicultural consultant at L.A. Unified, "the wait time a teacher allows [before deciding that a student cannot answer a question] depends on the teacher's expectations of the student. Normally, when a teacher does not expect a student to know the answer to a question, the wait time is drastically reduced to a mere nine-tenths of a second, not giving the student even enough time to fully process the question!" Teachers generally wait longer for boys than girls.

"GESA makes the teachers wait 2.5 seconds for all students, to give them equal time," says Moses.

"Students react to the expectations you place on them. They begin to rise to higher expectations," says Mike Bott, an Elk Grove School District administrator who's also participated in GESA.

Even the most well-meaning teachers can unconsciously reinforce sexism. In their workshop, Buswell and Kekelis include a videotape demonstrating the AAUW finding that most teachers--even in preschools--pay more attention to boys than girls. Boys get more chances to speak, more praise and suggestions, more hugs.

Why? Parents and teachers who attend Buswell and Kekelis's workshop tell them: It's because boys are more demanding -- and the girls already seem to be doing better than the boys, without so much attention.

But GESA, says Bott, really works to change those patterns, by giving teachers "an opportunity to observe others and have others observe them in a non-threatening way." He's observed that "most teachers are in a state of denial about what they think they do, and what they actually do -- most treat kids differently." The greatest thing about colleagues observing one another, says Bott, "is that it makes you aware." The teachers also get an individual self-assessment worksheet, highlighting two or three specific areas for them to work on.

Bott says that process "forced me to explicitly think about ways to break habits and behavior patterns." And with those new insights, "behavior can't help but change."