outrageous act

For my outrageous act, I lead a guided duscussion about gender rolers with the 4-5 grade class at Pinecroft elementary school. THe students and I talked about what it meant to "act like a boy" and to "act like a girl". I had the kids give me sterotypical things that they considered to be masculine and feminine, and we organized them into lists. Next we talkedd about what happens to kids who try to break out of their gender roles. The students were very clear in telling me that kids would be teased and possibly rejected. A boy in the class expressed his opinion that boys where in more danger from teasing because boys are more likley to use violence against one another. (I thought it was really interesting that he was already thinking about that since it is something that we are just formally learning about now in college.) the last think I had them do is write me a paragraph about how they felt gender roles affected them and something non-gender typical that they would like to do. I got some interesting responces; surprising to me was that most of them felt that gender roles where both god and bad, and were able to defend both of their reasoning's. The girls were all able to some up with activities for me, but the boys had a much harder time feeling comfortable finding something non-gender typical that they would like to do.