Gender Presentation (no, the other kind!)
Feb. 12th, 2022 01:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressSo the big news this week -- as in, absolutely dominating my brainspace and pretty much all my free time-- is that it was ~Social Justice Day~ at the school and I was giving a presentation1 called "Getting More Comfortable With Gender".
(Which, sidenote, the school kept shortening to just "gender" in various materials which was, to be frank, hilarious and commented upon by many of the students as they arrived. One pointed out it was very much like an alt-right meme "It's time for gender class!")
I worked _hard_ on the presentation, creating a whole little workshop, something I don't think I've ever done before. I teach every day but that's always been substituting (which is powerpoint kareoke writ large, here is someone else's lesson plan, have at!) or it's been standard classroom teaching, which has a different narrative arc and feel to it (because you're with these students for a significant length of time, there are ways you can and cannot relax with them). Part of *why* I worked so hard is so that I would have the pieces to do this again in the future -and I do want to do this again in the future!
In fact, as things stand right now, I have two presentations created --a half hour one focused on me personally (which is really just ten minutes plus a lot of time for questions), and now a 90 minute one focused on the attendee thinking about their own gender a whole bunch, ideally.
Anyways, the presentation this time went *great*. I had about 22 students show up, and almost all the students engaged ~somehow~. It wasn't a super talky-to-the-group group, but there were a lot of little conversations in the small groups of friends people sat near, and some back and forth with me and the teacher chaperone in the room. We ended with a _really good_ group-format Q&A which got pretty good engagement, and in general, for the end of a hard week in a harder years, I am _so happy_.
Because the workshops were self-select, I got what I expected: a higher-than-usual concentration of non-cis students. But that felt good too and it wasn't *only* trans/nb people! Even within that crowd, there was variance in understanding and knowledge and everyone seemed to have a good time!
I worked hard, I presented enthusiastically, and then I came home, didn't touch my phone and read until I literally fell asleep on the floor at 9pm2. Okay, okay, it was on the big floor cushion in the living room, not just like...randomly passing out sims-style, but _wow_ did I crash. I kinda want to continue crashing the entire weekend, which is hard both because I have other plans, and because there is one more week of school before February vacation, and I should do some stuff for it
I'm really really happy right now.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Ezri won the hardest laugh of the week for me yesterday, when I said "okay, gonna go upstairs and work on my gender presentation" and they immediately chimed in with "Oh, I think you look plenty dapper already, don't worry!" and just asdfgh YES!
2: This is _so early_ for me.
(Which, sidenote, the school kept shortening to just "gender" in various materials which was, to be frank, hilarious and commented upon by many of the students as they arrived. One pointed out it was very much like an alt-right meme "It's time for gender class!")
I worked _hard_ on the presentation, creating a whole little workshop, something I don't think I've ever done before. I teach every day but that's always been substituting (which is powerpoint kareoke writ large, here is someone else's lesson plan, have at!) or it's been standard classroom teaching, which has a different narrative arc and feel to it (because you're with these students for a significant length of time, there are ways you can and cannot relax with them). Part of *why* I worked so hard is so that I would have the pieces to do this again in the future -and I do want to do this again in the future!
In fact, as things stand right now, I have two presentations created --a half hour one focused on me personally (which is really just ten minutes plus a lot of time for questions), and now a 90 minute one focused on the attendee thinking about their own gender a whole bunch, ideally.
Anyways, the presentation this time went *great*. I had about 22 students show up, and almost all the students engaged ~somehow~. It wasn't a super talky-to-the-group group, but there were a lot of little conversations in the small groups of friends people sat near, and some back and forth with me and the teacher chaperone in the room. We ended with a _really good_ group-format Q&A which got pretty good engagement, and in general, for the end of a hard week in a harder years, I am _so happy_.
Because the workshops were self-select, I got what I expected: a higher-than-usual concentration of non-cis students. But that felt good too and it wasn't *only* trans/nb people! Even within that crowd, there was variance in understanding and knowledge and everyone seemed to have a good time!
I worked hard, I presented enthusiastically, and then I came home, didn't touch my phone and read until I literally fell asleep on the floor at 9pm2. Okay, okay, it was on the big floor cushion in the living room, not just like...randomly passing out sims-style, but _wow_ did I crash. I kinda want to continue crashing the entire weekend, which is hard both because I have other plans, and because there is one more week of school before February vacation, and I should do some stuff for it
I'm really really happy right now.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Ezri won the hardest laugh of the week for me yesterday, when I said "okay, gonna go upstairs and work on my gender presentation" and they immediately chimed in with "Oh, I think you look plenty dapper already, don't worry!" and just asdfgh YES!
2: This is _so early_ for me.
no subject
on 2022-02-14 05:42 am (UTC)May my partner contact you for ideas? She's been tasked with helping develop Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) material at her company. It's kind of a punishment for pointing out that most of the other company managers are White, cis-gender, straight, Christian... and, perhaps most saliently, unaware of the many privileges they take for granted that others do not enjoy.
no subject
on 2022-03-11 03:56 pm (UTC)~Sor