Teaching Tolerance: Personal Connections Empower Students
Check me out! I’m on Teaching Tolerance today with my article, “Personal Connections Empower Students”:
I just started my sixth year teaching high school English. This year began with the same question as always: “How will I empower the young women in my classroom this year?”
I teach mostly sophomores, who are around 16 years old, such a delicate age for young girls, especially in a culture that routinely worries about the latest generation of boys. Teenage girls, like their male counterparts, are trying on so many different hats that, as a teacher, I’m sometimes not sure which personality I will encounter on any given day. So every year, I try to teach as much literature by women as I can, but I find it never seems to be enough.
As I reflected on my annual question, an unexpected answer came to me. I stood in front of the class, introduced myself and told them a little bit about myself: I’m married, we have a dog, I like to cook—the usual. After this, they had to fill out a form and put my name on it, so I wrote it on the board: Ms. S____. A hand shot up in the air.
“But I thought you were married,” the student called out.
“I am,” I responded.
“So shouldn’t you be Mrs. S____?”
I told the class that I didn’t change my name when I got married, and I briefly explained the difference between Miss, Ms. and Mrs. Then, I noticed a hand raised in the back of the room. It belonged to a girl who hadn’t said a word all day. I called on her and she paused for a second to search for just the right words before asking, “You have a choice to keep your name when you get married? I didn’t know that.”