So... What's the Story

After many changes in our central focus and project ideas, for our final project, Olivia and I will be making a training video for teachers explaining that gender stereotyping in early education does not advance a child’s education. It will explain that all that gender stereotyping in the early education process does is hinder expression and teach young students that they must fit into the specific “ideal” mold that is identified with their gender.

This video will be made as an instructional tool for teachers to refer to when educating young students. The main purpose will to raise awareness to teachers that this is a problem, so it does not continue going unsaid. Many educators gender-stereotype without even realizing, so this video will bring it to their consciousness what is and isn’t gender stereotyping. Gender stereotyping in early education gradually leads to set ideas between the genders, which can then lead to bigger problems such as sexism.

Talking through the idea, I found that there were many different routes that I wanted to take the training video. As time progressed and I did more individual thinking, I realized that I want to focus solely on the children rather than the adults, and give examples of what gender stereotyping in the classroom looks like. When I say that I want to focus on the children, I want their point of view to be the most important and influential to the story. The video being made is being made to benefit them and enable them to be more expressive despite their gender, so in the video, I want the children to be the main “characters.”

During interviews with the children, Olivia and I will ask them about specific roles in modern day society, and then ask them about their education experience. We hope to one day sit in on an elementary school class to listen to what the teacher says and observe the way that the classroom is presented. The biggest movements in the story will be involving the children and their feelings as people and students. I think we may introduce our topic with the children to get the audience more interested. As for a closing, we may get shots from adults and teachers during interviews about what they know regarding gender stereotyping.

The change that we are trying to make by making this video is that we want teachers to be aware of the issue of gender stereotyping. It is making kids feel as though they may not be able to do something because it doesn’t correlate with their gender. When children feel this way, it limits their creativity and forces them to fit a mold that may not be what they want to be. The goal of this video will to be to open the eyes of teachers and make them aware of what they say or do that could possibly be considered gender stereotyping. Olivia and I want the young students to feel as if they can be expressive with their personalities without having their gender hinder them, meaning that they can be who they want to be and do what they want to do without having the label “boy” or “girl” limit them.