"If I Should Have Daughter.."

The one thing I can not help but notice is the need for role models. Not just people who lead a good example, but people that have screwed up so often and so bad, that they want to share it, just to prevent other people from making those same mistakes. I try to do this in my class, with reservations. There are a lot of mistakes I can't really tell them, but I am always looking for ways to share parts of me with them. One way I do this is with free writes. Free Writes are times where we pour our brains and our souls onto paper, forget about commas and subject-verb agreement and just get out what we need to get out. That piece of us that is on the tip of our tongue but not ready to leave our mouths. I ask my students to share these secrets with a few people: their paper, their classmates and me. This takes a certain amount of trust, so I try t always write along side them and share my stories, poems and memories in the same circle, with the same mixed emotions of fear and vulnerability that they do. For me, this is one way that I can build community and lead by example all the while creating a culture of writing.

However the more I watch and listen the more I am convinced that what this society needs is role models. I try to be that man that boys can look up to, have fun with and learn from but I'm facing the disheartening realization that I can't necessarily fill that role with my girls. Not that I can't teach them and learn from them, it's just more and more I'm realizing that I'm a bit clueless in this department. And the more I listen to them share and talk to them, the more I wonder if i want a daughter, you see the world is tough for these girls.

Now I don't know if I want a daughter, but I probably do ( obviously one boy/one girl makes the perfect family) but I know for a fact that I want to ease the transition from adolescence for all my students, boys and girls. So I've been trying to brush up a bit on gender issues and that sort of thing. I have been listening carefully to conversations among my female students and watching their reactions to certain situations and I'm learning, but I'm still clueless. All of this reminded me of a poem I really like by an amazing female poet named Sarah Kay. Here's two poems I really like by her, hope you enjoy.