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Through chapter's six and seven , Parmar and Krinsiky did an exceptional job highlights things that make a major impact the lives and education of students. The role of gender roles and power structures in society shapes the lives and outcomes of many and by encouraging students to notice and identify these occurrences at a early age. The authors made a good point when they stated "while the specific expectations vary by society, we are all cast into particular gender roles without even realizing it". The gender socialization begins long before birth. It is important that when teaching students they are aware that societal roles, along with their own experiences contribute to their value and belief systems. The authors also talk about correlating units with student's lives - a tool that could impact learning overall. In reference to the suggestions on reading, the units should also be correlating with the text that the students are learning. By doing this, one is able increase comprehension of the content.

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From these chapters I especially enjoyed the examples such as using Farenheit 51, The House on Mango Street, and Persepolis to discuss with students real-world topics such as gender roles, patriarchy, sexism, censorship, etc.  I chose high-school English because I wanted to be able to have these deeper conversations with students and be able to tie the material in with their lives and the world around us.  Learning about these topics not only allows new perspectives and ideas to be opened up for students, but prepares them to think critically for when they are out in the real world.  After reading chapters 6 & 7, I realized even more the ability and responsibility we will have as English teachers to weave representation, culture, and diversity into our lessons and the literature and text we choose.

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As a couple people have already mentioned, I have not yet read The House On Mango Street, but I did enjoy reading the example lesson plans displayed in chapter 6. I can see how each part of the lesson plans can be relatable for students, especially parts 5 and 6. Anytime you're asking students to take the reading and consider situations from the reading about their own life, I feel as though you're able to get some of their best reflections, so discussing with them about their own gender norms and how they are "fitting in" I believe would be a productive discussion.

In chapter 7, I enjoyed the lesson opening activity titled "Burning Books." I went back to the appendix and read the questions that the activity asked, and I thought they were a good range of questions that could really measure how students feel about censorship leading into reading Fahrenheit 451. Censorship is definitely a prominent factor in this book, so having some sort of idea on how your students feel about censorship could be important information that could help shape your lessons and activities for the rest of that unit.

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I am ashamed to admit that I have never read, The House On Mango Street. However, in Priya’s chapter 6, I enjoyed her reasoning in reading it and some of the points identified about the importance for reading such a book and focusing on gender. For starters, might I add, I have never encouraged in the face of students the ongoing myth that boys are better in math and girls are better in reading. However, I have thought that. I remember researching the topic in one of my OSU courses, and there is research which proves, some schools are taught to teach boys a certain way, and girls differently, which encourages those outcomes.

I believe the book provides several lesson plans for this book and have personally enjoyed reading over each of them but took a strong liking to: Part 4: Growth, Maturity and Sexuality. I think this section is one of which Is most suitable for the age group I am desiring to teach and regardless of gender share a ton of common ground. However, in this same unit you are able to ask the men to think as a woman would and the woman to think as the men. (Earlier in the chapter it was suggested that the students practice this for characters in the book as well.)

Chapter 7, Power Wars, stuck out the most to me. I can appreciate that the text calls the Holocaust not just a Jewish historical event, but instead, “it should be viewed as a period of explicable silence, a brutal silence that powerfully impacted the history of the entire world.” This triggered a few things for me: Am I an active citizen? Do I play a major role in the “1 percent” group and am I silent on things which affect others and me in no direct way? This section, which I originally thought going in was going to be about just politics and government, actually prompts a lot of introspection on how we view ourselves and our role in the world around us. I know the unit teaches us to challenge, discuss, and explore the power of the government, those with a democracy and those still fighting to have one, but what about the power as individuals that we posses?

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Upon reading the assigned chapters of Parmar and Krinsky a few key things stuck out to me as a future educator. The opening of chapter seven was particularly significant to me. The concept of power seems to fall by the wayside for me. I am aware of certain sources of authority in my life, such as my professors, but I think it is easy to forget some of the more omnipotent power players in our everyday lives, such as government and social powers.  It is important as educators for us to make our students aware of these powers that will play large parts in their lives and prepare them to view their choices in an intelligent and critical manner.
I particularly enjoyed Parmar and Krinsky's example of a post-reading activity for the novel Fahrenheit 451. Television is a huge part of most of the nation's lives, making the novel an aged but relevant source for quality discussion about how media affects everyday life in our country.

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Chapters 6 and 7 were great ways to end the book, discussing very important subjects for high school students. I think chapter 7 is particularly interesting because concepts of power tie into literally everything in our society, even going back to gender roles in chapter 6. Why are women seen as lesser in our society? Because men have the power. I think you can couple a lot of the lessons in Chapters 6 and 7 together. In many books focusing on a female lead, they are often victims of the patriarchy, so from that, we can tie in a lesson plan surrounding power.

I think chapter 7 would also tie really well into
things we have discussed in the past. A key issue in Fahrenheit 451 is
censorship, which is something we have talked about in our class as it pertains
to high school journalism. Page 143 mentions the opening activity of
"Burning Books", asking students to think about censorship and why
certain books might be banned and who the book in question is really a danger
to. We can tie this into our classroom discussion of censoring high school
journalism and newspapers. If "mature" topics are being banned in
schools, who are they really a danger to? The students, as the people in charge
of censorship claim, or those in power?
I think chapter 7 would also tie really well into things we have discussed in the past. A key issue in Farenheit 451 is censorship, which is something we have talked about in our class as it pertains to high school journalism. Page 143 mentions the opening activity of "Burning Books", asking students to think about censorship and why certain books might be banned and who the book in question is really a danger to. We can tie this into our classroom discussion of censoring high school journalism and newspapers. If "mature" topics are being banned in schools, who are they really a danger to? The students, as the people in charge of censorship claim, or those in power?

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I think that these chapters are some of the most important we have read so far, because i personally do not think that this topic gets talked about enough, or at least openly. This is a topic that has gotten more attention recently, but should be more widely accepted and discussed much earlier on.

Many people believe that gender discussions aren't very important or don't even know the depth that these conversations could go, and quite the contrary is true. Gender relates to power, confidence, the ability to empower their peers, and more. The main point that I would want to take away from these chapters is that you can incorporate these topics into any lesson. It is incredibly easy to bring them up and weave them into lessons you were already planning on teaching. For example, when teaching lessons on historical literature or rhetoric, you could bring up the background of the female author and explain her role in early feminism. This is a good way to ease your students into talking about something that many of them might find "taboo" or uncomfortable.

I am very passionate of this topic because I was very affected by gender roles in high school. I always felt like I was less than my male counterparts in high school, and now looking back on it after reading these chapters I feel like that was because of the lack of representation in my classes, especially literature. Many times it seemed like we were reading "token" gender literature pieces especially for women, which didn't make me feel as empowered as if they had been woven in to the literature not just as these token pieces, but a big part of a whole lesson or curriculum.I feel like so often our education puts children into boxes. Every single student is individual, and the last thing we would want to do is disempower our students and box them in. Helping children understanding their gender and how it relates to their identity can really translate to power in these young minds.

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It is inevitable that we all have to deal with gender in some way, although how you understand, approach, and act based on these socially constructed ideals is completely up to you.

What is particularly interesting about the topic of gender is that you can look at it in an American perspective, or the position within any other nation. This is mentioned in the exercises pertaining to Persepolis because the story is set in Iran and written by an Iranian woman. Depending on the demographics of your class, the novel provides the "windows and mirrors" that are so crucial to provide. In addition, the topic of gender allows for the incorporation of a wide range of media and text, as well as your student's actual experiences which both makes it relevant and interesting. Personally, while growing up I certainly noticed and often tried to fight against gender roles when I was younger, but didn't formally learn about them till college. This being said, during my FEEP placement my teacher actually allowed me to teach a lesson about the sociology of gender and how that impacts the world around us. Like me, those students hadn't had any kind of formal instruction about gender, but still were extremely eloquent and critical they were while explaining their understanding of these roles. While students differ from class to class, if you have a class that is anything like the one I taught during FEEP, all the exercises suggested in the book would be more than fit to try in your classroom.

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I think chapter 6 and 7 were both really good ideas for teaching students two important topics, power and gender. I think that they served as great guidelines for units that we could change to make our own. I think one of the things I would change in these lessons is possibly updating them with a few more modern texts along with some of the classics so that the conversation stays relevant to current events and the students think critically about what is going on in their world as well as the past.
I think running a school news paper would be really exciting and fun but also very time consuming and a lot of hard work! I think that having to monitor every story so closely and making sure everything was correct, accurate, and following school policy would be pretty stressful especially when everything will be online for everyone to see! I do think it is a great idea though because as we have discussed most people get their news from the internet now so students who are interested in journalism should learn about how things are in the real world!

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I found the reading this week extremely interesting because gender roles are an important thing to discuss, especially in class. Our job as teachers is not only teach them about our subject, but incorporate important life topics such as gender roles into our lessons. The part of the reading that talked about not only discussing women's gender roles, but keeping the male perspective as well is very important. I consider myself a low key feminist, but I am also an advocate for abolishing typical male gender roles as well. It is important as a teacher to your students that you show all both genders in the topic of d roles.  This is a good idea that I had not thought of before.
Personally, I would attempt to incorporate some of the bell work activities/discussion questions like the “Chapters of My Life” work on page 120 or the “One Step Further” assignment on page 122. I would have the students do this everyday for 5-10 minutes in the beginning of class. I always loved when my ELA has us write a little something everyday. It made me a better writer.

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I really enjoyed the chapter that discussed gender roles. I believe that gender roles are something that should be talked about in the classroom, no matter how taboo or uncomfortable they are. It's something that everyone deals with, so it is important to talk about them and understand and relate our feelings with them. I really enjoyed how the author recommended really focusing on the setting for the novels discussed in the chapter about gender roles. I think it is important for students to get an accurate idea of where a novel is taking place, because it helps them better understand the plot. The author recommended the students talking about their personal places of residence, and then studying where the characters lived as well. It kind of reminded me of my placement this semester. My cooperating professional teaches mainly through films because of varying reading levels in his class, and his units are based on cities, not time periods. For example, he is currently on Chicago, and had his students watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off as an example of a buildings roman story. The students now can relate better to the area of Chicago and understand what it is like in short stories or poems they study, and they are able to usually comprehend where works of literature are set.

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Like a few of the posts I read through, I was also not exposed to the idea of gender roles in high school. Honestly, I had little awareness of this topic until this past year as I became heavily involved in my required major courses (also the election brought this to surface, but that's another can of worms). Through the reading this week, particularly in the opening of chapter six, I was able to think through gender roles in the classroom setting. As a future educator, it is my goal to expose my students to pieces that I felt were missing in my education, gender roles being one of them.  Topics such as these can initially feel intimidating, especially with my lack of exposure and knowledge to exploring this topic until recently, so I truly appreciated all of the ideas the text offered to addressing this topic in the classroom. Through noting the texts that I can bring into my classroom, such as "The House on Mango Street," a major point I enjoyed was that through these readings, we always need to keep each gender included. Though when discussing gender roles, we typically discuss female oppression (point of view of referenced text), the writer noted to be active in always providing outlets to bring in male perspective as well. This was a simple, yet major point that I will be able to add to my practice of exposing my students to topics like gender roles: that each role needs to be discussed and evenly considered.

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Where I grew up, gender roles play a very big part on how kids are raised but it isn't a topic that is every actually discussed in a school setting, and only very recently have we discussed the binary that exists and the part it plays throughout our education.
We read the short story, "The Lottery" during high school and it was a stunner to me both then and now. The morals of the story is that some traditions are not worth keeping and that we have to question the information and structure that has been handed to us. I want to teach in a rural area, much like the one I grew up in, and this piece would be crucial if we were to discuss race and gender dynamics within the community. I always like seeing is preface a lesson because it's usually a good indicator that the lesson will be one that makes an impact on students and challenges preconceived notions.
To have a unit focused on power, especially in light of this last election would be a necessary thing for students. Of the two texts for the unit, I have read Maus I & II. This could really kills a few birds with one lesson plan because the books are graphic novels which many students have yet to encounter in an educational setting, it talks about important moments in history through the eyes of people who were actually there and it goes between current events in the characters lives to flashbacks.

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I personally related to the chapter that discussed gender roles. I feel as thought so often teachers (or at least my teachers) try to avoid talking about anything that might cause some kind of argument or unrest in the classroom. One point that I particularly liked was when it was talking about using the book but making sure to keep the males involved because of the books female perspective. It spoke about having them redo parts of the story from a male perspective. I think this is so imperative because often we can get caught up in making sure why it isn't okay for gender roles to be forced upon women and we forget that men also have roles perpetuated onto them.

We as teachers need to be aware of if we are participating in language/actions that promote gender roles. This goes back to self-accountability and thinking about our words and actions. I do not know to combat people's ideas of gender, but if we lead by example and do not give into it, it could make an impact on our students. Also if we are making a conscious effort to include in our curriculum books that challenger gender roles instead of shying away from it, that could have an impact on our students.

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This week, I particularly identified with the discussion of gender roles. I thought it was very powerful that the chapter opened with Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy” lyrics and mentioned that things in our childhood would have been a little different. Just the other day, my boss was talking about how boys have more pressure to get their driver’s license and their own car because of the norm that a guy should pick a girl up and take her out if he wants to date her. I also like how the chapter uses The House on Mango Street to talk about self-definition and identity. I don’t think identity was something that was brought to my attention before my freshman year of college and it’s so important. I definitely feel it’s necessary to recognize everyone’s unique identity and help them feel comfortable in figuring that out while they’re in my classroom.

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I find it interesting that all the chapters in the Parmar and Krinsky book have "wars" in the title. The "Gender Wars" and "Power Wars" chapters are both limited to focusing on specific issues without including their interconnection. There are power struggles between genders, and that includes the relationship between the government and the people. I wish the text was more fluid in it's discussion of each of these different "wars" because it is difficult to separate them into categories and not explore how they are all interconnected. As teachers, we can't ignore the intertwining of issues.

I find the concept of an online newspaper for a school rather interesting because it requires different funding, marketing, and execution. I wonder if there if it is more or less likely for students to read the school paper if it is online instead of in print. My school didn't have a newspaper so I'm unfamiliar with student interest in a school paper. In relation to the Parmar and Krinsky text, I think that an online newspaper is more accessible and could encourage a wider, more diverse audience which could help students address issues such as gender and power in a more impactful manner with their peers.

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In chapter six, I really connected when Parmar and Krinsky used Persepolis as a text example. I recently read Persepolis for my Adolescent Literature course last semester, and loved it! The book is also a graphic novel, which was an extremely refreshing read and provided a new platform for building understanding of difficult topics, namely gender. I would love to be able to teach this book in the future, and I definitely think I would use the opener that Parmar and Krinsky entitled "It's a Hard Thing Growing Up." I think this opener allows every student no matter what their background to connect to a difficult time in their childhood in order to really connect to the literature.
I really enjoyed chapter seven as a whole, since I feel as though we don't spend a lot of time learning about banned books in school growing up. While there is obviously a reason behind that, I personally believe high school students should be able to learn about why books are banned and realize that it may be a more common practice than they thought. A portion that I really connected to within the chapter was page 154, the in-class discussion about "Encouraging a Society that Self-Reflects" since we spoke about self-reflection and its importance in class recently.

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In class we looked at an example of a local online school newspaper. The class immediately brought up the fact that ads were front and center on the page. I think this shows that to have a successful school newspaper you need funding.  Being that news print is a dying form of media, I can only imagine that it is probably difficult for many schools to fund their newspaper, which may be why we saw so many ads.
The chapter we had to read talked a lot about gender roles and I think that its important for teachers to realized their own biases when it comes to gender. Teachers can judge without even knowing so I think its important to have ways that you can make sure you're treating all the students fairly.

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I like that the Parmar and Krinsky text brings up the concept of clothing as reflections of ideologies on page 131. I think this is something we all recognize but rarely talk about in classrooms. There are many ways that we form opinions about other people and clothing can play a huge role in those opinions.

In addition when reading these lesson plans regarding what they call the Gender Wars, all of their texts have the perspective of an individual who sits within the gender binary. I am curious to know if there are any good classroom suitable YA texts about characters who do not identify within the gender binary.

I love the idea of a classroom debate based on a text that has been banned at other schools or even banned at the student's school in the past as suggested on page 144. I think it’s cool way to talk about censorship at the school level specifically and how it impacts students. It also helps students practice their discussion and debate skills around a topic with two clear sides without putting their personal beliefs on the line as much.

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The discussion of gender roles in chapter six is something that is particularly relevant to me because of the impact gender roles have had in my life. I looked like a typical "boy" growing up and after being teased for so long I learned to conform to what I perceived as the norm for "girls." The way people view different genders on different platforms is something that I have noticed throughout the entirety of my life. One thing in the chapter about this that particularly stuck out to me was part five of the House on Mango Street: Gender roles and expectations. Having this discussion as a class is important because it was not until college that the difference in gender was made explicitly clear to me in a classroom. I believe that high school students need to be exposed to this tough kind of conversation so they can identify their own bias and hopefully grow as a result. As it (implicitly) says in the beginning of chapter 6, Beyonce knows best. The "If I Were a Boy" mentality should not exist in the females of the next generation and I believe by addressing gender expectations in the classroom that we will start the conversation early enough to change the mindset of young adults, male and female. Because although mens perception of women can be damaging, a woman's perception of herself can be equally damaging so we need to make sure that as teachers we are encouraging deeper thinking in our girls and boys.

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I really liked the line in chapter 6, “Educators should never limit their student” (pg. 118). It is such a powerful phrase and good message for us as future teachers who will be in the impacting various students day in and day out for many years. Although this chapter and line has a focus on gender, I believe that this statement is also very important in regards to a student’s ethnicity, class, education, etc. All of these factors are important to all of us as individuals and we as educators should create a space that is safe for students to embrace all of their qualities to the best of their abilities while receiving their education. No student should feel that they are any less than their peers because they may not understand something right away. Through my experiences, I have become inspired and want to help my future students embrace their talents and work towards their academic goals, all while being the best self they can be without their character, characteristics, positions they hold, etc. being judged.

The line, “Proponents of critical literacy refuse to bury the ashes of the past” (chapter 7, pg. 142) is a very powerful statement and speaks to the power of reading itself. This chapter speaks of powers that governments have and how it can be used, which can be a very difficult and challenging topic to present to a group of students no matter how old they are. War and power is a violent action in some cases and students can struggle with their inner thoughts and opinions regarding this topic. However, giving them these materials in lessons to read and work with pushes students to open their minds and perspectives to these difficult subject matters bringing to the surface what so many people try to forget. I believe that we can learn from our past and use it fix the mistakes made along the way. Although it most likely will not change anything drastically because of the continuity of the system we have in place, for example racism in our country, reading critical literacy can open those doors to the past to lead the way to the future.

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In general, I really like the discussion questions and activities that are described in the Parmar and Krinsky text. Because I currently observe at a school in Columbus, I tried to imagine my cooperating teacher employing some of these novels/activities in her 12th grade English classroom, but it was difficult to imagine. The students do all of their reading in-class with novels that the teacher rented from the library, so they cannot take the books home. Also, the school stopped giving students homework because they just didn’t do it; so, after reading in class, student answer comprehension questions until class is over. Parmar and Krinsky’s advice that students complete comprehension questions at home so that class time can be used for discussions/activities (121) would not work well under these circumstances. I wonder what can be done in this situation. The students never get to do the critical literacy discussions and activities that sound so fun and engaging in the Parmar and Krinsky text.

I think that I would try to use some of the reading activities/discussion questions (such as the “Chapters of My Life” activity on page 120 or the “One Step Further” activity on page 122) as five-minute daily journal prompts for my students. The “Reporting on Reporters” media activity described on page 131 reminds me of some of the discussions that we have had in class, and I think that it could be an insightful activity for students to do when reading Persepolis. I love the idea of having a censorship debate while reading Fahrenheit 451 -- we did something similar in my Adolescent Literature class at OSU, and it was really interesting (we did not get to choose whether we were for or against censorship, and we were given many scenarios). Lastly, I think that providing students with several pages (or maybe even chapters) from Scott McCloud’s book Understanding Comics (156) and then discussing the pages would greatly enhance students’ understanding of the visuals. I read parts of McCloud’s book before reading Maus, and I think that I appreciated the graphic novel much more because I had a foundational understanding of comics.

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First, I'll just say that I thoroughly enjoy all the readings we have for this class because they almost always include so many tips and engaging activities for our future classrooms. I definitely think I'll incorporate these ideas into mine.

I've always found it important for adolescents to discuss the relevance of gender roles in their lives, and I find it especially important lately with more controversy around gay and transgender students. Part 5 of chapter 6 on page 124 describes an activity that challenges students to think through their own gender roles as determined by people in their lives, but to also think about what gender roles a person of the opposite gender may be pressured to follow as well. I think this role-reversal activity is genius. Whenever students are able to put themselves in their peers' shoes, they will become more knowledgeable of themselves and the world around them.

In the introduction of chapter 7, it discussed different countries and how some of the power dynamics exist between the governments and their peoples. It was interesting for me to learn these differences and to compare them to my own country and it got me thinking of a unit that I could do with my students. I think it would be interesting to potentially pair with a social studies teacher if they are working on a world history unit perhaps, or learning about the government in general. They could learn about these topics in social studies class and we could read bits and pieces from the novels in chapter 7 to go along with those lessons. Students could reflect on these power dynamics, compare them to what they know of the US government, write from the perspective of world leaders or citizens from other countries, to really think through and apply that new knowledge.

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Right off the bat, a quote on the second page of the reading stuck out to me.  On page 118, Parmar and Krinsky write, “Because two of the focus texts are told from the female perspective, it is very important to keep your male students involved.”  This stood out to me, because this statement would never be made with the genders reversed.  You’d never have a text like Huck Finn or whatever and say, “Because this is told from the male perspective, it’s important to keep your female students involved.”  The authors go on to give suggestions about inspiring male students to think about the female-focused text if it were in a male perspective, etc. but I think that goes to show how ingrained gender roles are that a text of female perspective is considered abnormal and that extra effort must be made to hold the attention of male students.

In Chapter Seven, there is a powerful quote that reads, “Proponents of critical literacy refuse to bury the ashes of the past.  We believe that the world cannot be allowed to forget, to ever again be silent to the suffering of others” (Parmar and Krinsky, 142).  I think this is an important idea, especially in a language arts classroom, because it truly emphasizes the power of words and the importance of voice.  I think the whole unit on power is a great one, maybe more so now than in the recent past.  If taught in conjunction with the Holocaust, I think it is even more powerful.  (And I also love the idea of using Maus in my classroom as a class text!!)