After careful consideration and discussions with my teaching assistant, we decided to dive in headfirst with a lesson that approached the topic from an entirely different perspective. I wrote four words on the whiteboard that I leaned up against a tree; “Boy” Stuff and “Girl” Stuff. I divided the board in half under each heading and waited as my students began to notice what I’d written. One child, D., spoke first. He said, “That’s not true! There’s no such thing as boy stuff and girl stuff.” I asked my students if others agreed. Many raised their hands, chiming in, “Yeah, everyone can do everything!”

I told my group, “I hear you saying that there’s no such thing, that we know that boy stuff and girl stuff doesn’t exist...” I then asked them to think about stereotypes, defining the concept for them and giving an example of each. “Boys like toy guns,” I said, “and girls like wearing dresses and the color pink.” Suddenly, the ideas flowed. Together, my class created a long list of things they had heard about what boys or girls like to do or wear. (Image.) “Where do these ideas come from?” I asked. My students were quiet.

I asked the class to “mask up,” then walked around the circle with an example of where such stereotypical ideas come from. I carried with me a catalog from an educational supply company, with the highlighted page featuring dress-up trunks for early education classrooms. “Grandma’s Trunk” contained dresses, hats, necklaces, and handbags. “Grandpa’s Trunk” contained hard hats, tools, pants, and glasses. I asked, “What do these pictures tell children,” and what’s different between the two sets of dress-up items?” Some of my students were almost indignant. “That’s not true! Girls want tools, too.”

The morning of the lesson, I’d brought my own tools with me to the classroom; my hammer, level, measuring tape, and drill with its case of drill bits. As the children ate morning snacks before the lesson, I took out my drill and made some holes in a nearby log round. One girl, M., seated closest to me, visibly startled as I began using it.

As we concluded our discussion about gender stereotypes and began to transition to free play, I asked the group, “Who has ever used a drill?” Half of the hands went up- mostly the boys. I invited each student to use my drill if they wished, and most lined up for a turn. I asked M. as her chance approached, “What made you startle when I used the drill?” She replied, “I was surprised to see you using it.” My third graders, despite “knowing” that gender stereotypes aren’t true, still seem to hold them deeply ingrained.

After free play, we would tackle feminism and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I began the second part of our lesson with a question: “What is Feminism?” I guess I should not have been surprised that several of my students had ideas about how to answer it. “It’s about equal rights for women,” one child suggested. Another added, “It’s fighting for women’s rights.” I agreed with their thoughts, then asked, “Does anyone know who Ruth Bader Ginsburg was?”

One student, L., raised his hand immediately. As I called on him, he spoke quickly; “She was on the Supreme Court and then she died and Trump’s going to nominate someone else and that’s not fair because last time there was a nomination and they waited months to approve the person.” I asked him to pause, saying, “You’re absolutely right. Let’s focus on Ruth for now.” We live in a fairly progressive area of Western Massachusetts, with many of my students coming from families with academic or teaching backgrounds. Clearly, eight is not too young to be aware of what’s happening in our world.

I digress, and perhaps I should back up a bit. During morning meeting each day, I ask a “Question of the Day.” That morning, I’d asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Each child had answered, with a wide variety of imagined careers including doctor, veterinarian, and world traveler. When we returned to the topic of feminism later on, I told my students Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s history, including her struggles to be taken seriously by law firms despite graduating at the top of her class. I reminded them of their own answers to the question of the day, and asked, “Do you think you will run into any roadblocks becoming what you wish to be as an adult? Can you become a doctor, a veterinarian, a world traveler?”

Most of the children agreed that they could become whatever they wanted as adults. I noted that RBG’s feminist values and life’s work contributed greatly to that outcome. Our assistant teacher, Ella, shared her own example. She told the students that her parents are both primary care doctors, who went to similar schools for their degrees and work in similar practices. As she told the children, her mother could become a doctor because of feminists who fought for women’s equality.

“Is there still more work to do?” I asked. I challenged my class to think of jobs that are more frequently done by women. Several children suggested “teacher,” and I agreed. I mentioned that when I taught preschool, there were almost no male teachers. Several students raised their hands; each had a story about one male teacher they had known. More surprisingly, one student offered an interesting anecdote. D., age 8, said, “We had a gym teacher who was a man. But what else is that he was black. He was a black gym teacher. There aren’t many black gym teachers…”

While our conversation would eventually continue on the topic of feminism and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the resulting digression into parallels of race and employment bears discussing in another article.