as long as we acknowledge them and learn to remain inclusive. Oftentimes, teachers subconsciously push gender roles onto students, thus detrimentally impacting their self view. Malins (2016) outlines, through their research, that students who broke out of traditional gender roles often felt a form of "gender anxiety" as they were labelled as deviants. While most educators may not even realize, something as simple as claiming that "girls are more organized," is harmful to their students. We are their role models, and research shows that the values that we hold and implicitly or explicitly demonstrate in the classroom significantly impacts those of the students as well as their attitudes in social situations (Malins, 2016). 

Similar to many Indo-European languages, specifically the Italic branch (i.e. Spanish, Italian, Portuguese), the French language features a binary in vocabulary, with some words being masculine and some being feminine. While at the surface this may not seem harmful, once analyzed deeper, we can see that many words have gendered connotations to them. Many masculine words can be described as "of men;" for example un chapeau - a hat, and feminine to be "of women;" for example une robe - a dress (Perry, 2003). 

According to Ferdinand de Saussure, renowned linguist, language exists on the basis of oral speech. As a result, Perry (2003) outlines that it's the use of language structures in combination with implicit societal messages that evolve the linguistic sign. In essence, as our society evolves, so does our language and use of grammar. Thus, the continuation of certain gendered terms following a binary, and to an extent, traditional gender norms contributes to cisnormativity in our classrooms (Perry, 2003).