From the Dress-Up Corner to the Senior Prom: Navigating Gender and Sexuality Diversity in Prek-12 Schools, (Paperback)

From the Dress-Up Corner to the Senior Prom: Navigating Gender and Sexuality Diversity in Pre-K to 12 Schools, by Jennifer Bryan, is a must read book for any and all teachers and parents interested in getting their hands around gender stereotyping: what it is, how it's limiting to all, and how to teach children to overcome it, towards the end of embracing gender and sexual diversity in the same way enlightened cultures embrace racial, ethnic, class, and religious diversity. The copious anecdotes alone are worth the price of admission to a future world where we transcend millennia of assumptions about "what boys do" vs. "what girls do" toward a more psychologically and socially androgynous and balanced future. Readers will find themselves thinking time and again, It never occurred to me that our kids might be saying, and wondering, and exploring these things. How would I address that situation when it arises in my classroom? This book of innumerable stories and wise counsel is also the new definitive authority reference book on terminology and resources on the topic.The central question Bryan addresses--- what to teach about gender and sexual identity diversity in schools---is articulated perfectly by a fourth-grade teacher: The school community needs a point of view on these issues. Then we all need to support this view. Schools and teachers that don't address the question collectively as a school community will address it, at their own risk, haphazardly and poorly individually.