Group 4, Day 1

 Global Gender Liberation through Art and Activism, Day 1

On the first day, we were kind of thrown off with managing time. But, I think at the beginning, students were already getting interested in the topics they would be learning about. Part of this, I think, is because students had the impression that our workshop would be more engaging than the classes they had earlier. Just as class started and we put up our colorful PowerPoint (thanks to Alex), I could hear students bubbling with curiosity and excitement on the question we put up front: What is gender?

Again, to mention the issues we had with time, we had to cut out one of our activities. A lot of time was spent on our first activity, the icebreaker. In the icebreaker, students drew and made stickers that represented who they were as individuals. Some of the suggestions we gave were to draw themselves as a superhero, villain, game character, or tattoo. But in general, they were free to draw whatever they wanted. Each of them then shared their drawings with the entire class. The students were very creative. Some of the drawings I remember were a bowl of salad, light bulb and protector of cats. The students seemed to have fun with this too, and they were eager to share the stories behind their drawings.

Afterwards, we had students create lists on what they thought the classroom norms should be. Many students were active in this discussion, and they were very thoughtful. They talked about respecting others and not sharing private, personal information outside of the classroom.

The day then ended with an activity in defining gender. Because of time constraints, students weren't able to come up with their own definitions. However, we were able to expose students to various definitions of gender: one from the Webster's dictionary, a scholarly source, and two from different cultures. The students were a bit confused by these definitions, being unfamiliar with terms like non-binary and confusing sex with gender. It was clear that we had to address these misunderstandings the next day.