SELENE ATHERTON
Inclusive, Passionate & Resourceful
Welcome to Teachers Ruin Gender, my name is Selene and I'm a final year Werklund student who specializes in Elementary Inclusive Education. It is my top priority to design lessons and units dedicated to allowing students to reach their full potential. I also focus heavily on utilizing trauma informed practice in my classrooms and this unit can be an excellent bridge for students to gain trust and for educators to establish a safe space. I also love the relevance of this topic for students. More and more in society our students will be exposed to differing view points from their own, and I believe it is of the upmost importance that we teach our students to be ethical citizens who respect all people. I hope that this unit will do just that.
KIEFER WAITE
Caring. Brave. Zany.
Hello world, I'm Kiefer, and I'm in my final year of my Bachelor of Education at the University of Calgary specializing in Secondary English Language Arts. I am a passionate believer in the power of stories, and I believe that to be truly aware of the world around us, we have to understand how stories work to shape our societies, our relationships, and ourselves. Gender is one of those stories that is always in the room and requires teachers and students to be brave enough to address in a meaningful way. Having grown up in Treaty 7 territory, also I believe there is a need for a re-storying of the relationships between schools and Indigenous communities, and I am a strong believer in the decolonizing potential of storytelling.
KELSEY NOBLE
Creative, Dedicated & Compassionate.
Hello, my name is Kelsey and I am completing my final year in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. My specialization is in Secondary Music Education where I focus on developing students' abilities to think both critically and creatively in, through and about music and the fine arts. The fine arts offer a unique educational experience where students' holistically synthesize knowledge to express themselves artistically. Through the artistic process, students express their understandings even when words are limiting. The arts have always been a way to interact with societal quandaries such as gender expression. I am passionate about this topic because it is both meaningful and deeply personal to students. Gender and relationships affect all of us every day. The complexity of these topics allows for the creation of rich and deep works of art.
LORIANNE REUSER
Adventurous. Literary. Jolly.
Hello friends! As an independent scholar and pre-service teacher, I am committed to the process of making room for diverse voices to tell their stories. My education in Calgary and Ireland, as well as my experience as an assistant ELL teacher in Japan, has convinced me of the necessity for incorporating popular and current texts into our classrooms, and thus allowing for a more complete picture of our cultural identity. The connections we form through our cultural stories, no matter the media through which they are told, are powerful -- through them we can show students how to read both the 'word' and the 'world'. It is my hope that, through the exploring of this unit's essential question around gender and identity, both students and teachers will, through inquiry, enrich each other's gender stories while also discovering new ones.