Welcome to the Forgotten ECE, the show where before and after school educators, summer
camp and PD staff and CYWs have a place where they are seen, heard and valued.
I'm your host, Jamie Wakeler, and I'm so excited you're here.
Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the Forgotten ECE.
I'm your host, Jamie, and I have exciting news for you.
Today is going to be an amazing day because I brought a special guest along.
I brought with me my good friend, Rhee.
I should say good friend and old coworker, but my good friend, Rhee.
Everyone say hi, Rhee.
I know that you can hear them.
Hi, Rhee.
You can tell we-
That's the response when everybody says hi, Rhee.
You can tell we work with children and not adults.
Rhee, tell everyone how long you've been working in the field.
I've been working in the field about seven years.
Working with kids so much longer than that.
Since I was 16.
I'm 32 now.
32 this year, sorry.
That's because we're old.
Yeah, we're old.
It's time.
I remember when 30 was old.
I'm right.
And for those seven years, what program have you worked in?
I have always worked in a school age program.
I've also worked in toddler and physical programs, but I've always mainly been in the school
age, kindergarten and school age teacher.
Rhee kicks butt and is an amazing, amazing school age educator.
We worked in school age for a little bit together.
That was a long time ago.
It was a beautiful glimpse through life at one point.
Wonderful time.
And then COVID happened.
Literally.
And then we're both now hating that we don't work together because it would be a really
good program.
It would be.
Anyways, I brought Rhee here.
I invited you here for a really important reason to tackle the ever so popular and extremely
needed to be talked about, especially now because our world is stupid for lack of a
better word, gender and gender expression.
Let's start with some definitions so that everyone listening knows what we're talking
about.
So there's the difference between gender, sex and sexuality.
So gender is what you believe you are in terms of boy, girl, either, both, any mix of whichever
one you want to be.
Sex is what you are physically born.
That is your physical body down to your genetics.
And that can differ.
It can be male, it can be female, it can be intersex.
There are huge variations in that.
And then there's sexuality, which is who you love.
And that's not necessarily what we're going to be talking about today.
We're going to stick with gender and sex because those are developmentally appropriate for
all of our ages.
That actually really leads into my next question.
What is developmentally appropriate for the children in all of our programs, not just
school age?
So gender development actually starts at two.
Two years old!
Or slightly before, obviously depending on the kid.
But it starts really, really young.
That's when they start to identify and kind of figure out what gender is.
So it is appropriate from age two up.
And even honestly, in infants, there are different ways that you can show gender and kind of
help them start to develop that because it's going to be earlier in some cases.
But yeah, everybody, everybody can talk about gender no matter who they are, no matter what
their developmental range.
Gender is appropriate.
And just to be super clear with anyone listening at this point, and if you disagree with what
I'm saying, you should probably shut the fuck itself down.
And also that I just want to clear the air that talking about gender and gender expression,
are you shoving that down kids' throats?
Absolutely not.
Kids are already talking about gender.
They have been, they will be.
What we're doing is making sure we're talking about all genders and all being inclusive
in the best possible way.
They are already talking about gender no matter what you do.
Sorry, I just want to make sure because there's some politicians out there and some like the
United States and Alberta who are sorely lacking in their information stuff.
I do some work, but I won't, I'm going to be professional.
This is not a P or this is a PG rated podcast.
I'm going to do my best.
And also watch out people.
Okay, so how did your own process start?
Many, many, many years ago, I remember sitting down and actually having a conversation with
my mom because we were watching the show I am Jazz on TV.
And if you don't know, Jazz is a transgender role and they televised.
I'm not necessarily a process because her process has started much younger age, which
is developmentally appropriate.
But having this conversation about what is a transgender person?
What does that mean?
And even my understandings then were when they were more than my mother's, but that's
okay.
But they were different than what they are now.
And I've grown so much since then.
Yeah, it started, it started really with kind of that first conversation and expanded from
there.
And I've just kept learning since then and learned a whole lot.
And now I'm just trying to, to make that education out in the world.
That's so good that you're doing this.
Like when even like even myself, it wasn't, it wasn't until I met you, but I should, I
should let everyone know that we worked for a smaller center, a small community.
So things like this didn't really get talked about.
I grew up in a small community.
So things like this never ever got talked about.
And then I went to a big community for our high school, which opened me up to a whole
world of things, which wasn't a bad thing.
A lot of topics that I had questions about when I was younger, but was afraid to ask
people because it wasn't talked about.
Because we grew up in small communities, like where, where do people think gender begins?
That's a difficult question because we're still learning a lot about gender.
We do obviously know, say gender development starts too.
But because we live in a gendered society that, especially in the last few years, last
couple of decades, gender has been pushed since before you're born.
Like you, when people start finding out they're pregnant, that's great.
Whatever it is, 18 to 21 weeks, they get that ultrasound that tells you what the sex is.
People go, let's have a gender reveal party.
And from then on, that's when gender is put on whatever child.
And that the expectations that go along with whatever gender they're told that they are,
that's when it starts.
So be clear that 18 to 21 weeks, when they find out the sex, that is not their gender.
You won't know their gender until that person grows up and tells you what their gender is.
Because no one can tell somebody else what their gender is.
It comes from inside.
It's just your brain.
The gendered society that we live in is pushed so much onto the world.
It's hard to separate what is natural and what people do to please others.
So if you're being told that you're a girl from 18 weeks of life, from before you are
born, your entire life and what that is implied to go along with.
So if you are being told what your gender is from before you're born and what the expectations
are, either explicit or implicit, the ones that we don't necessarily think as we're
not telling them that they have to wear skirts and have long hair.
But we are telling them that what's the one saying that girls mature faster than boys?
That's just a whole bottle of something to open.
If you're telling people to expect less of boys and men in terms of controlling their
impulses, then they're going to have less.
What you tell somebody you expect of them, they're going to meet those expectations.
Those are lower high.
You're absolutely right.
As you're talking, I'm thinking about when I was pregnant with my first child, one thing
we didn't do was find out the sex of the baby.
And it was funny, I probably can't even count how many times I was asked as soon as people
thought that you're pregnant, are you having a boy or a girl?
Are you having a boy or a girl?
Like it matters.
Like in some weird frame, it matters if I'm having a boy or a girl.
They want to know because that's going to form their expectations of what that kid's
going to be.
Are you going to have one of those boisterous boys or are you going to have one of those
lovely little ladies?
Is it easier to be a boy, mom or a girl mom?
There's so much pressure put on gender and the expectations of gender.
Which leads me into my next question.
Have you, what are your thoughts on gender expectations of the society and that transition
to kindergarten?
Ah, yes.
So I get this opportunity to work in all the programs.
So I get to see the toddlers move to preschools.
I get to see the preschoolers move on to kindergarten and I get to work with those kindergartens
in the school-agers.
So I get to see what happens at that preschool and kindergarten age where, so before then,
they're learning what gender is.
And at this age four, age five, when that kid now has a general understanding of what
their gender is, because that's usually when a lot of, if you look at reports that ask
a transgender person, when did you know you were transgender?
A lot of them will say four to five.
Five years old, I knew what I was.
And that's when I started hiding who I truly was to fit the expectations that were being
put on me.
From society?
Yeah.
From everybody around.
And in a lot of cases, it's not malicious.
It's just what everybody was growing up with.
And it's not as explicit as 1930s, no pants for you.
You can only have a job because the men are off at war.
This is the small things.
This is women have longer hair and play with dolls and really paint their nails.
I watched kids in preschool and even the beginning of kindergarten love to paint their nails.
I absolutely love it.
Everybody is just fun.
It's colorful.
It's great.
You get to wear it around.
It makes you feel great.
Kindergarten, they go into that classroom and somebody makes fun of them because they're
viewed as a boy and boys are supposed to paint their nails.
That's what society tells us.
Huge sarcasm in that one.
And they stop doing it because they realize that doing that thing outside of the downer
expectation of boy is going to get them made fun of.
And as much as we will try to give them the confidence to be who they want to be, even
the parents who mean well, the families that mean well, put that expectation out there.
And so they start to hide it and they start to conform to what society expects of them
instead of what they want to do.
That's so heartbreaking because I mean, something as simple as painting your nails, which seems
because I am, I do identify as a woman and that's my gender.
And something so simple as I can paint my nails.
Like, that's just silly.
It's so silly to me that that would be anything to make fun of anyone over.
I mean, it's even mannerisms to crying in public, having more expression in your emotion.
You will start to see the people who are being told their voice from outside society, whether
that is true or not, whether they end up growing up to be a boy or not.
If people are telling you you're a boy, you shouldn't expect your emotions like that.
Now you've got to be boisterous.
You gotta be a little bit more physical.
People see that transition happen even in those really sweet, those really expressive
kids who in preschool are just the sweetest little things.
And oftentimes it's just a switch.
And sometimes they keep that and sometimes they don't.
And that's everybody's personal journey.
It's not one size fits all, but it is saying you have to fit into one or two boxes, one
of two boxes.
Which we know as a fact, or okay, Ria and I know as a fact.
Lots of people know as a fact.
And it's not just one or two boxes and it's not even about fitting inside the boxes.
You should be allowed to express yourself however you want to.
And you're not hurting anyone by wearing nail polish or by crying in public.
Actually you and I were having a conversation earlier about this and I did realize in the
conversation so that I make a habit personally.
One of my things I have to work on is I make a habit personally when I see quote unquote
boys or quote unquote girls doing something that might be of the opposite gender.
So like boys painting the nails.
I'll be like, wow, I really like your nails.
And kind of like calling them out.
So ideas to make it a safe place, but also what I'm doing might not be the best choice.
And you kind of touched on that.
Can you touch on that now?
Yeah.
So there's as educators, there's a lot of different things that we can do to help support
those different gender expressions and those different, not different, but everybody's
gender expressions.
One of the big things is you don't necessarily want to call this big attention to it because
that's just not freaks them out.
But sometimes when you're putting the spotlight, you just, it's still calling it out.
And so, you know, pointing at somebody and saying, that's a lovely dress you have on
Billy or whatever.
That, you know, Billy maybe doesn't want that type of call out, doesn't want that spotlight
put on them.
But just a simple look over and smile saying, hey, what you're doing is okay.
It's about being subtle, but still positive and still really finding those little ways
to say what you're doing is okay and what you're doing is like, you're totally okay
to do that.
One of the other ways is looking at what your own biases are and kind of calling yourself
out for them.
I love to say, Hey guys, let's go do this or Hey guys, let's go do that using, you know,
the masculine guys.
Because no matter what I do, the term guys is viewed as masculine by a lot of people,
but using a gender neutral term, Hey y'all, Hey everybody, Hey peoples, that's kind of
awkward as it is at first, uses that gender neutral term so that everybody is included
in that.
Not just girls, not just boys, but everybody.
Finding where your own biases are and where you are kind of pushing others towards that
typical gendered society.
If you want to, you know, redirect somebody from maybe doing something that you don't
necessarily want them to do, what are you redirecting them to?
Are you pushing them towards, are you pushing the little girls that you view as little girls
towards the dolls?
Are you okay with the girls roughhousing?
Are you okay with, you know, the boys chilling out, just doing something quiet?
No, I get it.
Like we have to get uncomfortable in our own biases because if you're comfortable with
what you're doing, if you're not, if you're not even willing to work at looking at your
internal biases, nothing's ever going to change.
Yeah, for sure.
It's definitely about looking at you first.
You can't do anything until you've looked at you first.
Because yeah, like I said, if you, like you said, if you don't think you're doing something
wrong, you should maybe look at it a little deeper.
But what about people though that say, that would argue to you that then say, but we have
no transgender kids here.
Are we all of our kids believe they're who they are and it matches with their, their
sex?
So why is it, why should I be telling them about this?
Because it's not just about the transgender and gender nonconforming kids.
You know, if you look at, okay, so the example I used before, which was painting the nails
and, you know, somebody going to school with their nails painted and somebody bullying
them.
If that person who had bullied that kid with the nails painted knew that just because you
have a male thing, it doesn't mean you're a girl or, you know, that they wouldn't be
put in that bullying position, right?
It's for everybody to know that all gender expressions are okay.
That gender is a spectrum and it's not just one way or the other.
It's challenging the status quo that tells us it's just boy or girl.
No, wow.
You're absolutely right.
I mean, even through this conversation, it's eye opening.
It's eye opening because I mean, we're in that generation that quote unquote is, whoa,
I don't know if I'm using that right.
I have no idea.
Probably not in that generation.
Anyways, we're in a generation that we grew up kind of learning about this.
Like we're, I think we're definitely the generation that like the generation before us, the, what
is it, boomers, baby boomers?
No, we're, we're, we're, we're the generation before us.
First off, anyways, generation before us grew up with the struggle of sexuality being the
big thing.
Okay.
It's not just straight people.
It's gay people.
It's bi people.
It's, you know, it's lesbians.
It's the LGB part of LGBTQIA2+.
And now in this, this kind of next wave of the next wave of fighting, it's gender.
It's we've, we've flopped and you know, a lot of cases we're still fighting for rights
to be, to love who we want to love.
And now we're fighting to be who we want to be or who we were born to be.
Yeah.
And you know, we're millennials.
So the millennials fighting, we grew up knowing that it's okay to be gay.
It's okay to be straight, but now it's the, we're, we're fighting for, it's okay to be
a boy, girl.
It's okay to be non-binary.
It's okay to be gender fluid.
It's okay to express your gender however you want.
It's okay to be whatever gender you are, no matter what you look like.
And it's fighting for the respect to be here and be seen.
And so that starts with the next generation of kids, the kids that are being born right
now, the gen alphas, that they're growing up in that world of gender inclusivity.
I think that's where I find it the hardest is that because we grew up knowing that it's
okay.
And I mean, side note, not all of us did.
So this is not a very, yeah, it's very, it's very you and I talking, but it blows my mind,
call me naive that we live in 2024 and this is still a thing.
But that's like in my head, that's like racism.
And that's like people being allowed to walk on the street without fearing for their life.
And that's about all the greater problems in the world and how we live in 2024.
And these are still problems when there's so much else out there.
But anyways, you are taking the steps in your program that you can to bring inclusivity
and to teach children about different people.
And I want you to tell me about your world world wall and how you kind of implement that.
Yeah, so that was one of the kind of the first things I started doing when I started looking
at just being a really more inclusive program.
And not just in terms of gender and sexuality, but race and religion and age and ability
and everything that kind of falls under inclusivity.
So my world world is just, it's a big post wall that I have and it's got as many different
types of people as I could possibly think of and fit on that board.
So I looked at, I looked at race and I've got a bunch of different people showing a
bunch of different skin tones because where I work in is very much dominated by the Caucasian
heterosexual gender normative people.
And if that's all you're seeing, you're thinking that that's the normal.
And actually it's funny because I had a conversation, I brought a new book in about specifically
about race.
And we talked about very openly talks about race and racism.
And one of my kids at some point said to me, I have normal skin and they were Caucasian
and you kind of, you have to question that.
Think what is normal?
And whether you talk about race or gender, looking at what those kids see every day,
what they think the world is, it changes how you kind of approach the topic.
So anyways, my world wall is trying to expand their world because right now it is, is really
dominated by one particular person, type of person.
And so yes, it looks at, it's got a bunch of different religious symbols, words that
talk about religion.
It's also got words to talk about race, words to talk about body size, being negative or
positive, but it's, it's just factual.
And it's looking at, it's got different people of different gender types.
It's got words that describe different genders.
It's got people of different abilities.
It's got different types of people.
You know, it's got autism, it's got Down syndrome, it's got dwarfism, it's got people who are
missing limbs or are either born with it or the story isn't necessarily the point.
It's just people look different.
People are different and there's so many different types of people.
It's not just the ones you see going to school.
It's not just the ones you see around town.
Even in KW where I am, and that's not necessarily where I work, but it's not as varied in some
spots.
And that's, that's what I grew up in honestly.
I grew up in that white straight world.
Me too.
Yep.
I grew up in this really small, hick village and I had to go to the next town over to go
to school on a yellow bus with horse and buggies driving down the road.
And I can assure you, I was sheltered and didn't know anything about anything until
I ended up going to school in KW.
Like I don't think we had anyone come to school that was not white until I was in Greening.
So it was, it was pretty, one way, one view.
There was nothing else.
And as a kid who doesn't have access to, especially when we grew up, you don't always necessarily
have access to the internet like you do now, but.
Wow.
Way to throw shade at our age.
But if you don't actively work towards making, you know, whether it's your kid or the kids
that you work with, if you don't want to expand the world, that's all they're ever going to
see.
Well, you made a great point when we were chatting earlier about this, that if gender
wasn't as rigid, things like women's rights and men expressing their feelings would, it
wouldn't be so much of a struggle to fight for quality.
You know, if we're so focused on making people equal because, you know, there's, there's
just men versus women, you're missing so many people, but it's, it's been viewing gender
as a kaleidoscope.
It's complex.
It's so different than the two boxes.
And if you view it as a kaleidoscope, if you view it as this big spectrum, you're not going
to have the struggles you would in a binary system of a one versus the other system.
I recently watched, watched this video about people talking.
I think it's a Barbie initiative or Mattel initiative about girls talking about how when
they were little, they wanted to be engineers, that they wanted to be astronauts, or they
wanted to be a quote unquote man driven career or vice versa.
This particular video wasn't talking about, but men wanting to go into caregiver roles
or ECEs or teachers and how by a certain age, kind of what you were saying, all of a sudden
that changes and they stop wanting to be those things because the resources aren't there
and the people who believe in them aren't there.
It's shown that the women are actually nurses and teachers and caregivers where then men
can go off to work in factories or can be engineers or can be doctors and astronauts.
And that's just how the world is.
And it shouldn't be like that.
The STEM products, right?
And you do, you see that at the kindergarten age.
Like they really start to move into what society expects them based on their gender.
Like what do you want to be when you grow up?
A mom.
Which there's nothing wrong.
I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with that.
That there's anything wrong with being a mom.
No, you want to be a mom.
Be that.
There's a whole world out there that you can be a mom and be something else.
But we still live in this ideology, even though we know it's not financially right, but we
live in this ideology that girls can be moms and that's it.
Oh yeah.
And it's such a thing too of what you expect of somebody becomes the reality.
They're going to meet those expectations if you kind of give them that level.
If you don't expect much of somebody, you're really going to meet that expectation most
times anyways.
But if what we're expecting because of some of these genders is something, then oftentimes
they're going to meet that.
Whether you say that explicitly out loud, or if you say that implicitly in your little
everyday actions, it's going to happen.
And we see that every time.
Or I see it every time when we go from the beginning of kindergarten to the end of kindergarten
to school age and on.
Even now, like all of my kids that I have right now, they, well, I can't say all, but
not even the kids that I have right now, all of the kids that I've ever really had have
this expectation of, especially when they get to the older grades, twos, threes, I say
older grades, but-
Older grades for us.
Yeah, older grades for us.
They go into this, this person's got a girlfriend, this person's got a boyfriend.
They start to talk about that because that's when it generally really starts to talk about
it.
You'll always find that it's boy-girl pairings.
It's the heteronormative pairings that you see.
And even though my kids know a boy can marry a boy, a girl can marry a girl, or women,
they know that lesbians and gay people and bi people, they exist, but they're still,
they automatically pair.
They go to that heteronormative because that's what they see.
The LGBT community is spread out throughout the world.
We are everywhere.
And whether or not we see that is the difference.
You're absolutely right.
It's spread out against, it's spread out everywhere because it is.
It is.
Yeah.
We're not just one pocket of geographical community.
We are literally everywhere.
Yes.
But it's also important that kids feel like they belong in these places and that they're
not wrong for having feelings.
They're not wrong for feeling that they're not okay in their body.
They should be able to tell someone, but when it's so forced that, nope, you're a boy, nope,
you're a boy, that if they ever started feeling that maybe they're not, or maybe that they're
more sensitive, they think that there's something wrong.
And that is what we should be avoiding.
And that is a huge part of the goal of gender expression and gender nor versus gender norms
is that you should be able to express yourself how you want to express yourself.
You're not hurting anyone.
No one's hurting.
No one's bleeding.
No one's, you're not freaking out.
You're just, you're being yourself on that point because you made, you made a comment
and I'm trying to call you out.
I'm feeling wrong in your body.
A lot of people who identify as they get older and more able to express themselves as if
they're more comfortable with it.
It's not that they feel wrong in their body.
It's that they know how others view them as not right.
That they, their gender is not what others have been telling them.
And so a lot of people who grow up and are transgender or gender fluid, gender nonconforming,
they, you know, a lot of people you hear about people like going on hormones and transitioning,
that's a personal choice.
But a lot of times people don't choose to do that.
They're okay with how their body is.
It's how they, how others view them and how they view themselves that they would like
to change because it's not what they want.
And one of the big arguments that we get or we hear a lot is, you know, they're, the kids
are too young or it's not appropriate for them.
Or like even one of the arguments against children transitioning is that it's irreversible
or they're doing harm to their body or what if they want to change it.
And putting aside the rates that de-transition rates are so, so small.
When you are looking at kids in child development, what you are looking at in transition for
a young kid is not medical transitions.
It is social transitions.
It is changing how others see them.
And that's really what as an educator, you would only be looking at.
That's if you had a child who is transgender, you would be looking with them to help transition
your social.
You're not helping the kid figure out who they are, which don't get me wrong.
Great, great idea.
You can help in those ways, but it's helping society accept that hidden for who they want
to be shown as.
It's really just helping society move from this is how people have to be to that's the
person that they are and we can accept that.
And as an educator, we're not just here for the transgender and gender-fluid kids.
We are here for everybody else, all those people who grow up and meet those expectations
to also know that the world is different and the world is huge.
The gender is a big spectrum.
It's complex.
It's like classical, like I said.
And it's okay.
People can do that.
People can be that and you don't have to fight them against it.
Which leads me actually to my next question.
And I do want to thank you for pointing that out because I did not know that.
So thank you.
But have you personally have had any pushback from implementing, I don't know, like anything
into the classroom or your word wall or talking about gender expression or gender in your
programs?
Oh, I definitely have.
I think I, in the time that we are, I always will.
And that's a struggle that I always have.
But I'm going to keep pushing back because maybe one day, you know, that gen alpha that's
growing up won't have that pushback.
And I understand parents want the best for their kids.
They always do.
We hope.
We always hope.
And the issue, and I say issue with a certain sense of sarcasm because gender isn't necessarily
an issue until somebody makes it an issue.
I think LGBTQ plus has been made politicized because people, some people think that they
have the right to tell others how to live and they make it.
A lot of their arguments are surrounded by, well, it's not good for the kids.
But science and research is now telling us, and it has told us for a very long time actually,
that it's better for the kids to explore their gender, ways to express themselves.
One of the four foundations got belonging, well-being, expression, and engagement.
We're so good at our job.
ADHD is both feminist.
That really is what it is.
I should pre-cursor this episode.
Just so you know, both we and I have ADHD, so follow us.
So yeah, okay.
So the four foundations of childcare, well-being, engagement, expression, and of course now I've
forgotten the fourth one.
Well-being, behavior, not behavior.
Belonging.
There we go.
Where's my book?
My book's over there somewhere.
It's fine.
Okay.
All right.
Let's try this again.
I love us.
I know.
We've got this.
We totally have this.
Okay.
So the four foundations of childcare of ECEs, belonging, well-being, engagement, and expression.
We were supposed to be able to help children express themselves in all facets of themselves.
And Henry really wonders what the world would be if it wasn't so gendered or binary in the
gender that we have, if we had the spectrum.
What would expression look like for all these kids?
Because I really do wonder.
It's just, that's obviously a question I'm not going to have answered, especially in
my lifetime, maybe one day in the future.
But right now we're still very much working the binary.
And it's also looking not just at the four foundations, but the code of ethics and the
government itself and their laws of.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
So at least in my childcare center, we are nonprofit.
We are a public organization.
We are not religiously affiliated.
We're not politically affiliated.
We are public.
We are supposed to be for everybody.
And that includes, from their inclusivity, the right not to be discriminated based on
your gender.
But it also means that, especially in our code of ethics, we say we're supposed to be
an inclusive community and it's working towards really meaning that, not just saying it, which
a lot of centers do.
I don't, can't tell you how many.
I actually spent some time looking at as many childcare center websites as I possibly could
to see if any of them actively supported the LGBTQ plus community.
I found one in all of Ontario that I could very easily, and I didn't spend long on each
website.
I will fully say that.
I wasn't looking in depth at them.
I was going to just go see if I'm a potential parent and I want to look at these places
if maybe I'm a queer parent or maybe I'm raising a gender neutral child.
And I want to see quickly at a glance who is going to be most receptive.
I found one that had actually really nice little, it had a little pride flag.
It had a little trans flag right beside it.
And I said, hey, these are what our values are.
And everywhere else said we're an inclusive community.
They didn't show it.
And if you ask anybody in the LGBTQ community, I'm not speaking for everybody, but if you
ask a lot of people in the LGBTQ plus community, and if you ask, even if you ask a person of
color and they're looking at a small community, if you see that all you're looking at is straight
white, heteronormative kids, you're not going to feel very included.
And yeah, you might not get chased out of there with rocks and pitchfork or whatever,
but you still want to be able to feel like you belong.
And part of our job as an educator is to make people feel like they belong, make people
feel welcome to be expressive of who they are.
In Canada, we have the laws, you're not allowed to discriminate based on gender, based on
sex, based on ability, all that jazz.
So as a public facility, we should really be going into that.
And my experience has been unless there is somebody actively working towards that, and
it's usually one person, one or two people, it's not going to happen.
They're just going to go with what their default is, which is often straight white, heteronormative
people or gender-normative people.
It's really that surface level.
So I look at it on my website because I say that I have, I value inclusivity or diversity.
And that goes back to the early days of Eckers and Sackers and whatever that range scale
is where as long as you have pictures of diverse families on the board, then you can check
that box off.
But again, that's not teaching anyone anything.
That's not making your environment welcome.
That's surface level showing nothing.
That you can't even put an effort in to these aspects of diversity and inclusivity.
The funny thing is actually now that I'm thinking about it is a lot of times when people, when
people who haven't had struggles, and I say that lately, people who haven't experienced
what it is to be discriminated against, when they think inclusivity, they just think, well,
I'm not going to attack that person or, you know, I've got this policy that says we won't
stand for anybody being, you know, abusive or for any abuse towards people of the LGBT
class community or, you know, we won't stand for racism.
That's great.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm not trying to say that's not good.
Those policies are always great to have.
But when we say inclusive, we mean, you know, it's not just that we're welcome at the table.
It's that table set for us.
Don't look at me like that.
Sorry.
That was really good.
I changed my face.
I'm sorry.
I just can't see it.
But anyways, yeah, so it's, yeah, it's not just that we're welcome at the table.
It's that we're not going to get thrown away from the table.
It's that the table is there for us to, the table is set for us.
The table is built for us and that we have, and we feel comfortable being who we are at
that table.
And so working in Child Care Center, working in the school age program, it's, for me, it
feels a little defeated because oftentimes at that point in the school age program, you're
working against stuff that's already put in place.
You're working against changing what that kid already has built and views as their society,
which is oftentimes binary, and especially when it comes to gender.
You are, you know, I feel like my job is not tearing down, but like trying to help rebuild
this idea that they already have.
Where it kind of gets a little frustrated when I see, you know, even infant programs,
even toddler preschool programs that aren't helping those kids express themselves fully,
that aren't looking at the biases they have.
And by not looking at those biases, we're putting our own biases in.
Yeah, it can get pretty frustrating as a school-age educator looking at that and feeling like you're
working a losing battle because by the time they get to us, they already have those, they're
already hiding.
They already have those, have that binary system in mind.
And now it's breaking down the wall that they're hiding behind before you can even get to the
groundwork of letting them know they should be accepted for who they are.
These gender expressions don't, they're not an end all.
Now, yeah, that was deep.
It's a really deep conversation.
And I mean, podcasts is the only thing I've taken so far, but I would like to ask you
if educators are listening to this that have questions or that want to do more research,
can they reach out to you?
Oh, for sure.
Definitely.
I'm always open to questions, especially when they come from a good place.
Don't get me wrong, I have had some very interesting questions asked me in the past and I still
appreciate even those interesting questions as long as they come from a place of actually
wanting to learn and not just, even ignorance.
I will take a place of ignorance.
I won't take any malicious questions.
Gotcha.
That's my, that's my only thing.
Please don't come at me.
If you're not willing to actually learn, but if some part of you wants to learn, go for
it.
And Rhi, you also brought some resources along that have guided you on your, your journey
of learning.
Yeah.
Actually, one of the big ones that I had was called Supporting Gender Diversity in Early
Childhood Classrooms, Practical Guide.
It has a bunch of different authors, but I'm sure we can post it somewhere with all of
them.
I'll figure that out.
And they actually, yeah, your job.
They actually have a video available on YouTube that talks a little bit about the book and
how to actually do this as an educator.
Cause it's a much more in depth thing than I could ever talk about.
And they've obviously done a ton of research and because there is a lot of research around
there.
But then there's also like, if you're looking at gender in general, there's a, an interactive
guide to gender binary by Robin Ryle.
And that's just looking at, it's basically, it's choose your own adventure book for gender
and it just has a bunch of different stories and it's, it's a, you're looking at gender.
Even if you think you have the same gender people have been telling you, it's always
good to look at your gender.
Cause you may find, you may discover something about yourself, but you could also get a better
understanding of other people and their, their kind of connection to their own gender.
And then the last one I have is a Gender Identity, Sexuality and Autism Voices from Across Spectrum
is just a collection of stories because oftentimes people who are neurodivergent have a higher
rate of gender difference, the even like ADHD and autism both have a higher crossover.
Yeah, it's a, there's more people on the gender spectrum and on the autism spectrum than you
would imagine.
But yeah, those are all, those are all really good books to have.
There's a ton of online resources.
Just, I would just say, make sure that when you look on online resources, you find somebody
who is accredited.
So I would always just always question everything on the internet, always, just always.
Look for proof that it's coming from a good source and not just someone writing a blog
post.
Yeah.
Unless the someone that's writing a blog post is someone who knows stuff.
Yeah, I'm doing it just as good a job as you have explained this, but don't look at the
bad people.
Find, oh, there's a source, there is something, I need to remember it later.
I think I have an option of doing show notes.
So I'll just add it in if you think about it.
Sounds good.
Always question everything on the internet.
That's the goal.
Really, really.
I mean, you should never believe anything that you just read without finding facts for
it.
Also, hint, hint, this could be used for your CPL.
Any kind of research like this is literally, this is literally part of your CPL.
If you're living in Ontario and have to.
Anyways, Reed, do you have any last things that you'd like to say that we didn't get
to touch on or any last comments?
Is it a good question?
You're like lots, but how much time do we have?
Honestly, I think one of my biggest things is as an educator, as a person, look at your
gender, question your gender.
Even if you end up at the same place you are now, it's a very interesting journey to go
on.
And I think it helps with the empathy of connecting with other people.
And whether that person is a five year old kid who's learning to hide who they are, or
whether that person is a straight white man in his forties.
It's just, it helps with empathy to understand where somebody's coming from.
Reed, this is so informative and so much fun.
It's always fun talking to you though.
It's very disaster sometimes.
Don't ask us how long it took us to get ready for this.
But also you're welcome.
Thank you so much for joining me on The Forgotten EC.
I'm sure you'll be back again to talk about lots of other things, but this was super exciting
that you were my first real interview on the podcast.
I'm not so happy to be here.
We love to talk about this stuff.
Amazing.
Ree's email address and some information on the books that she shared will be in the show
notes.
If you, as always, if you have any questions, concerns, comments, you feel free to reach
out to me.
And I know at the beginning of the podcast I said if you're uncomfortable talking about
this stuff, you can stop here.
Honestly, if you're going to come at me because I'm talking about this stuff in a place that's
not in a learning way, just save it.
I'm open also to talking deeply about beliefs or about what it is you're looking at, but
it needs to come from a spot that's not being a jerk.
Being open.
Open mindedness.
If you're open to changing your minds, let's talk.
Exactly.
That makes sense.
Anyways, this has been a little bit longer than normal, so there's no time for a question
time, but please send those questions.
Please join me in the next two weeks for the next episode.
And we're actually recording this on Good Friday, so happy Easter if you celebrate that.
Happy long weekend if you have a long weekend.
Oh, Eid is coming up.
Happy Eid and it's Ramadan.
Happy Ramadan.
Have a fab, fabulous day.
Bye.
Thank you.
Amazing listeners for your support.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at MissJamieUndersol.com.
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Again, thank you so much and happy learning.