What can teachers do to lessen the effects of gender discrimination in their classrooms?

I think that it’s extremely important to be mindful of discrimination and differences among people to be the best teacher you can be. This comes across in how you might treat your students or understand their individual situations. To lessen this in yourself it would be good to get exposure to things or communities you have not experienced before, as well as being reflective about where you might have your own discriminations or biases. To me, reflection and exposure are just starting points. What else can be done to lessen effects of gender discrimination in classrooms today? One thing I read about that can really help in a classroom is self-esteem. Specifically more opportunities for pre-teen and teen girls to see and hear that they are doing a good job. Studies have found that there is a huge drop in self – esteem for girls and not nearly as much of a drop for boys. http://www.maec.org/beyond.html#esteem.  Teachers can create these kinds of opportunities for girls in terms of planning how you might teach a lesson. According to the article mentioned above, in terms of gender discrimination girls who don’t have these chances take a hit to their self- esteem by seeing the ways that boys are positively treated by school as well as society. So if the teacher is being conscious of and planning activities that promote self-esteem than this is one way she/he can lessen the effects of gender discrimination. Another idea that can help in the classroom is by really making sure they are including everyone in their teaching and discussions. According to http://www2.edutech.nodak.edu/ndsta/dsellnow1.htm one example of this is the teacher making sure that everyone is given the chance to talk in a class discussion who wants to. Doing this can sometimes challenge gender roles for some people. Another way to challenge gender roles with smaller children can be done in play by giving children equal access to toys or situations that might be considered something one sex would do. One example of this could be having a girl play with the trucks in the classroom. I feel gender equality is extremely important inside and outside of the classroom. I wish that as a society we could take some more steps towards gender equality.