Sexist tendencies, no way

I love my teaching job and I have been doing it since 1992, so I am pretty confident (without sounding obnoxious) that I know what I am doing and that I am a pretty good teacher, but every now and then a kid comes along and challenges me. Yesterday a little boy in my class asked me a question, that actually made me question(doubt) that what I am teaching my class is the right thing.

I have always tried to cultivate an atmosphere of gender equality in my classroom. I teach that girls can be engineers, pilots etc and boys can play with dolls and so on.(who knows they may make great dads one day) So imagine my surprise when a kid asks me something so trivial yet it makes me think twice.

Yesterday, just before outside time, I announced, like I always do: "Alright girls go put your message book in your bags, then go outside to play" Once all the girls have gone, I always let the boys do the same. Then just after my announcement one of the boys put his hand up and asked: "Teacher, why do you always let the girls go first?" .....stumped.....

 I never really thought about it before, it was just the way I always did things. I looked at him, at a loss for words and suddenly thought; am I cultivating a sexist environment?

I turned to him and replied: "Well because it is the polite thing to do, by letting the ladies go first you are showing that you have good manners." He responded by saying; "Ok"

Now I know this may seem trivial and my answer was good enough, but it got me thinking. I have to be so careful of my actions as a teacher, what I do impacts these little lives so much ( I have always known this) but never questioned it before.  I also don't want women to be seen as the weaker sex, but am merely teaching my class to respect women.

I have since then decided, that he has a valid point and that from now on, I will alternate, by allowing girls first one day then boys first the next. After all, I do try and teach equality as much as I can.

Thoughts?

Hell hath no fury like.......

So this morning I decided to tidy up my huge pile of old magazines (I know being on school holiday is soooo exciting) Anything that was a year old had to go, unless of course it had articles in it written by my brilliant fiance.  Then I came across a magazine (the name of which I will not mention for fear of being charged with defamation) which I really enjoy and receive monthly. This issue was 18 months old and I wondered why I kept it so long, until I paged through it and then I remembered! It was a reminder.

I had submitted an article to the features editor of said magazine for their consideration and after waiting a month for a reply, received a polite, no thanks. At the time I thought, Oh well at least I tried. As I know I am not a great writer, but sometimes I do get great ideas.

Two months later this particular issue of said magazine came out and one of its main articles was the exact idea of mine. It was written by one of their staff writers, the words were very cleverly changed around so there was no actual plagiarism, but the idea and meaning was the same.

To say that I was miffed is and understatement, I mean how could they do that?

Could they not have used the idea I had and just edited the content profusely? with a small credit to the person who wrote the original?

I have no idea how this whole writer thing works, but I am pretty sure I am not the only one this has ever happened to.

Makes me feel a little like this:

"I am Jack's smirking revenge"

Fight Club