What makes many schools extraordinary is the professional development work that teachers do to ensure their work reflects the school’s values and incorporates the latest in teaching practices and techniques. Much of the PD at Mark Day School (CA) is centered on one important question: How can we best prepare students for the world in which they live?As part of his own PD, Head of School Joe Harvey heard Joel Baum from Gender Spectrum—a Bay-Area nonprofit that provides education, resources, and trainings—speak at a California Association of Independent Schools event in 2017. Baum discussed the relationship between science (the components of gender identity such as expression and biology), state law, and the research that says children as young as 2 or 3 years old are expressing their gender. For Harvey, it was a great moment of connecting the dots and deciding to make gender identity development a priority for faculty to explore.
For nearly a decade at Mark Day School, gender identity has been a part of the K–8 curriculum, particularly the seventh and eighth grade health and wellness program, which aims to empower students to better understand their bodies and identities. To build upon that and ensure that the whole school community was advancing toward the same goal and using the same language, in 2019, all faculty and staff members participated in a two-part Gender Spectrum workshop about how educators could contribute to a gender-inclusive life on campus. In addition to developing a common understanding of terminology, the workshop illuminated classroom practices and schoolwide programs that contribute to students’ ideas about gender identity and expression starting from their first days as kindergartners.
As a result of this work, faculty members are now having conversations about gender with younger students; teaching human development in fifth grade as a coed class rather than teaching it separately with boys and girls; and using gender-inclusive language such as “students” instead of “boys” and “girls.”
A second grade teacher works with a student during math class./Photo courtesy of Mark Day School
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