It is obvious from my experience that gender stereotypes affect students on a daily basis. I have noticed this the last three years from teaching 5th and 6th class as it is the boys who wanted to do the jobs in the school that involved heavy lifting such as lifting tables and moving furniture. The girls went for the jobs such as photocopying, spraying and cleaning the tables. I became more aware of this stereotype so I decided to draw up a rota that involved all boys and girls doing all the jobs in the school environment.
This year we got all students from 5th and 6th to get involved in knitting as part of the Pure Mile initiative. At first the boys were not one bit impressed and they asked did they have to do it. I told them everyone was to get involved. The class was broken up into groups and they did knitting every Friday for an hour. By the end of the year all children had made a knitting square with their name on it and it was displayed on the tree at the front of the school as part of our yarn bombing initiative.