Throughout my childhood my parents did not make any differences between my brother and myself, if I wanted to play with cars I could and if my brother wanted to play with dolls again he could. We would often play together with football being our favourite. Throughout my extended family I was the only girl amongst 5 boys so we would often climb trees and go bug hunting, however we would also dress up and pretend to be our favourite pop stars.
At primary school I don’t ever remember being separated from the boys unless it was time to get changed for gym (in the upper years). At high school again the only time boys and girls were separated was during PE, everyone was made to do the same lessons (rugby, football, gymnastics, swimming) but boys were known as being too rough especially at contact sports. Everyone at our school had to participate in cooking, sewing and woodwork. When choosing subjects boys tended to choose physics and girls tended to choose biology. Looking back I never thought why this could be, however physics is more masculine and biology more feminine in respects to society.
Personally I do not feel I was drastically effected by my gender throughout my childhood. My personal opinion is that parents have a role to play in regards to gender as there is no reason as to why boys cannot play with dolls or toy kitchens and that girls cannot play with army trucks or lego.
It’s good to see that even from a young age you were not separated into the different boy/girl ways that society expects. I enjoyed reading the post and how you found that even during your school years, you felt fully included within the different aspects of your education. This will hopefully mean that when you are fully registered as a teacher, you will be able to recognise how important it is to have full inclusion of both genders.