as I write this, I am sitting in the hallway listening to Joseph, MacKenzie and Dustin facilitate their stellar sessions at conference. I am so proud of my MCFYP peers and their incredible enthusiasm and leadership during this conference. Yesterday, during registration, I stayed in the background as staff, and I got to attended all the advisor sessions, and it was awesome!! People keep asking me if I miss being a MCFYP member, or I wish I was up there with them, and I do not. I am no longer on the committee, that is not my role this year, I squeezed every last drop out of my three years as a MCFYPer. The current committee is phenomenal and I am so excited that I to get watch this committee in action!
Yesterday, one of the advisor sessions was with my favorite Kari, about Youth Empowerment (which put me in an interesting position, an empowered youth learning about empowering youth) Kari was telling us that we are "encouraging the future Mike Goorhouses and Ellen Blanchards" [so elated to be included in the same category as him] and referred to empowered youth as "growing up in the system" Thanks Kari, way to make us sound like juvenile delinquents...
Yesterday morning I also found out that the Social Change: Gender Awareness speaker was ill and unable to come to conference and present her speech. Luckily, the conference has a resident feminist, and asked me to step in. So last night I prepared a 30-minute lecture (lecture--not facilitated session--eeek!) on Gender Awareness that I was going to present to a group of eighty high school participants. twice. Breannah and I stayed up until 2 am talking about the session...and our lives and experiences with gender issues. It was amazing.
So my session was this morning and I was so nervous. I had my outline prepared...and I was confident about the content: sex vs. gender, sexuality, social constructs, gender boxes, heteronormativity...women's and gender studies 101. I was most nervous about my audience. I had no idea how a group of 15-18-year-olds was going to respond to all this information. I got to the room, put on some Katy Perry (Firework. what else. it calmed me down) and began. and is was AWESOME. They listened, they reacted, they laughed at all the right times and they asked some great questions! About inherent sex differences, defining the term 'queer', how do we talk about this in our Northern Michigan high schools. One participant seemed a little too intent on getting my opinion on inherent sex differences, that maybe there was a reason that men and women are supposed to be attracted to each other and are meant to be together to reproduce...
The main point was to think outside of the gender boxes, and allow people to be individual in their sex, gender and sexual identities. To end the use of harmful, degrading stereotypical language, and be aware that issues such as sex and gender inequalities in domestic abuse, human trafficking exist. We need to open to these issues and how we can help combat these problems with our grant dollars as well as our individual actions.
Yesterday, one of the advisor sessions was with my favorite Kari, about Youth Empowerment (which put me in an interesting position, an empowered youth learning about empowering youth) Kari was telling us that we are "encouraging the future Mike Goorhouses and Ellen Blanchards" [so elated to be included in the same category as him] and referred to empowered youth as "growing up in the system" Thanks Kari, way to make us sound like juvenile delinquents...
Yesterday morning I also found out that the Social Change: Gender Awareness speaker was ill and unable to come to conference and present her speech. Luckily, the conference has a resident feminist, and asked me to step in. So last night I prepared a 30-minute lecture (lecture--not facilitated session--eeek!) on Gender Awareness that I was going to present to a group of eighty high school participants. twice. Breannah and I stayed up until 2 am talking about the session...and our lives and experiences with gender issues. It was amazing.
So my session was this morning and I was so nervous. I had my outline prepared...and I was confident about the content: sex vs. gender, sexuality, social constructs, gender boxes, heteronormativity...women's and gender studies 101. I was most nervous about my audience. I had no idea how a group of 15-18-year-olds was going to respond to all this information. I got to the room, put on some Katy Perry (Firework. what else. it calmed me down) and began. and is was AWESOME. They listened, they reacted, they laughed at all the right times and they asked some great questions! About inherent sex differences, defining the term 'queer', how do we talk about this in our Northern Michigan high schools. One participant seemed a little too intent on getting my opinion on inherent sex differences, that maybe there was a reason that men and women are supposed to be attracted to each other and are meant to be together to reproduce...
The main point was to think outside of the gender boxes, and allow people to be individual in their sex, gender and sexual identities. To end the use of harmful, degrading stereotypical language, and be aware that issues such as sex and gender inequalities in domestic abuse, human trafficking exist. We need to open to these issues and how we can help combat these problems with our grant dollars as well as our individual actions.
YAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!!!! proud of you!
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