HOW TO COMBAT HARASSMENT AND DISCRIMINATION
By: Sandra Moyer

The overall objective of this lesson is to enable students to determine what they might do in a situation in which they feel discriminated against. Drawing from experience in which they were the only one of their respective gender in a group, students will reflect upon, analyze, and make recommendations for strategies they might use in the future to combat harassment and discrimination.

STANDARD: All students will be able to list strategies to overcome gender bias, stereotyping and discrimination.

GRADE LEVEL: 2 -6, Language Arts, Health

OBJECTIVE(S): Students will be able to:

• Define discrimination, prejudice and harassment
• Express their feeling about being the only boy or girl in a group.
• Relate examples of harassment that they have experienced.
• Suggest strategies to overcome the above.

TIME: One class period

MATERIALS: articles about school or job discrimination as a teacher resource

PROCEDURES:

1. Help students define discrimination and harassment.
2. Elicit from students examples of times when they were the only boy or girl in the group. Were you uncomfortable in this situation? Was anything done to make you uncomfortable? How did you feel?
3. Inform children that such actions are harassment (see definition in the Equity Terms handout) and are illegal. Discuss the proper method of reporting such harassment.
4. Role play situations and have students suggest ways to react in such situations.
5. Relate these feelings to stories of females harassed because they are the only one on a team or in a job. You might want to relate this to Olympic hockey team member, Sara DeCosta, who was being forced to play hockey on an all boys team in high school. What problems might she have had?
6. For an assessment, the students may write about how they would react in an harassment or a discrimination situation.