I still remember the first time I was called bossy. It is an unpleasant memory, since even my 4th grade self realized that it was not a compliment. It may have been the first time, but it was by no means the last. Bossy, abrasive, brusque, and aggressive are all words that we apply to women on a regular basis. We mean “un-ladylike”, but we know we can’t say that anymore. Learning to navigate male dominated spaces, whether in graduate school or teaching, has taught me that to have my voice heard, I must accept these labels, choosing them over the others that are available to me, such as emotional, hysterical, or irrational. And for a long time, I accepted that, thinking that by continuing to speak would pave the way for others and that the quality of my thought and speech would ultimately be what I was measured by. I thought this would be the world I modeled for my students and, in doing so, that I could will that world into being. 

I was wrong. As I have watched the power in movements like #metoo and Time’s Up, as well as the feminists who came before, I have been disheartened to find that the change in schools is slow. I have taught Latin 4 for the last 5 years and each year, during our reading of Ovid, as we discuss women’s rights in Rome, I ask my students how many have been called bossy as an insult. Only female hands go up. I ask them how many of them have been told that the way they are dressed contributes to the behavior and focus of others. Only female hands go up. I ask them how many have been told that a boy hit or pushed them because he liked them, a hold over from the lessons we teach them in elementary school on that same tire playground where I was labeled bossy. Every female hand goes up. The boys look thunderstruck. The girls look unsurprised. 

We owe our girls more than this. We owe ourselves more than this. Female voices are essential in discourse in schools, not just because women make up the majority of the teaching population, but because we are the models for how the dialogue in the future will progress. This work is important and the time for it is now. I am proud to start AEC with Lauren and Lisa and excited to shift the language around gender in schools and leadership. 

-Amy