Hi fellow students who want to get a job with children!

I am Hyewon Lee, a second

year UC Davis student, and I enjoy working with children. During high school, I helped

young children as one of the teacher assistants. Like you, I want to get a job working with

young children. As you know, young children are pure, innocent, and start to build their first

socialization in kindergarten. As you want to work with young children as a job, you might

want to know how children play with their classmates and how gender influences the early

socialization. From my experiences, I observed that young children in kindergarten want to

play with the same gender. There might be some reasons for that and the gender of teacher

assistants or primary teachers can also be one of the reasons. I will explore these questions

based on my own experience, so follow me if you want to expand your knowledge about

young children.

One thing that I found in kindergarten was that gender is one of the crucial parts in

the early socialization for young children. I discovered in this class that young children start

to create a relationship and communicate with classmates where they are socialized. I

observed that young children in this classroom are equally divided into the same gender ratio

and confirmed that gender is an important thing for young children. The children in this

classroom were in groups of four, and there were two boys and two girls per group. I

immediately noticed that each group has the exact gender ratio. I also noticed that children

were talking with the same gender even if different gendered children were sitting right next

to them.

For you and me, it is important to learn more about the early socialization for young

children to provide better education as a job. For example, you might consider whether they

have different attitudes to the same gender and the different gender or not. Young children in

this class begin to live with other classmates, so they should be interconnected no matter what
gender they are, but they are not. Even if these children are in the same classroom, they have

different attitudes to the different gender. I observed their different attitudes to the opposite

gender in this class. Their homework was writing a short story and share it in front of the

other classmates. A boy started to share his story. “When I had my birthday party…” He said

quietly. After his presentation, a teacher, the TAs, and other boys began to applaud the

speaker. Meanwhile, girls just listened, watched him, and talked with their friends. When a

girl started to share her story, it was the opposite. This time, it was the boys who were silent.

Another thing that you need to know for your job is gender differences also influence

the conversational skills of young children. Young children have different ways to

communicate with the same gender and the different gender. Even if the classroom was

equally divided into the same gender ratio, young children in this classroom have different

ways to communicate with the different gender. For example, the conversation that I listened

to was “Hey, do you have scissors? Yes, I have pink scissors. My father gave them to me.

Wow, so pretty.” As you can see, this conversation is interconnected and active. This is a girl

talking with another girl. But, the opposite conversation that I listened to between differently

gendered children was “Hi, can I borrow scissors? Yes.” This is a girl talking with a boy.

This conversation is less active compared to girls’ conversation. Carol L. Martin, the author

of Gender: early socialization, mentioned that “While children develop skills to interact with

members of their own gender, their abilities to relate effectively with girls and boys are more

limited.” Compared to communication with the same gender, students have poorer

conversation skills with the different gender.

Young children are also influenced by the gender of teacher assistants and the

primary teacher. Since they expand their relationship with the classmates, a teacher, peers,

and TAs are also one of the important factors to their early socialization. I observed how
educators’ gender are important in this classroom where they wrote short stories on a small

piece of white paper. They were holding their pencils so tightly and moving their mouths to

read the words that they wrote. The flapping sound of paper came from everywhere. After

they finished writing their stories, each group learned how the alphabet sounds. Students kept

practicing and saying, “B..b..bat, f..f.. fat, v..v..vat.” They were learning different consonants

and how they are pronounced. After they practiced, they went to the TAs to test it out. There

were two TAs, one female and one male. All the girls went to the female TA and the boys

went to the male TA. According to Time spent playing with peers influences gender-typed

behaviors in young children by J. Cohen, “Boys will be boys--and girls will be girls--the

more time they spend with same-sex peers. Not only do preschool-age children tend to self-

segregate by sex, but that segregation leads to the development of different sets of social

skills, styles, expectations and preferences.” Students want to stay and get help from the same

gender TAs or peers. In the future, if you become a teacher, you can create a group or do a

tutoring with children who have a different gender than you to communicate more and more.

Children want to stay with the same gender and stand far away from the different

gender. The attitude in the early age usually was made by parents, peers, and teachers. Of

course, you and I want to be a good teacher, but somewhat we do not know how to become a

thoughtful teacher. We should keep in mind that the early socialization starts in the

classroom, so we should provide a better learning conditions for young children. In order to

help young children to begin a good socialization, pay more attention to gender in the

classroom. Does the class have a lot of boys or girls? Are all teachers and TAs the same

gender? You should make a balance between same-gender children and different-gender

children in the classroom population. Thank you for listening and I hope all children have

better early socialization skills to grow up due to sex integration, also I hope that we all

become a wonderful teacher for young children.

 Works Cited

Annabel J. Cohen. “Time spent playing with peers influences gender-typed behaviors in
young children.” American Psychological Association, vol. 32, no.7, 2011, pp.13-14

“Gender: early socialization”. In: Tremblay RE, Boivin M, Peters RDeV, eds. Martin CL,
topic ed. Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development [online]. http://www.child-
encyclopedia.com/sites/default/files/dossiers-complets/en/gender-early-
socialization.pdf