Untamed

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Brainstorm as many gender expectations for women in the mid-twentieth century as you can think of.

Teaching Suggestion and Helpful Links: As students brainstorm, encourage them to think about more than one kind of expectation. Some might relate to occupations and ambitions, some might relate to behavior and attitudes, and so on. Students may need help understanding how gender role and sex differ. You might introduce the idea of Society’s Influence on Gender by explaining past mistaken beliefs about gender as a binary resulting from biology.

• Canadian Institutes of Health Research resource on how gender role and sex differ
• an extensive U.S. History Scene article on perceptions of women in 1950s America

2. Write a paragraph in which you explain which of these expectations have changed and which have not.

Teaching Suggestion and Helpful Links: As students write their paragraphs, ask them to focus on degrees of change rather than on absolute change. Encourage them to think about nuances such as how expectations are enforced: while some might have once had the force of law, for instance, media, social pressure, and bullying might now be how an expectation is enforced.

• This article from the journal Childhood Education discusses how television continues to reinforce gender role expectations.
• This Pew Research Center data set offers insight into Americans’ perceptions of gender bias in the United States.

Short Activity

One of the thematic motifs of the book you are about to read is The Power of Inner Knowing. Glennon Doyle, the author, will explain how she used a meditative practice to learn to quiet her anxious feelings and look inside herself for answers. The following activity offers some first-hand experience with the kind of meditative practice that Doyle will talk about.

1. At the top of a sheet of paper, write a one-sentence explanation of something that bothers you about being in school. Do not write about a specific person; choose something about the atmosphere or environment, your schedule, or a subject you study, for example.

2. After the sentence, write a number that represents how much this thing is bothering you at this exact moment (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, with 5 being a lot and 1 being very little or not at all).

3. Together, we will watch the five-minute video “Classroom Meditation - Quieting Your Busy Mind, Stress Relief, Relaxation, Mindfulness” by Cheryl Brause, a certified meditation and mindfulness instructor.

4. After our brief exposure to mindfulness meditation, go back to your sheet of paper and write a number (again, 1 through 5) that represents how much the thing you wrote at the top of the page is bothering you after spending five minutes relaxing through mindfulness meditation.

5. Finally, write a one-paragraph “review” of the experience in which you explain what you knew about meditation before this activity and what new insights the activity gave you into either meditation or your own responses to life.

Teaching Suggestion and Helpful Links: Some students may protest that meditation is not a part of their “religious” practice. Assure students that the kind of meditation they will be exposed to in class is a secular activity rooted in science and psychology, not a spiritual practice rooted in religion. It is evidence-based and helpful to students regardless of background. If there are students in the class willing to talk about their own meditative practices, discuss the variety of practices and the benefits of repetitive practice.