Using Mulan to Teach Gender Stereotypes

I love Disney.  Honestly, at this point, it’s probably a bit irrational.  My husband doesn’t understand it.  My kids don’t understand it.  But Disney movies in the 90s were the companion to an only child, i.e. me.  So anytime I can go back to my happy place I will.  Therefore, I use a lot of Disney in my teaching.

When I do my big unit on gender stereotypes, I reference Mulan a lot.  One year, I had almost an entire student group tell me that they hadn’t seen the movie.  I dreamed that night about all the lessons I could plan around the movie.  Besides viewing it as literature, I had the students identify any point in the movie that supported the idea that gender norms/ stereotypes can be beneficial, and any point in the movie that supported the idea that gender norms/ stereotypes are not beneficial.  I had them transfer those into a graphic organizer that also had a bubble outline for a persuasive essay.  They then had to choose a side and write a draft using the movie as evidence.  Pretty easy.

If you’d like the free graphic organizer, you can find it here.