Blog #7 - 3/24/2011

"The Ultimate High School Classroom" (Boys & Girls Learn Differently) - Chapter 6

Creative Connector

1.) "We were girls and boys in high school trying to be women and men. The two teachers I respect most now, Mr. Cantlyn and Ms. Sylvester, knew how to talk to us as women and men, not just kids." (p. 267) At the high school level, I loved the teachers who would push us past our limits. They held expectations on us that were challenging - where we, as the students, were responsible for our own fate. You want to be an adult? Well, here's how I will treat you like one. It's too important at the high school level, to get them ready for their futures. At college, no one holds your hand or tells you when your assignments are due. There are no progress reports for your parents to sign, or the teacher is tracking you in a class of 250. It just doesn't happen. So we need to prepare them for that reality. My teachers would always yell and scream if it was necessary, or give lectures where we did feel guilty at the end of that class period for acting up, or not doing what was expected of us. And you know what? I respect those teachers more than the ones who just sat around, and let us get away with everything. We weren't learning if we weren't pushed.

2.) "Our educational system has been focusing on equal education for females since I started teaching twenty years ago. I have never been trained to focus on the male." (p. 252) As educators, this book has really opened my eyes to a world where we need to pay attention. There are two different genders in our classrooms, why are we not teaching them differently? We want to live in this world where "there should be no difference" or "a girl is just as important or smart as a boy". We all have different needs, as men and women... as girls and boys... and we need to address them in our classrooms. When I was in high school, the ways the girls were addressed, and the guys, all depended on the teacher. Some male teachers were harder on the boys than on the girls. But sometimes, I thought the girls needed to be laid into a little bit more. I was always a good student, but I'd definitely need to be lectured if I wasn't living up to my end of the bargain. So I think as teachers, we need to push our kids. And we need to be educated on how to teach them. Some educators just aren't doing their jobs.

3.) "In an age when too many children are leaving school before graduation, when a high school diploma is only the first mandatory step in gaining the skills and knowledge needed to compete in a growing global market, we must use every resource at our command to prepare our children to compete and succeed." (p. 320) Growing up in an urban school district, I saw kids come from many different paths of life. I had friends drop out of school before graduation. Whether it was for drugs, their families, home difficulties, teenage pregnancies... they did what they had to do. But what if our teachers had caught them? What if we could of changed their lives and kept them in school? It is our job to teach them to love school. It is our job to catch the children who fall through the cracks, so that they aren't ignored by the school systems. We need to grab these children, and put them into our care before it's too late.

Literary Luminator

1.) "It's our belief that the ultimate classroom must include teachers, supported by administrators and parents, who are both trained for and committed to gender-friendly education. Now that we have the scientific knowledge and empirical evidence to substantially document major differences in anatomical structure, neurological development, and the chemical and hormonal climate in developing boys and girls, we can innovate and sustain gender-appropriate educational techniques that bring the greatest benefit to all of our children, with all of their unique and personal strengths and needs." (p. 321)

2.) "It is natural for adolescents to seek identity-attention ("This is who I am; pay attention!") and use clothing for individuation ("I'm an individual and can take care of myself"), dominance ("I demand respect and can outcompete"), and mating strategies ("Look at how cool I am; you should like me"). The more individualizing, competitive, and romance-oriented the culture -- and ours is one of the most intense at pushing children to seek individual expression, rebel, compete and sexualize early -- the more the adolescent uses the colors of clothing, hairstyle, tatooing, jewelry, and other personal innovations to call attention to growing sexual, social, and personal identity." (p. 281)

3.) "It is still up to the high school teacher to help them achieve a balance between being young people to whom only intelligence -- not gender -- matters, and young men or women for whom being masculine or feminine is a worthy ideal, and essential to adult life." (p. 317)

Meghan C. Koch