Many Viewpoints on Single-Sex Classrooms
I’m over at Gender Across Borders today, talking about US and global viewpoints of single-sex classrooms:
Picture this: A 120-pound, 5’5″, white, 23-year-old teacher stands in front of a classroom of 30 juniors in high school who are mostly Black or Latino, mostly twice her size, and all male.
This might be every first year teacher’s worst nightmare when, in fact, this was the reality of my first year of teaching at my second job. I stood there, looking at them looking at me, and my first thought was: How am I going to do this? My second thought was: I am really in trouble when they realize that there are more of them than there are of me. And they’re all twice my size.
The year turned out to be one of the best years of teaching I’ve ever had. While I left each day completely exhausted by the constant movement 17-year-0ld boys need to keep them from getting themselves in trouble and wondering what I’d come up with to keep them moving and attentive the next day, I felt like I was actually getting through to them because my teaching style could match the style of learning they all needed.
When I described my teaching experience that year, I was asked many times, “What kind of all boys tech school did you get yourself into?!” In fact, I taught (and still teach) at a public, co-ed high school in the south suburbs of Chicago that separates their students into career academies. I was placed in what was called the Engineering and Industrial Technology Academy (now called STEM), which is where all of the boys interested in wood shop, welding, and auto were placed. As you can imagine, there weren’t many girls who opted into that academy, and those who did were so much like the boys in their attention span and energy level that it didn’t really change my teaching strategy when I got a renegade female student.
The experience has me thinking in interesting ways about single-sex classrooms and the pros and cons of having a student in a classroom with only boys or only girls. As a teacher, it was actually a really great experience because I didn’t really have to worry about different learning styles. As a student, though, I wonder if those boys ever truly learned how to interact with female students their own age. For example, when a girl would come in with a pass for someone, the boys would whistle and hoot at her. When I reprimanded them for that behavior, they insisted that “she liked it.” As a feminist, I know the dangers of single-sex classrooms for LGBTQ students. Separating students into two genders doesn’t work when a student may identify as another gender than his or her outward appearance may suggest. Furthermore, using gender norms to inform your teaching and learning experience just solidifies these roles and even further alienates anyone who might not conform.
Head over to GAB to check out the rest of the article and share your view! What do you think of single-sex classrooms?
