Gender in the Classroom

To create a more equitable classroom I think that the teacher must become more aware of their behaviors in the classroom and find non-bias materials to teach with.   According to Amanda Chapman’s paper entitled Gender Bias in Education,” Curriculum researchers have established six attributes that need to be considered when trying to establish a gender-equitable curriculum. Gender-fair materials need to acknowledge and affirm variation. They need to be inclusive, accurate, affirmative, representative, and integrated, weaving together the experiences, needs, and interests of both males and females. (Bailey, 1992) "We need to look at the stories we are telling our students and children. Far too many of our classroom examples, storybooks, and texts describe a world in which boys and men are bright, curious, brave, inventive, and powerful, but girls and women are silent, passive, and invisible." (McCormick, 1995) Furthermore, teachers can help students identify gender-bias in texts and facilitate critical discussions as to why that bias exists.”( Chapman 2011)

The first thing that I will try to do as a teacher is make my material more varied in as far a gender is concerned.  In West Virginia we are limited to state approved text books but I could choose a textbook that address the content in a non bias way and gives both genders accomplishments in science.  If the textbook does not accomplish this I could assign various journal articles address gender roles in science.  I also found a great PBS series called Secret Lives of Scientist that talks about what various types of scientist and what they do.  The great thing about the series is that they have both male and female scientist and how they deal with everyday life as a scientist. 

As a teacher I would also have to be aware of the amount of time I spend helping both genders.  Both genders must be allotted equal amounts of time and energy to learning.  According to Spencer, "Over the course of years the uneven distribution of teacher time, energy, attention, and talent, with boys getting the lion's share, takes its toll on girls." (Sadker, 1994)  As a male teacher I will have to make sure that the majority of my time is not towards the male gender in my classroom but equally divided between the two.  This includes thing such as examples used in class and the way questions are stated in a test. 

Bailey, S. (1992) How Schools Shortchange Girls: The AAUW Report. New York, NY: Marlowe & Company.

Sadker, D., Sadker, M. (1994) Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls. Toronto, ON: Simon & Schuster Inc.

Jones, K., Evans, C., Byrd, R., Campbell, K. (2000) Gender equity training and teaching behavior. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 27 (3), 173-178.

Chapman, Amanda. "Gender Bias in Education." Gender Bias in Education (2011): n. pag. Web. 30 Jul 2011. <http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/genderbias.html>.

Low SES Schools

As a single parent with two children living on 1000 dollars a month it would be difficult to say the least.  They biggest cost would probably go to rent and utilities.  The apartment would be HUD approved and would constitute about 400 dollars of the budget.  Utilities would be about 200 dollars a month.  This would include electric, gas, and phone.  Cable and internet would not be an option for the cost would be too much to put into the budget.  This although would not matter, for the family could not afford a computer.  Food and gas would constitute the rest of budget and a little, about 100 dollars, would be set aside to pay for things like clothing, medical bills, automotive repairs and special occasion items.   The kids in the family would have to rely on the school for two of the three meals in the day, and they would qualify for free meals. They third meal of the day would not be from a fast for restaurant, it would be meals that are either frozen or from a can.  Nutritional value would poor most of the time.  Throughout the year the kids would rely on the school to provide transportation, to school and home.  This includes during the summer time in which that kids would go to a program that provided breakfast and lunch. The parent would also rely on the school to develop those characteristics that are lost in their parenting.  For example, if it is a single mother then the role of the father may have to be play out by a male teacher in the school or vice versa.  The school may also be relied on with things such as sex education and helping the children deal with personal hygiene issues.

The kids would be more than likely be latch key kids; because the parent would be working long hours at a minimum wage job.  The older of the two kids would watch over the youngest most of the time right after school.  Due to exhaustion the parent would not spend a lot of time working with the children on things like homework.  They would probably spend most of the time just trying to recoup from the day’s work.   Parent teacher conferences would probably not be of priority for the fact that most working poor do not see education as means of getting out of a situation.

As an educator I would make sure that every student had the same supplies need for classroom.  This would include things such as pencil, pens, markers, and notebooks.  I would also make sure that the students in my class were not prejudice towards each other.  Mean that no matter what the socioeconomic background was they were all treated equally.  I would have cooperative learning groups that were diversified to allow student of different economic backgrounds work together. As a teacher, I would also promote I would also allow all the students to have a voice in the classroom by engaging them in inquiry activities and discussions.  The use of the 5 step model would be a great idea.  Robert Moses (1989) describes his five step teaching and learning process. These five steps are: a physical event (mathematical project), a picture or model of the event, intuitive language description of this event, and symbolic representation of the event (Moses, Kamii, Swap, & Howard, 1989).  This model would allow the teacher to bring real world problems to the students with inquiry based solutions.  I believe that having high expectation and connecting with all the cultural and economic backgrounds that will allow the students to succeed in society today. 

Moses, R. P., Kamii, M., Swap, S. M., & Howard, J. (1989). The Algebra Project:

organizing in the spirit of Ella. Harvard Educational Review, 59, 423-443

Language differences and perspectives of ethnic groups in the classroom

To implement various teaching strategies into the classroom I think that teachers need to know about the culture they are dealing with. To do this, teachers need to communicate with the students and the parents of the students to understand the world that they are coming from.  I know that the place I grow up in is total different from the place to which I teach and in order to be able to connect with the students I must to learn and understand their environment. It all comes back to that first word of discussion we had RESPECT.  We as teacher must remember that we are stepping into their world as much as they are stepping in ours. Communicating about each other’s cultures and views seems like the logical place to start. 

Now how do we get our student’s to communicate with each other?  Cooperative learning groups are a great way for students to interact together and share ideas.  In fact, research has shown that “Cooperative learning leads to more positive racial attitudes for all students, more interracial friendship choices, and academic gains for students of color (especially Hispanics and African-Americans).. Cooperative, crossracial learning also increases student instruction, self-esteem, and ability to empathize. (Gay, Geneva.,2010)

After surfing the internet for some teaching strategies I discover an article called “Strategies for Reducing Racial and Ethnic Prejudice: Essential Principles for Program Design.”  The article summarized the works of several great research projects and came up with 13 principles in which teachers could reduce ethnic and racial prejudice.  The principles can be found at the following web-site, http://www.tolerance.org/activity/strategies-reducing-racial-and-ethnic-prejudice-essential-pr, but I would like to elaborate on a few that I found interesting and applicable to my teaching. 

The principles that I found interesting are principles four and ten. Principle four states, “Strategies should include participants who reflect the racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of the context and should be structured in such a way as to ensure cooperative, equal-status roles for persons from different groups,” and principle ten states” Strategies should expose the ino.ccuro.cies of myths that sustain stereotypes and prejudices.” ( Willis D. Hawley, James A. Banks, Amado M. Padillo, Donald B. Pope-Davis, Janet Schofield, 2011) These two principles guide me to try to make the students overlook the myths about different ethnic groups and learn that the differences between them should be embraced.  In order to accomplish these principles, I would strategically put students in cooperative learning groups during lab and project time.  The students would be matched up with different races, ethnicities, socioeconomic status or learning styles on a rotating base. For example, if there are 6 groups 4. After the 4 projects or labs, new groups would be formed allowing the further mixing of students. The students would also be allowed to assign each other roles for the labs or projects being done. This would also be done on a rotation bases.  For example, in a lab situation each student would have a responsibility for completing a task of getting the lab completed. At the end of the lab it would be the responsibility of the leader, of that lab, to get all members working on the discussion and final presentation.

As an educator I would explain that each of us is from a different part of the country or world and we have different dialects and languages that are all unique.  I would also explain to them that it is important for their success in the United States that they learn to speak English in the classroom so they may be able to communicate outside their community.  I would however explain to them that their home language is important and that it is imperative that they keep their home language. For this language is their connection to their culture and past and with it traditions and root to that past maybe lost. Now, if a student is not comfortable yet with English it would only make sense try to teach that student in their native language until the student is comfortable with English. To do this I would have to ask for help for a translator and use material to help the ESL student.

 

 

Gay, Geneva. At the Essence of Learning: Multicultural Education. West Lafayette, IN: Kappa Delta Pi, 1994, p. 2.

Hawley, Willis, James Banks, Amado Padillo, Donald Davis, and Janet Schofield. "Strategies for Reducing Racial and Ethnic Prejudice: Essential Principles for Program Design." (1995): 2. Web. 16 Jul 2011. <http://www.tolerance.org/activity/strategies-reducing-racial-and-ethnic-prejudice-essential-pr>.

Democratic Classroom

After reading about a democratic classroom it reminded me of the ways corporations get their companies to produce.  It has been a long known fact that if you have a mechanical task for employees to accomplish it will relate directly to the monitory amount made. For example: Take a group of people and pay them based on performance. The people with the least production gets the lowest pay, the people with the average production get middle pay, and the people with the greatest production get the highest pay.   The result would be predictable; people worked hard and tried to get the highest pay possible according to their abilities. On the other hand, if you give a cognitive task to the same group and offer the same monetary values, as before, the top level of pay is not reached.  So why is this? 

According to Karl Marx’s, “Workers were most satisfied when they were able to make key decisions about their job. Under capitalism, workers were alienated from their labor because the employer tells the worker what to do and how to do it. Thus, the harder the worker works, the more alienated he becomes, even if he makes lots of money.”  (Media to teach and learn with, recommended by professors everywhere, 2010.)  The worker has no connection to the work he/she is performing; it is just a meaningless task and when cognitive task are presented further alienate results and performance declines even greater.   It is the purpose and the exploration of the task that allows the worker to be part of something greater than oneself.  All learning must have a purpose to it.

Why am I talking about the work force and the performance that occurs?  It is this type of capitalistic, authoritative scenario where students are forced into learning without meaning that is occurring in the classrooms of today.  Just a Campbell says “The present curriculum is too often divorced from students’ actual lives and experiences.” (Campbell, 2010)  It does not have a purpose to the student’s lives or the world to which they live in.  They get up in the morning and go to school, just like their parents get up in the morning and go to work.  While they are at school, they fill that same alienation that most of the parents fill when they go to work.  Then when they go home, they try to recover from the day and find some activity that brings meaning to their lives.  

To bring meaning to a student’s life a purpose for learning must be set-up in a safe and inviting classroom.  This classroom should promote the student to have a purpose in life and move to the point of self actualization.  Self actualization “is a person's need to do that which he or she feels they are meant to do.” (Maslow's Hierarchy - Online Leadership Training)  When talking democratic classroom each student must have a purpose of being there and what to be there, and if other levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy are not meet then the learning process is not really occurring.   Take for instance this scenario.  If Billy, is being bullied and is hungry before he comes to school.  Billy is not going to care about what is being taught.  He is more concerned with where and when his meal will be coming (Biological) and why cannot fit into the group (Safety, Loved, and Belonging).  So, how can we expect a student to perform in the classroom if they are not feed, feeling safe, being respected, loved, and have high self esteem.

What things can be done to promote a democratic classroom?  The first thing that I do at the being of the year is go over a few of my rules in the classroom and then have the students come up with their own rules for the classroom.  My rules include thing such as classroom preparation, homework, attendance, disruptive behavior and consequences, plagiarism or cheating with consequence, and respectful behavior. The rules are then gone over and discussed with the students allowing them to have a say in the matter.  The rules are then finalized when both the students and I agree on the rules.    I remind them that the rules must address each of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, too which I explain them to class.   By doing this simple act, I give some of the control over to the class and allow them to be a self governing community.

Then I have the students write me a simple essay, create a PowerPoint, or make a video on “What they want to get out of the class?”  I do express to them that getting a passing grade is not acceptable.  I ask them to think about what in Science intrigues them the most and to elaborate on it as much as possible.  I believe that this allows the students to use whatever creative means to get their point across and I also allows me the ability to help shape my curriculum around the needs and wants of the students. For in a democratic classroom it is the student’s classroom and we are the facilitator.

Another thing that I think helps promote a democratic classroom is allowing the students to work in cooperative learning groups when doing projects.  For example, my ninth graders had to make a machine that had the ability to make the letter x and erase that letter by using only the momentum of a small wooden ball.   I separated the groups into different abilities but I allowed the students to separate out the jobs of designing and building the machine.  Not only does this allow them to communicate with each other, just like a real world job, but it also allows them to critically think and problem solve. 

I also have students work on individual projects.  I take one week every semester and tell the students to pick something that they use in their everyday life and try to make it better.  For example, I had a student that had a baby that year and she made a pacifier that landed upright every time it was dropped.  She stated that it had taken her all of 24 hours to come up with the idea and create a solution. The student was excited about what she had made and her attitude towards the class change.  From that point on she now was asking questions and engaging conversations within the class. It is amazing how smart students are and what they can come up with when a real life problem is set in front of them.

I believe that in a democratic classroom the teacher must give up the authority figure and start to facilitate the classroom in a secure and accepting manner that realizes the potential in every student.  I also believe that the classroom is a place that must consideration the opinions of all students and compromise on best solutions to problems that may arise.  Just like a democratic society all ideas and beliefs must be taken in consideration when decisions are made.

Campbell, D. E.  (2010). Choosing democracy: A practical guide to multicultural education. Boston,
 MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Media to teach and learn with, recommended by professors everywhere.. Web. 7 Jul 2011. http://mindgatemedia.com/lesson/great-performance-is-motivated-by-purpose-not-profit/

MindTools.com, . "MindTool.com." Using Maslow’s Hierarchy Building a happier, more satisfied team. © Mind Tools Ltd, 2011. Web. 7 Jul 2011. <http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_92.htm>.