We+had+to+make+some+changes

It is interesting when you are trying to do something new all of the challenges that will come your way. In spite of the vision that you may have for the innovation, it is impossible to anticipate all of the challenges that may present themselves. It is also interesting to work your way through the implementation dip and not get discouraged.

In preparing to do the Gender Project the steering committee did lots of research, went to conferences, listened to speakers and 2 members attended 2 days of training at Leonard Saks facility in the States. We felt we had a pretty good understanding of what it was that we had to do to be successful and yet the grade 8 boys class has proved to be difficult.

It is important to realize that entering into gender education does not simply mean putting all one gender in a classroom and then continuing to do what you have always done. While that might seem obvious, changing your practice as a teacher is difficult. To teach a boys class in particular, it is not only important to realize what structures need to be in place to help them be successful but also the strategies that need to be used to teach the material that you want the boys to learn. Then there is the bigger question of what vehicles you are going to use to help them learn the material.

Again while all of this seems quite obvious, one of the points that many researchers raise about the difficulties that boys are having learning in today's classrooms is the feminization of education. That does not just refer to material being used in the classroom but it also refers to the way in which classes are taught. Since most teachers at the elementary level are female, it stands to reason that most teachers naturally teach in a way that is not engaging to many of our boys. So how do we handle that?

After we had done our research, the steering committee felt that a female team could teach an all boys class but the teachers would have to be very aware of their teaching styles, they would have to be reflective and monitor the kinds of behaviours that they knew were not supportive of boys learning, and they would have to actively work to change many of their strategies and styles of presenting information. Perhaps one of the biggest learnings that we have had as a steering committee from the first term is that this is an easier thing to intellectualize than it is to actually do.

I had an all female team teaching my grade 8 all boys class. The teacher who was their homeroom teacher really gets boys and has been successful in reaching some challenging boys in the past. She has two sons herself, coaches girls basketball and was really committed to the project. Her teaching partner was a young teacher, with five years experience and she too had worked well with some challenging students in the past. While progress has been made in the class over the first three months of the year, it has been hard work and not as substantial as we had hoped. What I think has been interesting is that having two female teachers has resulted in a jockeying for power amongst the boys that has not settled the entire term and the teachers have struggled with establishing themselves as the power base in the class.

After a lot of soul searching and referring back to the literature, the steering committee, in conjunction with the two female teachers, decided to do a teacher change and put two male teachers into the classes for the rest of the school year. What was interesting was that the two male teachers went in today to introduce themselves and lay down the expectations for the program starting on Monday. The location of the power and control was evident and the manner and demenour of the boys was completely different.

As part of our research to help us make a good decision regarding the class, I did an analysis of the grades achieved by the boys in the first term. I think my two female teachers were surprised because the majority of the boys maintained their grade standing or improved. The boys whose marks dropped were not surprising and could be attributed to a lack of effort more than anything else.

In the new plan for the grade 8 boys class, we are instituting a mandatory homework/extra help "Counting on You" class two nights a week and the class will be run by the boys new homeroom teacher and their French teacher. Interestingly enough, their French teacher is a female but she has an excellent rapport and relationship with the class. After the "Counting on You" class there will also be a drop-in basketball program run by an outside agency that the boys will be invited to participate in.

Starting students in the gender program at grade 8 was a decision that we made this year because it was the first year of the program but in future students will enter the gender program in grade 7 and their teachers will loop up with them to grade 8. We will be capitalizing on all of the good research around looping and creating a consistent, stable environment for the students in the gender classes for two years.