Gender+Classes+aren't+a+silver+bullet

We are always searching for the answer to all of our woes in education. We grab onto new ideas and we hope that we have found "the"answer and gender based classes are being viewed by many as the next best, great innovation, but they are not. Gender classes have the potential to make a difference for some students but gender classes are as much about what we need to do differently as educators as they are about was to best meet the needs of some boys or some girls.

School hasn't changed very much. There is debate currently in the educational community about whether "To Kill a Mockingbird" should still be a novel studied in High Schools. I happen to really like the book and I think it has some important lessons to give about a time that we want to make sure we never go back to but that really isn't my point. My point is that I studied "To Kill a Mockingbird" in High School in the 1970s. It was a different time and society was in a different place, has nothing been written since that can inform, that can teach similar lessons but ones that are more pertinent to the times? I suspect so but then we have always done "To Kill a Mockingbird" and so why would be change now?

We need to change because the world is changing and education needs to be at the fore of that change not behind it.

We know that boys are generally not doing as well as girls. I say generally because while there are a large percentage of boys who are underachieving, too many to be discounted, there are also a large number who are doing just fine. The boys who are doing well are the boys who have adapted their learning style in such a way that they are able to take advantage of all that traditional schooling has to offer but there is that 40% who are not. As educators we know that if we are to be successful as a community in the future then our job is to ensure that we are providing our young charges with the knowledge and skills that will enable them to take on the challenges of the future. We should also know, because the data is telling us so, that if we just keeping doing what we have always done we are going to not only fail those boys, but we are also not going to fulfil our mandate as educators.

What is equally as interesting as the educators looking at the silver bullet of gender classes as the next, great solution are the naysayers who are ready to bash the idea before it even gets a chance to work.

Gender classes are not a solution in themselves. They are an opportunity for us to look at differentiating program and program delivery for students whose needs are not being properly met in the co-ed class setting. They are an opportunity for the teachers involved in teaching the gender classes to really explore methods, strategies and environments that not only meet the needs of the students in their gender classes but re-ignite the children' passion for education. The second part of the mandate of the teachers involved in the gender classes is then to share with their colleagues the things that they have learned and assisted other teachers in beginning to mainstream some of those strategies and methods.

We live in a diverse world and we need to learn how to work together, repect one another and learn from each other regardless of race, religion, age, colour, abilities, sexual orientation or gender but our responsibility as educators is to ensure that those students for whom we are responsible have all of the skills in place to be able to do that. Differentiation to meet the needs of all students may mean that for a time the grouping needs to be different, the delivery of knowlege needs to be different, the environment needs to be different and the gender grouping needs to be different but the goal is still the same. We need to do "whatever it takes" to ensure that we have left no stone unturned to assist our students to learn to the best of their abilities so they are prepared to take on the world.

Gender classes are not a silver bullet, they are a way to differentiate programming for groups of students who are not being successful in the regular, traditional classroom setting so that their passion for learning and their belief in themselves as learners can be re-ignited to burn brightly.