by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.
The Power of Personal Relationships
By Thomas S. Mawhinney and Laura L. Sagan
Phi Delta Kappan, March 2007
The essence, the very essence, of what I believe as an educator is summed up in this understanding:
We now understand that higher-level thinking is more likely to occur in the brain of a student who is emotionally secure than in the brain of a student who is scared, upset, anxious, or stressed. (para.5)
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RYAN BERGEN,
The Gazette
I worked at Weston for 5 years – almost 4 as their high school resource coordinator and teacher, and about 1.5 as a substitute teacher when I was back in school myself. It was a special place where everyone strived for excellence in one form or another. Its closing is a great loss.
At the closing ceremonies, last Thursday evening, a student, who entered the school in Grade 7 as a shy girl who was virtually disabled by her dyslexia, won one of the school’s top awards. She is entering CEGEP in the fall in Child Care Studies. I shed quite a few tears at that closing ceremony….
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When Good Marks are Not Enough by Rosalind Wiseman
The success in educating girls, many say, has come from recognising
their specific learning styles as well as their emotional development
and the impact of friendships.
Teaching Physics to students – or Teaching to Girls and Boys by Prof. Dr. hannelore Schwedes
For today I will put my focus to physics instruction, and I want to
argue that teachers, she or he, should be very aware of their own gender-like
behavior and to that of their boys and girls. We have to realise that we
act and react differently to a male or female partner, and that´s
allright. I think it is a very unlucky rule in education saying teachers
should treat all their students exactly the same way, or parents their
children.
I have had the opportunity to work in a variety of school contexts over the past 10 years – as a teacher, coordinator, pareducator, and consultant. I have worked in elementary schools, high schools, and university. I have worked in co-ed classes, all girls and all boys classes at both public and private schools, and I have worked 1 on 1 with both boys and girls.
Differences in Learning
All of my experience has led me to believe and understand that children learn differently, that it is essential to be aware of and teach to different learning styles, ability, and interest if I want to make sure that my students have equal access to learning. Another element, infusing all of those, is gender.
As educators who value integrity and strive for excellence in our practice, we must understand and aim our teaching practice towards the students in our classrooms. No, let me wordsmyth for a bit, towards the children, towards the girls and the boys.
Looking at the Brain
We now have the ability to see what happens in the brain as it is happening, through Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), and we can see how boys and girls brains process information in very different manners.
Through fMRI, we have discovered, for example, “There are exceptions and shades of gray, of course but in general according to Dr. Deak [psychologist and author of Girls Will Be Girls: Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters.]:
from Gender and the Brain: The Difference is in the Details on the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools website
Allowing Data to Drive Design
I see this as valuable data that educators can use when they are designing programs and learning situations for the girls and boys in their classes. It is powerful data to know how girls, for example, learn in order to design activities that address their learning strengths and it is also important data to help us design situations that provoke them to go outside of their comfort zones, what Dr. Deak calls ‘against the grain’ learning.
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“…some middle school experts argue that school reconfiguration is a
costly distraction from what adolescents really need: smaller classes,
an engaging curriculum, personalized attention and well-prepared
teachers.”
I agree!
Instead of looking at complicated school reconfigurations, I would take a much more grass-roots approach. No matter where they are, children in middle-school need classes tailored to their needs – as Patrick Montesano stated in the passage I quoted above, from
Taking Middle Schoolers Out of the Middle
(you may need an account to view the article. If you don’t have one, sign up already! It’s free!)
The article talks about k-8 schools, 6-8 schools, 6-12 schools. I think that looking at structure change is talking around the issue. We need to be looking at good, solid teaching and administrative practice that is based in research about how middle school students learn. Just like any other level should have good solid professional practice based in current research that is specific to them.
No matter where they are, if the teachers who work with them are using methods such as differentiated instruction that looks towards students’ learning styles, interests, abilities and knowledge as a starting point to plan activities that point towards specific goals or competencies, then we’d be onto something!
(picture from article cited above)
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