Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: I Don't Discriminate My Girls As a teacher with 25 years of experience, I am regularly asked to mentor new teachers at my school. In my 25 years, I have taught every grade level from Kindergarten to 5th grade. One of the new teachers in our school is Ms. Smith who is in her second year at my school. She pays a lot of attention to teaching science using hands-on inquiries. She also wants to make sure that both boys and girls have good experiences in science. She strongly believes that schools push girls away from math and science. I observed one of her science lessons last week. She had her students conduct science experiments in small groups. Students, then, wrote an experiment report at the end. As she was walking around in the classroom, she commented on student work and praised students. What I noticed about her praise was that she praised the boys for using proper science skills, coming up with good hypotheses and predictions, conducting the experiments carefully while she praised girls for keeping the materials orderly, writing a neat experiment report, and being a good team member. When I talked to her about my observation, she became very defensive. She said that she was making sure that her female students were praised for the work they do and that she did not gender-discriminate. I have to find a way to show/convince her that what she is doing may actually hurt her female students. Am I right about these points? How should I explain to her my points? Do you think what she is doing is right? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) I think you were right to bring this issue to the teacher's attention. Instead of using hollow praise for her female students, she should offer helpful encouragement. If she continues to praise the students for different things, the boys may begin to fee that they aren't doing well because the teacher's praise is empty and is given out for trivial parts of the assignment. It's acceptable to offer different encouragement for different students, but offering the same praise for accomplishments that are so extremely different will make the teacher's praise seem hollow and less genuine to all the students.