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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 would suggest to her that she make equivocal comments to both boys and girls. If she makes a comment to a boy about good hypotheses, she needs to make the same type of comment to a girl. Conversely, if she comments to a girl that her materials were kept neat, she needs to be the same for a girl. I would praise her for wanting to encourage girls and science and explain to her that you believe the comments she is currently giving could be detrimental, because the girls may believe they don't have good hypotheses or the like. If its going to be equal, it needs to be equal. |
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