Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: No Women's Issues Please! I am a novice middle school social studies teacher. When I was still a student in the middle grades education program, my professors taught me the importance of teaching students about the underrepresented groups such as minorities and women. I have been very sensitive to women's issues and their perspectives and contributions since I started my job two years ago. Last week, I was teaching my students how to conduct research using Internet resources. To practice their skills, I asked students to do research on accomplishments of a list of women I created. Students were allowed to pick whom they wanted to research. While my female students were very excited about this assignment, three of my male students openly protested the assignment and said that they did not want to waste their time researching about women. I have to deal with this behavior somehow because I will be integrating women's perspectives into my curriculum regularly in the future. I cannot tolerate this type of behavior continuously. I wonder if these children's home lives have something to do with their reaction to women's issues. What should I do? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) First, I think it is very important to have students researching women's accomplishments in history. Second, I think you should have a debate. Take the boys who do not want to do the research or project and have them research good viable reasons why this assignment is a waste of time. Then have them go up again a group of girls in the class. Make sure the judges panel has equal amount of boy and girls on it for when the debate is over. Then have the class decide how important woman are. This might change the perspective of the boys who do not want to do the research.