After observing classrooms, sharing information with your peers, drawing initial conclusions, and further discussion with Mrs. Parisi and Mr. Bishop, what do you think? What do you still question? What reflections will you share with us? (Please do not mention names of any teacher or student!) Let's continue to be professional and respectful.
I thought I would start our dialogue by sharing some questions I still had.
ReplyDeleteMr. Bishop, what is it like working with and evaluating female teachers? Do you think gender ever plays a role in your interactions with female teachers?
Mrs. Parisi, what about you--what's it like working with male and female teachers? Are you seen as an equal?
Then I wondered . . . what discussions has the gender dialogues from our class sparked between the two of you?
Lastly, our district/state looks at achievement gap using the race/ethnicity lens--why not the gender lens? Research indicates there is evidence of gender inequities in classrooms--as principals, have you ever read or studied this type of research? Are teachers aware of it? I only ask because it has definitely made me more aware of my interactions with students.
I have a question for either Mr. Bishop or Mrs. Parisi. When you're evaluating teachers, do you notice any differences between male and female teachers? Like the way they teach, which sex will cause more disruptions, how they handle situations, etc.? Do you notice similarities with the same sex teachers or does it depend on the teacher's personality?
ReplyDeleteLike Mrs. Holloway, I'm also really curious as to what discussions you two have had about gender since our first gender-based socratic seminar. Are you guys serious and get in to the conversations, or is it more like a "battle of the sexes" type thing and just joke about which sex is better?
I actually thought that the question Mr. Bishop brought up at the end of our discussion was a very good one. It was his question about mens dress code and womens dress code, and the difference on why the two versions of "professional" are so different. I really would like to know how we as a society came up with those so different definitions of what a male's professional look is and a female's. Is it merely because of the style trend or just tradition, in a way?
ReplyDeleteAlso like Zach and Mrs. Holloway im curious as to what discussions have sparked from Mr. Bishop and Mrs. Parisi joining in our class discussions. Also had it just made you two talk more or do you take what we share and bring up in class and discuss with the other administrators?
I know that personally i like it when Mr. Bishop and Mrs. Parisi come and join our class discussions, it makes them more interesting. If only we could just get all the administrators in on it then, i think it would be a real good time.
I also agree that Mr. Bishop's final question was very interesting. What has influenced our society to determine appropriate gender clothing? Think of other cultures who have different ideals of what is appropriate for each gender to wear (like the Scottish, who believe it is respectful for men to wear kilts).
ReplyDeleteBut to be entirely honest, I feel a bit burned out with the gender lens and the classroom. I feel that I recognize the gender gap exsists in the classroom, but as long as I am in a classroom as a student, I don't believe there is a way to overcome the gap. When you analyse situations in the classroom with the gender lens, think of the motivations and what causes the gap to exist. Really, you should think of the motivations whenever you are applying the gender lens. I personally believe most motivations go all the way back to human exsistance. Humans exsist with a natural instinct of attraction that is capable of complicating views we have of each other and causing the gender gaps to form.
Correct me if you think I'm wrong, but I believe there is no way around it-- it's who we are.
I have noticed that I observed things differently. I see a lot of things I have't before in all my other classes. I wonder know if Mrs. Parisi and Mr. Bishop notice while they are evaluating classes as well.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering which gender seems to be more disracted during class? This is to Mrs. Holloway as well as Mr. Bishop and Mrs. Parisi.
Also In gym classes which gender seems to succeed? I am really curious only because of what i notice in my class as well as the walking class I observed.
On the subject of male professional clothing: I have found a few articles on the matter that I'd like to share. This first link deals with kilts, as Emily brought up, and their disregard in our society as dress wear despite the customs of other lands. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,399208,00.html
ReplyDeleteThis second link: http://www.abcneckties.com/necktiehistory.html
is about the history of the neck tie. Apparently they came to fashion because fashion designers managed to make various kings think they were cool. It also says that the tie as weknow it really didn't come about until the nineteenth century. considereing this is early twenty first, that makes the tie about 200 hundred years old--talk about retro.
I'm still curious though about the statistic of Magna Cum Laude (25 girl to 1 boy i think it was...) that Mark shared with us. Do you think a similar ratio will appear with our graduation? What does this say about the push for gender equality?
When it comes to the professional dressed question, I believe that women are given more options, because they fought for it. It use to be that women could only wear skirts or dresses, but finally they broke down a barrier so they can wear slacks and jeans. There also is just more options of clothing for females. We can’t change the fact that our society isn’t like Scotland’s and allows men to wear kilts. It is just a distraction and the administrator wouldn’t be taken seriously. I also don’t think that they can wear polo, because polos on guys just look too casual.
ReplyDeleteJulie, really good point! I definitely agree that women have a more flexible dress code because they demand it. In our society, males haven't had to struggle too and therefore have no reason to fight for their rights to wear skirts. I also think that in our society, we trust females to choose something appropriate and nice whereas males need more direction. I bring this up because of what Emily said in class. In orchestra, the girls just had to wear black and look nice, but the boys have a specific attire.
ReplyDeleteI also appreciated Emily's statement about our natural attraction as humans. I feel like we so often forget to consider this as a factor in our conclusions. As humans, we have natural attractions, as Emily said. With attractions come emotions; with emotions come complications. I think a lot of the way we (males and females) treat each other draws back to the psychoanalytic side of things. I think we use different forms of defenses to keep from getting hurt by each other or from feeling embarrassed, which can often come off as attacking (or oppressing) someone.
In the classroom we have established that boys are more disrutive and girls are more reserved an care about their grades more. I think this goes back to our last socratic seminar when Mr. Bishop said that more boys are in trouble with disciplinary problems than girls. It seems that boys dont care in school when girls are more focused.
ReplyDeleteTo answer Caities question of who do you think succssed more in gym class, I would say boys. Boys tend to be more focused in sports. They get really into it, and as said today, they can get pretty agressive. Also, im not saying all girls, but a lot of girls dont want to get sweaty in gym class or get dirty. It seems to be rare to find a boy who does not want to get sweaty. If there was, they would probably get made fun of for being "too girly" like the commercial we watched in class.
I agree with Shayna, I think boys succeed more in gym class also. I am one of those girls that doesn't like to get sweaty. I used to hate gym class and I was awful at it. I couldn't touch my toes, or do even one pull up or even 40 sit ups in a minute, not to mention the mile that I never got under 12 minuets. Every year I was in Gym class in elementary school, the boys always did better than girls.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that now we don't have Co-ed gym class, but we did when we were younger? In my experience from A+ tutoring, the kids in elementary school are so innocent, and sweet. They love playing together and don't care about what you look like or what gender each other are. They also all love to learn and are praised for silly little things, but thats what makes them want to do good in school. I feel that middle school is where most of the innocence is lost, By this time they are old enough to realize the differences. The teachers try to prepare them for high school, but I think they may be too rough. It's a fine line to balance in middle school between nurturing and soon to be grown up. Somehow I feel we have not figured out quite how to transfer these kids to each step. We have a good idea, But I don't think it's the best.
Mrs Parisi or Mr. Bishop, If there was a way to make males and females more equal in each others eyes, would you allow it in our district?
Mrs. Holloway said she wondered why you look at ethnicity and not gender. I also wonder why because I feel that seeing the student body like a whole and not separate genders could be a problem. The class I observed had boys called on 7 times, and girls only 2 times. I think that paying attention to this type of stuff when evaluating a class can help greatly. I think sometimes you have to break us up into gender or ethnicity or anything to get a better understanding of what is going on in the classrooms.
Mrs.Parisi and Mr. Bishop,
Allen had said something during the discussion about a teacher who a lot of students had gotten awful grades in his class. I believe you said that you do look into it and talk with the teacher so it gets better the next year, but what about the students who had already failed at this expense? What is done to insure these kids can get better in the class? If a certain number of students do bad it's not them it's the teacher, yet the students get punished and have to take the class again, or take the bad grade they got.
I just came across this when going to look at my e-mail, and thought It was int interesting.
ReplyDeletehttp://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/108296/sun-maid-girl-makeover-sparks-controversy.html?mod=family-love_money
It's about the Sun Maid Rasin girl.
Julie and Ashley, awesome point. I didn't even think of it that way yesterday.
ReplyDeleteAnd Ashley, your whole paragraph about emotion, complication, opression.. wow. I really envy the way you can put your thoughts into words.
About gym class, I think some people are naturally athletic. I don't know if it has to do with your gender or not though. I have seen some girls that are much more athletis than boys, and if it had to do with gender alone, all boys would be more athletic than all girls. I do feel that I am naturally not athletic. However, I think there are other gentic components--other than gender--that are behind that fact.
Emily's comment really makes sense. In a way i do feel a bit burned out on the whole gender int eh classroom. Its like i recognize it as an issue i just don't really see the gap or anything really changing anytime soon, if at all. I think the fact that our adminstrators don't really take gender into a factor when evaluating or observing teachers is really something to be said. Like they could but the fact they don't think its something really super important, i don't really know i just think that for us at least that the gender is the main priority in our classes.
ReplyDeleteThe link Merissa provided was really actually useful. I noticed it the other day when i got home, and i thought it was just interesting that they would change their iconic, and classic look to keep up with the appeal and lure of a new more asthetically pleasing trade character.
Ashley really addresses a good point, since we as humans have emotions and there are some many ways of easily getting hurt we put up those defenses. And sometimes we may not realize but those defenses can cause a greater rift and separation in the way gender plays a roll in our society. Because we treat each person differently based on the walls or defenses we put up to keep others out. I think its partly why men and women are always struggling against each other and why even within a gender there still is a struggle. I wonder if its just a dominance thing or does it purely exist because of those defenses we put up?
Perhaps the difference in gender focus levels in school is a resultant of pre-programmed societal ideologies. For instance we know that boys are more likely in math to be encouraged at a young age, and girls are not. This point was made in Tyson (pg 87), the provided videos on the other blog, and the gender equity in the classroom paper given to us in class. This last article works its way from math help to the conclusion "girls are more likely to attribute failure to internal factors, such as ability, rahter than external factors, such as luck."
ReplyDeleteI think that's what we've been seeing, girls focus more on work because they've been lead to believe at an early age missing a problem is an internal error. I think they work harder to avoid the fear of failure this programming has lead them to feel.
Boys, on the otherhand, recieve hints instead of answers and must then work through it themselves. This makes them more likely to consider error an external problem, such as luck or accident, instead of personal fault. This makes them less focused because they do not see the problems as internal, personal, issues to be fixed. Another example of this would be prevalent in video games. Guys, answer this honestly, when you lose at a game is it because you didn't have the necessary skill, or because the lowsy stinkin' game cheated you somehow? Girls, you can answer this too, I'm curious to see how my hypothesis holds up.
Wow, Willy that was an awesome point! I think it is entirely true though; girls I belive raise themselves up on their own pedestal and expect to maintain that perfect image. Why is that though? Do girls strive to be more perfect than guys do? To answer your question Willy in video games I usually blame myself for my lack of skill if I don’t do something right, but then again I do have a lack of skill when it comes to video games.
ReplyDeleteWilly’s comment also led me to wondering who is more likely to be depressed, boys or girls. Here is an interesting link http://www.education.com/reference/article/girls-vs-boys-susceptibility-depression/. In this article it discusses about how girls actually are more likely to be depressed than boys are in their adolescent years.
Trying to break through traditional roles and desiring to be just as smart and just as athletic as boys are, and attempting to compete with them in every way possible is a stressful thing for a lot of girls. To me, guys seem to have the “I don’t care” attitude about most situations. Like with what Willy said it is an external problem for them instead of internal problem like it is for women.
Willy, you made a very good point about girls feeling an internal issue when they miss a problem. I would say that females show more effort because of their fear of failure that hurts them internally and psychologically. To answer Julie's question of girls wanting to be better than boys, I believe it ties in with fear of feeling the internal failure. After a girl witnesses a boy succeeding in the same task, she feels competitive and obligated to do better than him so she doesn't feel disappointment.
ReplyDeleteBut how were these ideas programmed into us? What part of society presented the ideas to females that if they fail there must be a problem with themselves? What caused males to behave as if a failure they make is an external problem?
And to answer Willy's question about video games, I'd have to say I would place the blame on lacking the skill when I lose. I remember playing Halo for the first time and losing. I blamed it on the fact that I didn't know how to play it and that I'd never have before.
General concensus seems to be pointed toward women being the more sensitive sex. That has been preached to me as long as I can remember. Women are better at sharing how they feel and expressing their emotions; perhaps they were just "programmed" differently than boys as children. Or maybe they simply dodge a certain portion of the brainwashing as children by right of gender.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I can tell you that a young boy is discouraged from crying, throwing "temper-tantrums", or ,truthfully, expressing emotion in general. Watching my sister grow up, my father neglected to punish her for doing the same things I had done at her age. In school, boys are made fun of for crying, or showing that they have been hurt.
I believe that the sexes are not so different at birth, but that societal treatment and culture shape them into who they are (for the most part). Women may not be "the more emotional sex" but simply the sex that feels comfortable in expressing those emotions, rather than getting the feeling that they're supposed to be "strong".
Emily to answer your quetion I think that it is our family and their background that "programs" us. How we are treated by our mothers and fathers shape what we believe, or lead us in the other direction. But they also got theirs beliefs from their ancestors as well. And we are all influenced by the media, which honestly is run by men, well at least in the old days. So from the beginning of time the programming began.
ReplyDeleteMark you make a very good point. We are the same at birth, but as we grow our family along with society change who we become.
I really liked your point about the internal issue Willy. And I agree with Emily about the reason girls put themselves on pedestal's. I think it is our personal beliefs and values that make us think if we fail, there is something wrong with ourselves. It is also a lot of society, because you are told at a young age you need to Succeed in life at anything you do. You can't get anywhere if you fail time and time again.
ReplyDeleteI have an example of this. I had gone to take my permit test, and didn't pass the first time. I took it 5 more times totaling up to 6 failures ( times 2 because you take it twice each time so it's really 12) And after I left that last time I took it I was so upset. The entire care ride home I kept wondering what was wrong with me. I couldn't even remember what questions I was asked so I could study more.
I don't know why I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought I needed to see a psychiatrist. All I had to do was study but beating myself up about it and thinking there was something wrong with me made me lose the will to study or even want to drive.
If the scenario were of more serious circumstance than a video game, I doubt that men would simply feel they'd been cheated. That seems an excuse to tell your friends who are laughing at your failure rather than an honest belief. Failing to provide for your family, or an issue with similar severity, would be felt by both sexes as an internal error. The man's shoving off his failure as him being cheated could stem back to men being programmed to think that failure is not an option. Perhaps women are more at ease to accept they don't excell at things as trivial as video games, while men are unable to overcome the insignificance of the failure, seeing only that they have failed (thus denying the failure altogether).
ReplyDeleteMark you made a great point about how girls arent scolded as harshly as boys when "tantrums" come into play. I know that at work i see kids daily that are kicking and screaming, and usually the girls are just watched until they are done, but the boys are immediatly told to cut it out, on a normal basis. I think that is because of the same patriarchy we have disucussed from the beginning.
ReplyDeleteJust like everyone else kudos to Willy! With the whole video game point, I would have to say that I do feel somewhat "cheated" but not by the game, but because im usually playing someone with a much higher skill level than me. I think it can tie back to the the gender lens. The whole gender gap is there. and because it has this unconscious power over us, it makes it harder to win. I hope that makes sense.
To answer Willy's question, I definitely am terrible at all kinds of games. It's absolutely me and not the game.
ReplyDeleteI found this article:
http://www.emotionalprocessing.org.uk/Emotional%20Processing%20&%20Gender/Emotional%20expression%20in%20men%20&%20women.htm
From all the topics we've been discussing, the one I found myself most drawn to was the idea of emotional expression. The article supports what Mark and Caitie said about our emotional expression as males and females coming from how we are raised. It's from our culture--our society, and as young children we learn fast and well what we are supposed to be like.
One of my personal faults that I've come to terms with recently is my inability to clearly communicate my thoughts or emotions. I definitely let it out when I need to cry. I don't censor my facial expressions or body language. However, I am terrible when it comes to verbally communicating to another person what is going on internally. From my experience with males, I've found that they do experience the same emotions as me as a female--even to the same extent. However, what this lens has really taught me to see is that there is a difference in how we express our emotions. Society tells males to express their anger and there is no way they better cry. Society tell females to cry it out and do not be angry. It's ok for males to lash out at each other or even females in anger, but a female better not or else she's considered a "bitch" or worse..."unlady-like." It's ok for females to cry about everything, but a male better not or else he's considered a "wimp" or even called "gay."
I'd like to say that I've been having a hard time with this unit. However, I think I finally "get it." I still feel the same that I have throughout my previous blogs and in class discussions, but I understand the societal view of things. Having Mr. Bishop talk about his sons really helped me see how real it is in our world. The stereotypes I found so hard to think were actual realities were only validified by our class observations. I think many of us in this class and so many of the classes I'm in are more mentally mature than many kids our age and we don't conform to these expectations as easily as is the norm. It's hard for me to accept these realities, but I'm glad I'm seeing them so clearly now even if they don't apply to me personally, they do to the world around me, which is just as important as myself.
I know I'm a little late on this, but hopefully someone will see and respond to one of my questions.
ReplyDeleteFirst, a question for the principals: When you observe classes, do you notice a difference in both male and female involvement in classes that are smaller (say 10 - 12) than larger classes (25 - 30)?
My second question is for anyone: Have you noticed separation in class based on those who are in sports and non-athletes? I sure have. In a couple of my classes through out the years there has been a huge, obvious separation between the two. And in all instances, the teacher was a coach and payed more attention (one teacher in particular) to the athletes in the class. Falling in the non-athlete category, it annoyed me at times (I'm actually switching out of my classes because of it).
Cameron, I've been noticing the same kind of things at my work also. The other day a couple walked up and ordered, then I told the total to the guy, but the girl ended up paying. I guess we're just "programmed" to think that the man should pay for everything. These are also all good examples of how women are trying to fight for equality.
ReplyDeleteOn point number three in Julie's link that she provided, it states that "Girls more often have lower expectations of success than boys." I thought this statement was really interesting, and it ties back to what we've been talking about the past couple days after observing the classrooms.
Nick, I deffinitely know what you're talking about here. I'm in a class right now where the teacher is a coach, and half the kids in the class only signed up for the class because their coach teaches it. I've noticed he gives them more attention, but haven't really thought much of it.
To go back and answer Mrs. Holloways question on why do you think we pay more attention to ethnicity in the class room over gender, I believe it is because the civil rights movement was a huge turning point in history. We have so many famous icons from that movement, we even have a black history month. However, i believe women fought the same to be treated as equals. But we do not have a women's history month. Even in our feminist critisim packet page 128-129 it mentions that the FBI's definition of hate crimes include intolderance against "race, religion, sexual orientation, and ethnictity." Notice how gender was not included. Why do you think people pick out ethnicty over gender?
ReplyDeleteFunny you mention a "Women's History Month" Shayna. I think the civil movement was much more needed than a gender movement. And you know as well as I do that if there were such thing, that their would be a "Men's History Month" to go along with it. And funny how Zach and Cameron mention the "expectations" that we assume with guys and girls when ordering. On a personal note, my step-mother is the money maker in our house, but when we go out, my dad is the one that whips out the payment for any restaurant situation. Even though they have a joint account, even though my step mom makes more, my father still feels it is his duty to pay for our outings, and even the regular Sunday donations to church. Why he feels its his need? I don't know, maybe like Zach said, it's all in the "programming".
ReplyDelete