Creating A Gender Fair Classroom

1221 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay on gender bias in education

Claim: Creating a gender-fair classroom is extremely important to me, as well as to our society. Attending school in Georgia for most of my education, and getting to finish high school in Michigan opened my eyes to a lot of differences within the education system of both states. I believe that because our state is stepped in the traditions of football, big guns, and good ole boys, it is even more important for us to instill beliefs of gender equality in our youth. When I am a teacher I will work tirelessly to insure all of my students are treated as equal, and understand that this is the way others should be treated in their lives.

Evidence: There are many things that can be done within the classroom to counteract gender bias. I plan to self evaluate often and make sure I am incorporating these ideas in my classroom throughout my career.
• The easiest aspect to control in my classroom should be me, however this requires taking a good look at myself often. I will need to examine my thoughts, beliefs, actions, and most importantly my disposition. I need to make sure that I am treating all students fairly, and not hindering anyone 's success.
• I will praise and criticize all students equally and fairly. Praise and critique will still only be given when deserved but I will keep a tally sheet to insure I am praising boys and girls in the same way, and the same amount.
• When choosing additional texts for my class I will do a thorough review of each to insure they are gender bias. If the texts I am required to use are biased I will confront the bias with my students. I will teach them the forms of bias from stereotyping to cosmetic bias. (Pg. 120)
• When guest speakers are brought into the classroom I will insure that students are...

... middle of paper ...

...e on their education.

Opinion: It is not always an easy task to keep a gender-fair classroom, but it is vital to the success of students, the community, and to myself as the teacher. I know that I have a difficult road ahead of me, eventhough I don’t consider myself to be a bias person. I do feel like each of these ideas will help me on my journey, and most importantly I am aware that there is still much to learn. I will continue reading and professional development in gender equality. (Pg121) I will also suggest gender bias workshops to my school. I think this subject is especially important in Georgia, and throughout the South, where our traditions are so steeped in sexism. Regardless of how to teachers perceive their classrooms, I believe everyone could use help in this area. We owe it to our students to create the best learning environment possible for them.

Show More
Related

  • Deborah Tannen Gender In The Classroom Summary

    1258 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus” as the famous saying of John Gray goes. It is believed men and women are nothing alike in almost every aspect. In Deborah Tannen’s essay “Gender in the classroom: Teacher’s Classroom Strategies Should Recognize that Men and Women Use Language Differently” she focused on how men and women differ when it comes to communicating, with emphasis on how it effects to how men and women behave in the classroom.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay: Say Yes To Single-Sex Education

    1228 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is a common phenomenon in coed schools that when an instructor asks a girl to answer a question in a science or math class, some boys always interrupt and answer that question correctly. Many girls at that moment may feel embarrassed, frightened, and even want to be invisible. In many cases, instructors do not punish the boys for their rude behaviors. As The learning environment and teachers’ attitude make girls feel pressure and decrease their Learning enthusiasm. As a result, girls and boys receive a different education even though they have the same class. In the U.S., the discrepancy in academic performance persists across gender. In order to close the gap and provide an equitable and quality education

    Read More

  • Gender Ethnicity And Identity Development Essay

    1275 Words  | 3 Pages

    Although some may disagree, I do believe that female are targets of gender bias and have been since birth. For example, a mother is more likely to be gentle with her infant daughter than she would her infant son. Another good example of gender bias is that girls are more than likely to be given a doll to play with, while on the other hand boys would be given a toy truck or ball. This type of action can affect a child’s development.

    Read More

  • Title IX and Impacts on Women's Education

    1146 Words  | 3 Pages

    Even today, we acknowledge the many advances women have made in academics, employment and athletics, we still need to recognize some dismaying facts in our efforts to achieve equity. While sex discrimination is no longer routinely accepted in education and has been prohibited since Title IX became law, the incidences of sexual harassment and assault that are continually reported show that freedom from threats to learning still has not been achieved. In response, the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education has released its final policy guidance on sexual harassment to help educators recognize sexual harassment and formulate age-appropriate responses to prevent or resolve incidences of this form of sex discrimination.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in Little House on the Prairie

    2315 Words  | 5 Pages

    Sadker, Myra, David Sadker, and Susan Klein. "The Issue of Gender in Elementary and Secondary Education." Review of Research in Education 17 (1991): 269. JSTOR. Web. 14 Mar. 2012.

    Read More

  • Women as a Minority Group

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    Education was sex segregated for hundreds of years. Men and women went to different schools or were physically and academically separated into “coeducational” schools. Males and females had separate classrooms, separate entrances, separate academic subjects, and separate expectations. Women were only taught the social graces and morals, and teaching women academic subjects was considered a waste of time.

    Read More

  • Gender Based Education

    1566 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sending a child to a gender based school, is a very big decision to make. The decision is so big, that looking at what research has to say about the topic could alter one’s decision to send their child to a gender based school. “Educators must apply different approaches in teaching make, and female students” (Gurian). This is said by Gurian, because he also believes that boys and girls learn differently. “Social pressures can be gentler and your child can learn at his own pace” (Kennedy).

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Taking Women Students Seriously

    903 Words  | 2 Pages

    Imagine living in a time when your only role is to get married, bear children, and take care of your house and husband. Adrienne Rich proposes an ulterior idea in her essay “Taking Women Students Seriously” Women should not only question the gender standards but discuss the gender norms that society has created; by discussion and attention to the matter we can eliminate it all together. Women are not represented in school curriculums enough and have a large misrepresentation in society. Rich draws attention to: What women have working against them in education, how women are perceived in the world by the media and advertising, and the gender roles that society pressures young children to contort to. By striking up a discussion

    Read More

  • A Significant Issue in Education: Teacher BIAS

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    A significant problem of practice in education is teacher bias. Teacher bias has implications around race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and socioeconomic status. Teachers must be willing to examine their beliefs, acknowledge and overcome their biases. Teachers need to evaluate their practices in relation to their ideals as well as recognize and assess the position of power they hold in their classrooms in order to be true Social Justice Educators (Cooper, 2003).

    Read More

  • Same Sex Schools

    1630 Words  | 4 Pages

    Same sex classes make it possible for teachers to cater to student needs in a more efficient way. In general boys benefit from hands on learning, but girls benefit from calm discussions (Mullins 3). Girls tend to doubt themselves while boys think they can do anything. Boys need to be brought down from the clouds while girls need to be dug out of a hole (Mullins 3). David Chadwell says, "Structure and connection are two key concepts when examining gender in the classroom. All students certainly need both, but it seems that teachers need to consider the issue of structure more with boys and the issue of connection more with girls" (7), and Kristen Stanberry’s research has shown, "Some research indicates that girls learn better when classroom temperature is warm, while boys perform better in cooler classrooms. If that's true, then the temperature in a single-sex classroom could be set to optimize the learning of either male or female students" (1). These observations further support the idea that same sex classrooms can cater to student’s...

    Read More

  • Gender Inequality Still Exists

    1288 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout these silent scenarios of sexism in the classroom, more and more women today are being robbed of "knowledge and self-esteem." ( Sadker 234) These young women slowly lose their confidence to respond to the professors during class discussions. Only because they feel that they are not as intelligent as their male counterparts. Why must a woman answer a question with a phrase like: "This probably isn't right but" and "I'm not sure if this is what you want, but"? (Sadker 235)

    Read More

  • Rose Guilbault's 'The Untranslatable Word Macho'

    1068 Words  | 3 Pages

    Girls are seen as caring, nurturing, quiet, and helpful. They place other’s needs above their own. Girls get ahead by hard work, not by being naturally gifted. Boys are seen as lazy, but girls are seen as not capable. In class, teacher will call on boys more than they call on girls. Boys are seen as better at math and science; while girls are better at reading and art. This bias is still at work even out of the classroom. There are more males employed at computer firms than women. The ratio of male to female workers in STEM fields is 3-1. In college, more women major in the humanities than in the sciences. In education, women are often seen as lesser than; even though 65% of all college degrees are earned by women. Women are still often seen as needing to be more decorative than intellectual, as represented by the Barbie who included the phrase, “Math is hard!” and the shirt that JC Penneys sold that said, “I’m too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me.” While there was a backlash on both items, it points out that there is a great deal of work to do on the educational gender bias to be

    Read More

  • Dress Code Research Paper

    1431 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many female students fall victim to the gender biased rules. In an article written by Lee Hale for NPR, one teen named Sophie Manoukian in Pasadena, CA, told a local news station that "[i]t 's like girls should be ashamed of their bodies. And even though they presented it like it was about equal opportunity for education, it was about how girls can be distracting and pulled out of class to change." Hale explores the struggles of being an educator and fighting the war against dress code violations. Some of the comments from the educators she spoke with noted confronting students about the dress code were not something that they enjoyed, and that they have encountered negative pushback from female students. There are numerous social media stories like Sophie 's, about a female student who was sent home because she was violating the school dress code. One of the educators Hale interviewed points out the need to take gender out of the dress code and make the rules non-gender specific to ease the perception of gender bias. Uniforms were not mentioned in that article as a potential solution, however, non-gender specific uniforms would greatly assist educators in reducing gender bias. In an essay written by Todd DeMitchell from the University of New Hampshire, he summarizes the positive influence uniforms could have on the gender biases saying that “[a]llowing educators to enact such policies will allow

    Read More

  • The Many Benefits of Single-Sex Classrooms

    1333 Words  | 3 Pages

    The teacher tossed a Styrofoam basketball to the outstretched arms of a fifth grade boy. Catching the ball was the incentive for the boys to point out missing conventions in a paragraph. The teacher projected a paragraph on the board with omitted punctuation for the students to add. The other boys in the class watched him as he went to the board to add the missing comma and then tossed the ball back to the teacher. A few seconds later, other arms shot up in the air to point out other missing conventions (Stotsky). A simple incentive of competition for the boys made them enjoy learning and actually got them to participate in class. Although single-sex classrooms can develop stereotypes for both genders, separating boys and girls can be beneficial for the students. Single-sex classes are more effective because they raise test scores, create fewer distractions, and make kids interested in school.

    Read More

  • Single Sex Education: Beneficial or Detrimental?

    2360 Words  | 5 Pages

    The first all female schools began in the early 1800’s. These academies favored more traditional gender roles, women being the home makers and the men being the bread winners. The first generation of educated women was the result of single-sex colleges in 1873. Wendy Kaminer, an investigative journalist, states that “single-sex education was not exactly a choice; it was a cultural mandate at a time when sexual segregation was considered only natural” (1). Women of this time were technically not allowed to attend school with males. Feminists of this time worked hard to integrate the school system and by the early 1900’s, single sex classrooms were a thing of the past. In 1910, twenty-seven percent of colleges were for men only, fifteen percent were for women only and the remainders were coed. Today, women outnumber men among college graduates (Kaminer 1). After all the hard work of early feminists, there are thousands of people today who advocate bringing back the single sex classroom.

    Read More

More about Creating A Gender Fair Classroom

Open Document