You want me to WRITE!?!?! Ahh Maaan!

I have only read through chapters 1 and 2 and so far I am not shocked or surprised. Boys are struggling in the current, traditional classrooms. Writing is boring.

As Kindergarten teachers, we continuously compete for children's attention with Bakugan and Kung Fu Panda among others. One observation is that I can't help but notice how the kiddos (mainly boys) would rather spend more time named "Anakin" or "The Red Ranger" than answering by their given name. Heck, one boy knows all the characters in Star Wars, but after 114 days of school cannot name the other boys in the classroom. There seems to be a disconnect here. Could it be that children are more and more being introduced to the outside world through electronic media rather than face to face socialization. In a movie or a video game, effortless (perceived) connections are made with the characters. Is it any surprise that boys are giving up and retreating from uneasy situations resulting from peer encounters, especially when teachers (like myself) are telling them to quit playing rough and settle down?

In a nutshell... if it is so easy to not write and have fun, why bother? How can we make writing attractive to young boys when other stimuli are so readily available?

Continuing research

I will be using the same research question I used last year.

Does Having a Male as a Teacher Change Students Perceptions?

I think it will be interesting to see how the perceptions of students who have had a male for the entire school year compare to those students who only had me for 16 weeks.

Boy Writers

While reading the book, "Boy Writers", I noticed a real interesting quote. "Girls tend to 'attack' a writing assignment and get it done quickly. Boys, on the other hand, tend to ponder and fester about what they are going to write." I'm not real sure about all classrooms, but this is definitely not the case in my student teaching classroom. Sure, there are girls who are good writers and get theirs done quickly. However, there is a greater number of boys in the classroom who have written some fantastic pieces thus far and are more creative. Most of the boys jump right in and can write for hours. I think its all about the teacher's personal perceptions of what their students writing is to look like. We can't be biased about what writing needs to look like when the student's are expressing themselves. Let them be creative, school appropriate of course, and express themselves as writers!

Who the Hell Was That Guy?

   So, as it turns out, I am not the only male in my grade level in my district.  How exciting!  I met two others today at a district meeting.  This was quite surprising since this is our third or fourth meeting of the year.  One of them is a student teacher, and I wish him all the best.  The other one, is a first year teacher.  As I said, this was the first time I've seen him.  As it turns out, he hadn't cleared space is his schedule to make it before.  (Hearsay from his co-worker: "What are they (the district) going to do?  Fire me?")  Later in the day, I had another session with him where he sat in the back and declined to participate ("No, I'm good") when asked.

   I don't think I've ever been more upset at a person's attitude.  There's already a huge stigma on male teachers and the last thing I want is for one of our own to degrade our image.  I'm not the best teacher.  I never will be.  However, I know that I want to be a better teacher than I am now.  It's going to take work... lots of work.  "You should never stop learning" is a cliché, but it became a cliché because there's near inarguable truth to it.  I'm a huge advocate of getting more men in the classroom, as you could guess, but I'm a fan of getting the right men in the classroom.  Maybe he's not a lost cause, but the passive-aggressive stance that he's taken towards his professional development thus far, doesn't instill confidence in me.  I hope he can turn it around and become an example of what a great male teacher can be.

Thanks for the info...

Yesterday, one of my students decided that during silent independent reading time that it was the perfect time to tell me that he was "becoming a man". He walked up to me and said "Guess what? I just got my first bit of peach fuzz!" as he points to his crotch...Usually, I'm pretty good on my feet, but I had no response but "Thanks for that information." after what seemed like a long hesitation on my part. All I have to say is wow.

He doesn't have a father in his life, he just recently moved in with a stepfather, so I guess I'm glad he feels comfortable or close enough to me to want to share something like that, but...

I'm Always the Exception!!

I'm sorry but I could speak to so much on this. Many thanks to Zac for finding this. This is the most ungrounded piece of work I have ever seen. I almost didn't get past slide number 8 which basically said boys can't multitask. But then I went on to slide 30 that said to not talking to boys about feelings. This is the kind of rhetoric used in society that "trains" our boys to act the way they do!

Anyway, keeping it short and sweet. It is funny that this came up, because the thought that I had for my post to the blog was that as I was looking over behavior issues and academic achievement among my students for upcoming parent teacher conferences (12 boys 13 girls) it came to my attention that the boys in my classroom are doing quite well, 11 of the 12 boys are reading at the level they need to be (no exaggeration, don't ask me how this is! The one below grade level is an ELL student!) and the discipline problems are very minimal. Whereas I have 3 girls that get pulled for Title I reading, get pulled for a seperate group during Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) and 3 that are constantly in safe seats or buddy rooms!

I'm not making any conclusions from this, I'll leave that to you. But it seems to me that Ms. Elliot may want to do a little more research of her own before she makes these gross generalizations about boys.

Sorry, I know, longer than you or I probably wanted!

Teaching Boys

As a student teacher, I don't have a lot of experience teaching in general. Thus far, I have not noticed any differences in teaching boys than in girls. In the classroom I am teaching in, there two chronic behavior problems in the classroom, one being a boy and one a girl. All of the students appear to be eager to learn and willing to participate in all activities equally. Hopefully, as the semester progresses and I gain more experience in the classroom, I will be able to share more experiences with teaching boys.