Girls on the Edge by Sax Leonard;

Author:Sax, Leonard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2011-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

parents unite!

What to do if an all-girls classroom is not an option where you live? Maybe there isn’t a girls’ private school anywhere nearby, or maybe you couldn’t afford one even if there were, and the public schools don’t offer single-sex classrooms?

First, here’s what you should NOT do. Do NOT start by making an appointment to talk to the principal about offering single-sex classrooms at her school. One parent with a crazy idea is just an annoyance. Single-sex classrooms sound like just another crazy idea to most principals.

Here’s what you should do instead:

Step One: organize a meeting of your fellow parents. The easiest way to do this is to contact the president of your school’s parent-teacher organization and ask for permission to speak for a few minutes at the next meeting. Explain to parents how the all-girls format can broaden educational horizons, engaging more girls in subjects like physics and computer science.43 Show how the girls-only classroom makes it possible to create an environment in which the focus is on who you are rather than on how you look. Conclude the meeting by asking for a show of hands, or better yet, signatures on a petition to give to the principal and the school board. You need the support of the parents of at least five other children at your school in order to move on to Step Two.

Step Two: NOW it’s time to make an appointment to meet with the principal. Show her your petition, or at least make sure she understands that there are at least half-a-dozen students at her school whose parents would like a single-gender option to be available. Explain to her that offering single-gender classrooms doesn’t cost anything, at least not if the school already has at least 75 kids in each grade. You can have one class of 25 girls, another class of 25 boys, and a coed class of 25 students for parents who prefer the coed option. Same number of classrooms, same number of teachers. Zero cost.

Step Three: Work with your school or your parent-teacher organization to offer an evening event for parents on this topic. Explain the benefits of single-sex education for girls, in particular how the single-sex format can shift the focus from how you look to who you are. You can also describe the benefits for boys, such as creating an alternative counterculture in which it’s cool to be smart (see Boys Adrift for more on this point).

Step Four: Make sure your teachers get some training. Most schools in developed countries require teachers to have ongoing professional development. Try to persuade the principal to include this gender-specific training during some of the days set aside throughout the year for the required professional development. NASSPE serves as a clearinghouse for appropriate training for single-sex classrooms; ask the principal to check it out at www.nasspe.org. If you offer an all-girls classroom but your physics instructor is still beginning the year by talking about bombs exploding, football players colliding, and trucks crashing into each other, then you’re not likely to accomplish much.

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