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Sexes Don't Battle In These Classrooms

Tribune photo by Candace C. Mundy

Woodbridge Elementary fifth-graders Klayton Diaz, 10, front, and Trae Blocker, 11, make funny faces as part of the fitness routine in class. Some classes at the school are separated by gender.

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By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 2, 2008

Updated: 01/02/2008 12:11 am

TAMPA - Boys. Yuck.

They are noisy, attention-grabbing and make you feel dumb if you ask a question.

"They get all crazy, and I get distracted," 10-year-old Darla Aquino said.

Celeta Stewart, her classmate, doesn't like the way boys act when teachers pair them with girls on projects.

"They talk to their friends, and you get stuck with the work," the 10-year-old said.

The view is a little different across the hall.

Girls. Ugh.

They bait you, and the teacher thinks you're the problem. They dominate the classroom and make it all girly.

"They want to talk to us, and we talk to them and they get us in trouble," said Klayton Diaz, 10.

"When you have girls, they're so distracting," 11-year-old Trae Blocker agreed. "They try to get you in trouble."

These fifth-grade boys and girls at Woodbridge Elementary are getting a chance this school year to see what happens in the classroom when distractions from the opposite sex disappear.

Hillsborough County is experimenting with single-gender classrooms in a pilot program at Woodbridge, in Town 'N Country. For the past two years, the school has split most of its fifth grade by gender, creating two girls' classes, two boys' classes and a coeducational one for parents who prefer the traditional arrangement.

Indications from 2006-07 are that test scores rose, especially among boys, and discipline problems dropped, but school and district administrators say it will take at least three years to identify trends. Woodbridge initiated the change because Principal Liz Uppercue was interested in how the sexes learn and asked the district whether she could try separate classes.

District officials like what they have seen so far and will look at test scores, grades, discipline statistics and parent and student feedback to assess the approach, said Mike Grego, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

"We really want to see if it makes a difference or not," Grego said. "I think it can."

If it succeeds, more public schools could offer all-boys and all-girls classes. The district might consider it for school choice as well, Grego said, allowing students from across the county to opt into a school's program.

Pinellas County created its first single-gender classrooms last year at Belcher Elementary in Clearwater and at Melrose Elementary in St. Petersburg.

Belcher Principal Lisa Roth said the response was so enthusiastic that the school expanded it from second and third grade to include kindergarten, first and fourth grade. Next year, Belcher hopes to add single-sex fifth-grade classes. Each grade level also offers coed classes.

Nationally the movement has spread to an estimated 366 schools, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. Although criticized by some for stereotyping, supporters say the approach is rooted in research on how "boy brains" and "girl brains" learn.

Adapting Teaching Methods

Pinellas and Hillsborough both drew from Michael Gurian's books, including teaching strategies in "Boys and Girls Learn Differently," when the schools started considering the programs.

Uppercue, Woodbridge's principal, discovered Gurian's books when she sought better ways to communicate with her sons. The mother of two girls and four boys, Uppercue found her daughters eager to share the details of their days, but her sons gave minimal answers.

She tried talking with them while the boys had something to do, such as washing dishes or taking a walk. At school, she asked male students sent to her office for discipline to collate and staple papers before bringing up incidents. At home and school, the boys seemed to talk more easily when they were busy.

She approached the district for permission to try separating the genders with fifth-graders, who she worried were disconnecting during their final year of elementary school, and began training her teachers in Gurian's methods.

The Gurian Institute, a Colorado-based training organization for schools, homes and businesses, works with teachers at conferences and their schools on how to adjust teaching methods for the genders. Schools have become alarmed that boys, in general, lag behind girls on standardized tests, said Gurian Executive Director Kathy Stevens. Boys also have the majority of discipline problems.

Although concerns remain about getting girls interested in math and science, the traditional classroom is designed for girls to succeed, Stevens said. Strict rules about classroom behavior, such as staying seated and still, work for girls who, in general, want to please teachers and parents.

Boys, Stevens said, want to know why a topic is important and how it will help them. They tend to be more competitive, and if they think the girls are better than them in class or they are no good at reading, they might not try.

"They decide this is a game I can't win," Stevens said. "They may think, 'How many times can I get the teacher to say my name?' Those are all games. We need to give this boy a different way to learn to read, write and process language."

That may mean providing boys with books on topics that interest them or bending class rules.

"You can get boys to read - let them lay on the carpet. Let them walk on the treadmill," Stevens said. "You have to understand what these little people are, how their biology is. If you can make the environment more friendly, you can get them to focus, you can get them to stay on task. But boys on task will be louder. They're going to be moving around more, fidgeting more. It doesn't mean they're not on task."

Hillsborough also has reached out to boys this year, Grego said, through a survey of what they would like to read in the media center. Boys responded with lists ranging from the Captain Underpants series to nonfiction stories about dirt bikes to instructional books on drawing. Media specialists will consult the lists when they order new books.

Loud And Involved

The newspaper's sports section hangs on the wall in Edlin Rosado's all-boy class at Woodbridge, and language arts includes readings on the gold rush and baseball records. Rosado read excerpts aloud, pacing the classroom and shouting the dramatic parts. She paused frequently to involve the boys.

"I want to see your face if you had two tons of gold," she said, and the boys dropped their jaws in cartoonish exaggeration. She posed questions with 10 seconds to come up with responses. When she gave the code word "Bulls" - a nod to her alma mater, the University of South Florida - hands shot up to answer.

For silent reading, she flipped on classical music and the boys grabbed books and scattered around the room to lounge on beanbags and floor pillows.

Rosado, in her third year of teaching, said she tends to be uppity about classroom rules but had to learn when to relax.

"A lot of our boys need to stand up to read. Some of them like to lay down. It doesn't bother me," she said. "I want them to enjoy reading, too. I know that I wouldn't want to read at my desk."

She and her partner in the adjacent boys' class, Milca Lebron, stay strict about discipline, rewarding students for good behavior and allowing the class to earn prizes such as pizza parties and time to play video games. They also refer to their students as gentlemen to make sure they know how to behave.

Lebron said she speaks to her students as human beings and tells them she has their backs as long as they are honest with her.

They would be bored by lectures, she said, so she gives them hands-on projects and interactive lessons. To make sure they understand perimeters, she has them walk her through math problems, telling them they have to explain everything because she's the "biggest idiot," which makes the boys laugh but gets them to answer.

"I don't know how to subtract," Lebron said, egging them on. "Talk to me. C'mon, teach me. What am I supposed to do?"

Discussing And Writing

Teachers at Belcher will use different approaches for the same lessons, Roth said. In science, for example, boys like to see the experiment before the lecture. They like to watch the volcano blow, take it apart and then discuss the science.

Girls want to know what to expect before the experiment. Roth said the girls enjoy the hands-on learning as much as the boys and don't shy away from math or science - they just are more verbal about it.

"Girls need a lot more 'talk time,'" Roth said. "In math, they want to talk about it a lot and talk to a neighbor about how they solved it. For the boys, they don't want to chitchat about it. They want to get to it."

Barbi Vartanian, in her second year teaching all-girls math and science at Woodbridge, gave the same lessons on perimeters as Lebron did for her boys. But she used the girls' interest in writing to ask her class to write out how they solved the problems.

A lesson on solids, liquids and gasses turned into artwork, when the girls decorated definitions with illustrations of the states of matter, dotted with swirls, stars and rainbows.

They are the ladies to the gentlemen across the hall, and when one girl struggles, Vartanian comes to her and says, "I'll show you, sweetie."

Mostly, they quietly sit at their desks or raise their hands before speaking. During work in small groups, the noise level escalates and Vartanian asks them to lower their voices.

Next door, Melissa Fielder's all-girls class is talking about a reading with long-ago, farfetched advice on surviving the plague. One suggestion was to sleep with a dead dog under the bed.

"That's sad," one girl said.

Stereotypes Or Separate Interests?

Some national organizations, however, have criticized single-gender classrooms for promoting stereotypes. The National Organization for Women's position is that the research doesn't show gender accurately determines educational needs, and "separate but equal" does not treat girls equally.

The American Civil Liberties Union refers to the classrooms on its Web site as "sex segregated" and "dressed-up versions of old stereotypes." Resources could be better spent on proven educational strategies, such as teacher training or smaller class sizes, according to the ACLU.

At first, Woodbridge's single-gender classrooms give the same stereotypical vibe as nurseries decorated in blue for baby boys or pink for girls. The girls' classrooms have piles of stuffed zebras, elephants and raccoons, Japanese lanterns and ivy wound around window frames.

The boys' rooms have a NASA suit on the wall, Yoda figurines and movie posters from "Monster House" and "How to Eat Fried Worms." One of the class rules is "running and throwing only outside."

All the classes do short bursts of physical activity during the day. One of the girls' activities are Rockette-style kicks they call "cheerleader kicks." The boys do squats, lunges and stretch their faces by making funny faces.

But much of what appears to be stereotypical reflects the students' interests. The girls work in teams occasionally and dubbed themselves "Angel Puppies," "Soldier Girls," "Chocolate Chipmunks" and more. The team names the boys selected were the "Astro Blasters," "Warriors" and "Disco Space Monkeys."

The boys love that they don't have to do "girly stuff," and Trae points out that the two boys classes only have one "girly thing," some flowers on Lebron's desk. Klayton said he likes the "boy stuff" the classes can do, like go outside and play football.

Osvaldo Romay, 12, said some boys like girls and show off for them. But that doesn't happen in an all-male classroom.

"It's better because we get to focus more," he said. "It's all about boys. It's not about girls. We don't have to worry about girls all the time. They get in our business. We get to do our stuff, not their stuff."

The girls say their room feels more private without the boys.

"I can tell everybody secrets because they're all girls," Darla said. Celeta said the girls get along and no one judges anyone for asking questions.

"There's nobody who goes, 'Oh, that's stupid,'" Celeta said. "Everybody just stays quiet."

Destiny Ruiz, 11, listens better in the female environment.

"I think it's different because you're not disturbed by boys, and they're not acting like monkeys like they sometimes do," she said.

The school district also emphasizes that no one is missing out. The boys and girls get the same curriculum, but taught in different ways and with some freedom in additional readings they do.

Fielder said she incorporates stories about women who overcame odds to become successful to help her girls realize that no matter what their background is they can do well. Rosado talks up USF and college to pass on the mindset that a college education is important.

'Delivering The Curriculum'

Measuring the long-term success could take time, educators said. Woodbridge and Belcher want more data before they can tell whether the single-gender approach works, and Stevens, of the Gurian Institute, said no one can tell whether separate classes are the "ultimate option" to boost boys' academic performance.

Simply splitting students by sex won't work if the teachers don't have training about different learning styles, Stevens said, and that training would benefit single-gender and mixed classrooms.

"We should be shooting for teachers coming out of college to be trained as teachers who understand male and female biology," she said. "This isn't a curriculum. This is a strategy for delivering the curriculum."

Uppercue has focused on educating all her teachers on the strategies the single-sex classrooms use in the hopes that the coeducational teachers learn to recognize and honor differences.

Coed classes can present a combination of approaches, she said, and teachers will find that every boy does not respond to techniques geared toward boys, nor does every girl.

Grego said the key is not the single-gender cocoon, but that the teacher understands the class he or she teaches and the various learning styles. Belcher's Roth sees it as "hooks," figuring out ways to snare a child's attention. It could be allowing a wiggly student to stand while he reads or journaling exercises to reach out to a girl who is uncomfortable with hands-on activities.

"We're trying to make sure they're all benefiting. We don't want to make this a school within a school or us against them," Roth said. "It's just another way to try to open doors for your children."

Reporter Courtney Cairns Pastor can be reached at (813) 865-1503 or cpastor@tampatrib.com.

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