Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and the classroom

It is no question that boys are different from girls and vice versa. There are many differences between boys and girls that should be identified and learned to help make a person aware of these differences. Examining the differences between boys and girls is the best way to learn how the teacher can use these differences in a productive way in the classroom.

From all most day one, males and females are very different. From conception the fetus usually is m

With all these differences biologically, mentally, as well as with the child’s personality, its no wonder that teachers are confused on how they can treat the gender problems in their classrooms. Robert Slavin believes that one of the best ways is to avoid stereotyping the children. He believes the teachers should not do things based on what they believe that particular sex is attuned to doing. He goes on to give an example such as when assigning roles in a classroom, the teacher should not automatically assume that the girls would like the cleaning jobs and that the boys will be line leaders (2003, p.124). Allowing the children to pick their own positions gives them a sense of accomplishment while performing these roles that they may not otherwise be able to achieve anywhere else. Slavin also believe that a teacher should encourage the children to work together. Many teachers separate the sexes for various reasons, causing the children to become more dependent on their same sex peers than reaching toward the opposite sex peers, thus alienating themselves.

These ideas can be plainly seen when an experiment was conducted on a first grade classroom. Karen Gallas conducted the experiment and wrote a book called Sometimes I Can Be Anything, Power, Gender, and Identity in a Primary Setting. One experiment that she tried was to see how communication between a group of all girls and a group of all boys worked out a problem given to them. The problem was that they were to go hunting for mammoth but they had to put together a plan on how they were going to do this. The differences between the two groups were astonishing.

Women’s roles have changed and more and more women are taking jobs that have in the past been prescribed more as a male’s type of job. These women who have stride ahead make way for other women who will eventually come up from behind and make way for even more changes as we surge into this new time in our world. Taking baby steps in our primary classes helps this cause go forward and one day we will have a more gender neutral world, where mean and women are considered equal but different, respectively.

Gender problems in the classroom have been around for as long as we have been teaching children in classrooms and even before that moment. I believe that we can and will continue to strive and change these facts into a more gender neutral classroom, while still being perceptive to the fact that boys and girls are different. Nothing can change tha

Some topics in this essay:
, Elisabeth Hayes, Primary Setting, Robert Slavin, Janice Koch, June Reinisch, Diane McGuiness, boys girls, Karen Gallas, corpus callosum, weiss 2001, level playing field, 2003 p124, pay attention, males females, question hidden, girls communicate, sex peers, gender neutral, differences boys girls,