4/20
I’ve been teaching nearly
seven years now, and I took a class on a field
trip for the first time a couple of weeks ago. It was to RiverMead, the
retirement community in
A
friend from
the residents about my concern, expressed in this space,
that boys seem to
be lagging behind girls academically at ConVal and across the nation. I was
willing, but the day and time he wanted me to come, I had a
Journalism
class.
So I
decided to take the class with me. After all, who would know more
about how boys and girls respond differently to high school
than the boys
and girls themselves? Plus, they could write stories
about the event for the
school newspaper.
I checked
with my RiverMead friend to see if that would be all
right. He
was intrigued, and got it cleared at his end. I filled
out the necessary
forms at my end, handed out permission slips to my 20
students, and reminded
them every day for a week that we were going on a field
trip on Monday,
April 3,
and that the bus would leave at
Six of them were either
absent, cut class, or forgot about the trip. Five of
the six were boys.
We
arrived to find an audience of about a hundred residents. I made a
few remarks, then I put the four boys who made the trip
on stage. RiverMead
had provided a handheld wireless microphone for us, and I
was ready to ask
the kids questions myself if the residents were too
shocked or shy, but that
was not necessary. There were hands up in the audience
for the entire hour.
We
didn’t stick strictly to the subject. I had contemplated asking my
students to dress more formally than normal for the visit, but
on
reflection, decided that our audience should see high school
students in
their native plumage -- unedited, uncensored, unretouched. I suspect this
was why one of the first questions was, “Does your high
school have a dress
code?”
When
we got around to gender and schools, one of the boys said that
boys have “higher priorities” than academics -- sports,
mainly. Another
explained that boys who got good grades ran the risk of being
called
“kiss-ups.”
Someone in the audience asked for a definition of the term,
which led to a minor semantic skirmish. I translated “kiss-up”
as a
derogatory term for a student who curries favor with teachers,
but one of
the girls denied it. She said it was a term of respect
for “someone who
works really hard.”
One
of the boys offered to put it in context. “Say I call a guy up on a
Saturday to see what he¹s doing,
and he says he¹s studying,” he explained.
“So I’d say, don’t be such a
kiss-up!”
After the boys were done, I brought four girls up on stage to get their
perspective. They agreed that boys had other things on their
minds. More
interestingly, they said that when they were younger, they also
tried to
avoid looking too smart for fear of being unpopular. “Guys
like to teach
girls stuff,” one said, “so I’d pretend not to know
anything.” But they all
agreed that as they matured, they stopped doing that. “Now
girls just work
harder.”
I’ve
left out a lot. The hour went by swiftly, and as we departed, one
of the residents said, “I wish it could have gone on all
morning.” My friend
called later to say that everyone who attended was still
talking about it,
and many wanted to invite us back for more.
That
was gratifying. But the best part was the five-minute ride back to
ConVal on the bus. The students
talked passionately about the experience all
the way, and when we got into class, they didn¹t stop for
another hour.
It
was only five miles, but you don¹t have to go very far to discover a
different world. I must do this more often.