A Teacher's Journal: Are We Toxic to Boys?

But the alarms just continue if you dig into the statistics a bit deeper. Consider that:

---95% of children who are diagnosed as hyperactive are boys.
---Boys make up 80-90% of all discipline referrals in schools.
---Boys make up over 65% of all children on medication.
---Boys make up over 70% of all children in special education programs.

Shocking, huh? In our efforts to "control" and "manage" our classrooms, it seems that we are unknowingly putting boys at a disadvantage. As Dr. Leonard Sax---author of Boys Adrift and advocate for single gender classrooms---argues:

"In the co-educational classroom so many of the choices we make are to the advantage of girls, but disadvantage boys. The fact that girls are doing well is not the problem. The problem is, why can't their brothers do as well?

Asking a five-year-old to sit still and read and write is something that many girls can do, but many boys can't. I have visited more than 200 schools. This is what I hear the teachers saying, 'Jason, why are you standing?', 'Gerard, are you making a buzzing noise?', 'Robert, can you stop tapping?', 'Look at Emily, she's sitting still and is good'.

These observations have been reinforced time and again in my own fifteen year teaching career. Boys who thrive in my loud, fast paced classroom are often labelled "discipline problems" and "trouble makers" when they head off to other teachers. I can remember fighting a special programs referral started by a colleague on a boy early in my career because I knew that he was not struggling with a learning problem. "This kid's bright," I argued in a particularly heated meeting.

"Yeah, but he never shuts up and he never sits down," I was told. "He's hyperactive and that needs to be fixed."

Needs to be fixed, huh?

I guess I just don't see the traits that make boys so unique as "broken." Instead, I work hard to make my classroom a "boy-friendly" place. I'm never surprised by students who blurt out or who struggle to stay seated. I move often---and let my kids move often too. I break lessons into smaller chunks and make sure there are plenty of opportunities for kids to talk to one another during the course of my class.

And it seems to work. The boys I serve year in and year out are pretty successful, both socially and academically. They enjoy coming to school and are willing to work hard for me. That's something I'm proud of---and something I wish I could pass on to other teachers because it breaks my heart to see those same kids lose the love of learning when they end up in a room where "boy-ness" is seen as an illness in need of medication.

So what do you think? Are the majority of today's classrooms "toxic" to boys? Have your sons struggled to succeed during the course of their school careers? Where did they thrive---and what was different about those settings?

Are single gender classrooms something that we should consider as a community? Is the gender gap an issue that we need to begin to aggressively address?

If we get a good collection of comments, I'll post them here next week. Should make for interesting reading.