Chapter 4 Student Diversity Analysis

While reading Chapter Four Student Diversity from the book Educational Psychology by Robert E. Slavin, I associated a great deal with the sub chapter Sex-Role Stereotyping and Gender Bias. This association is linked to my child hood days, motherhood, and what I have seen in my mentor classroom. As a child I always was the girl who wanted to play football and other sports with my brother and his friends. I was always told no because I was a girl and I could get hurt. This didn’t stop me from playing though, I would plead my case continuously until my brother and his friends gave in. So even as a child a took a stand on gender bias. In school I noticed that I had a short attention span, although no one seemed to notice that I hardly ever paid …show more content…
So were my husband and his friends “We are going to have a football player.” My response to this was “He can be whatever he wants to be, even a dancer.” The fact that they were playing the gender card and planning his future really perturbed me. I did not want my child to grow up thinking that his gender decided what he could do and who he could be. I proved my point when my son turned two, and wanted to be in the jazz and dance class at his preschool. Everyone was against it, his teachers, my husband, friends, and family. I just looked at my son and said “Do you want to be in the dance class?” He said yes and so that is exactly what I did. I told everyone who was against it that I wasn’t going to hinder his development based on the bias that boys don’t take dance classes. In the end everyone saw my point of view, I can be very persuasive when I truly believe in something. My son loved dance at this age, and he learned coordination, and developed great listening skills in the process. Delamont states “children do being to make gender distinctions and have gender preferences by around age 3 or4.” I found this to be true for my son who is turning three in two weeks. He has started to focus more of his attention on sports, and other things that society deems boy related. He even has stated that pink is for girls and blue is for boys. It’s really an eye opening experience to see this, I …show more content…
My mentor teacher does reprimand the girls in the class more often for getting off task then the boys. It feels like she expects more behavior wise from the girl students. Also during think-pair share sessions I have noted that the boys seem to be the focus when she is calling on the students to provide answers to her questions as well. I find myself doing this as well when I am engaging the classroom. Recently a female and male student began arguing in line over who was in the line first. The argument got heated and the teacher told the female student to go to the back of the line. The female student was very upset and stated “why do I have to go he was arguing too.” My mentor teacher tried to come up with an explanation and finally stated “I don’t have to get on to him as much as you,” This type of incidences in the classroom is brought to our attention in chapter four when Slavin states “Teachers tend to punish females more promptly and explicitly for aggressive behavior than males.” Although I can say that she has sat the students’ boy, girl in the classroom which may be seen as a way to distinguish diversity among them. She also implements collaborative learning quite often during classroom activities. So even though there may be issues with gender bias, and diversity in our schools, we must work to overcome them by