In the article, the author says that teachers should help them channel their energy into productive tasks and supposes that the reason boys act up is because boys' education is not up to par. Boys are kept back in schools at twice the rate of girls. Boys are diagnosed with learning disorders and attention problems at nearly four times the rate of girls, are more likely to drop out of school, and make up only 43 percent of college students. She goes on to mention eight categories of instruction that succeeded in teaching boys that came from a 2009 study:
- Lessons that result in an end product--a booklet, a catapult, a poem, or a comic strip, for example.
- Lessons that are structured as competitive games.
- Lessons requiring motor activity.
- Lessons requiring boys to assume responsibility for the learning of others.
- Lessons that require boys to address open questions or unsolved problems.
- Lessons that require a combination of competition and teamwork.
- Lessons that focus on independent, personal discovery and realization.
- Lessons that introduce drama in the form of novelty or surprise.
This scratches at the bigger issue of always striving to make education interesting and relevant. Teaching for standardized testing generally goes against curiosity and creativity, but who is to say we can have both? Standardized testing and its teaching is flawed in its current state, but this is one way we can improve it.
This is a topic that I feel very strongly about. All too often children are diagnosed with a LD or ADHD and people don't realize that we live in an age where there are sounds and colors and technology EVERYWHERE. The little boy I nanny for has sensory overload. He doesn't know how to process everything that he sees, hears, and feels. He gets overloaded and begins to hit and punch and jump off of things.
ReplyDeleteI think the underlying issue is that teachers shouldn't expect their students to be excited to sit in a classroom all day and learn about boring topics (because almost every time it is a boring topic) when they can see how beautiful of a day it is through the window or when they are thinking about how they can't wait to go home and play on their ipads. Teachers need to take responsibility and teach students in a way that is engaging. This is difficult when testing is the focus. It's a never ending circle..
I agree that all too often students, especially boys, are misdiagnosed with learning disabilities or learning disorders when actually they are just not entertained well enough. While I believe that we need to teach children in a certain way to keep them entertained, that style of education may not work for other students. Teaching in a way that keeps the attention of the boys may not be the ideal for girls. If we were to split it up by gender than we are just further teaching gender roles which is one of the last things that should he taught in schools. Rather I think teachers should find the best way of teaching for all the students and try to include all of that in every lesson while it may be verbal, written, and even experimental.
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