Gender Roles

Yesterday I listened to one of the CLIP podcasts entitled Pokemon & Popular Culture. One of the topics Vivian discussed with the young students was color representations and gender roles within the Pokemon characters. The students’ initial reaction was to describe the “boy” (although Pokemons are apparently genderless) characters in blue and green and the “girl” characters in purple, and pink. As I stated in my comment, my students still fall victim to gender roles that seem so antiquated. I was shocked at a conversation that some of my seniors had one day in class.

A class of 8, I see my AP biology students are falling victim to “senioritis” and keeping them on track towards the AP exam is often a daunting task. However, one thing that grabs their attention is talking about their plans for next year, all are college bound, and their goals for their careers. Of the 8 students, 3 are male 5 female and because this is AP biology, future goals are mostly involved with healthcare. All three male students want to be doctors. 3 of the female students want to be nurses. 1 female student wants to be a doctor, and the final student wants to go into advertising.

One day in class, I was teaching some AP test taking strategies. A particularly outspoken student asked me:

“Why do we need to know how to take standardized tests? I do ok on them. Then after this we never need to take standardized tests again.”

In response, I asked the students their future plans, and the above responses are what I heard. I had hoped to make a connection between their plans, and the numerous standardized tests they would have to take to get there. My AP strategies would help them on the MCAT, GRE, NCLEX, or anything else the future may hold, and I had hoped to relay that with this discussion. However, the discussion turned to why the female student would want to be a doctor.

The various cons that the female students came up with included:

she would never get married
she would not be able to have a family
she would potentially make more money than a man

and finally, the future nurses came to the census that women should be nurses and not doctors. I tried to reason with these girls, and even the boys in the class did as well, but nothing would dispel their view. I realize that nursing is a very noble profession, and those young ladies will be great nurses, but the idea in their brain that women should not be doctors was disturbing.

This was over a month ago, and I still am no closer to convincing them otherwise. I hope that something could dispel this gender role that these girls hold onto. Even the boys in the class were more progressive. It is horrible to see this notion extend from the pink v blue argument, to professions. Maybe I can convince them otherwise, but part of me thinks it may be helpless.

Sessile Animals

In the last post, I mentioned allowing my students to choose the direction of their biology classes. They chose to start with vertebrates (I think because we humans are vertebrates), but after looking through the material I had to confess something to them. I told them that if we still start with animals, but with invertebrates (without backbones) we could dissect worms. After letting them decide, I came to class the next day with an agenda. To be honest I would have been ok with vertebrates first, but preferred that we learn about invertebrates first. They took my bait, and changed to invertebrates with the promise of a worm dissection after break, and vertebrate biology to follow. A fair compromise, I think and hope that my students agree.

So Monday of last week, we started learning about invertebrate animals. The really fun part about this is I am learning along with my students. My specialty is Biochemistry, not vertebrate or invertebrate biology. They ask me questions that challenge my knowledge, and we get into lively discussion and debates. On Friday we had one of these debates.

The definition of sessile is: an organism that is permanently attached to the surface. I asked my students to think of a land animal that we could consider sessile. This opened a huge debate in all three of my classes if a person in a coma could be considered sessile. We spent all of Friday’s class talking about this question. I was very proud that my students would think to question what sessile meant, then extend the definition to fit things that they see in their life.

Student Choice

As a biology teacher, the big news is the upcoming standardized test for all the biology students. DC is piloting a test, and my 9th graders are all going to have to take it in May. I have basically ignored that this test is coming. This has served the class well, and the students seem to enjoy what we are doing. Suddenly this attitude is not going to work. The students have caught wind of this test, and they are getting anxious. Even though this test is a “pilot” year, the students are concerned, and want to do well. So now I am left with the dilemma, create a class that the students can still enjoy, yet teach to the test.

So what do I do? I choose to dive head first and let the students dictate where we are going next. There are several topics that are going to appear on the test that we have yet to discuss, plants, vertebrates, invertebrates, evolution, viruses, bacteria and fungi. I told the students this and said, “Vote on the topic that we should start with.” Now we are going to learn about vertebrates as dictated by the students. Then next, we’ll see. I think this is the balance that I need, interest the students and allow them to critically dictate the course, but also learn for the test.

DNA Replication & YouTube

In my 9th grade biology class, I have been teaching a unit centered on DNA. My students have really taken to the subject, and genuinely seem to enjoy what they are learning. I like teaching biology, because it is very easy to relate the concepts to “reality.” Humans have DNA, and my students always make reference to themselves as the biological subjects. In this unit I started discussing DNA replication. Through some hands on building projects, and my feeble attempts at drawing, I thought my students had a handle on DNA replication.



I soon realized that the difficult subject matter had not solidified in my students’ mind. Frustrated, I was at a loss as to help my students understand one of my favorite parts of biology, when a student emailed me a video from YouTube. The clip was a short segment that illustrated DNA replication. He stated, “You could show this in class, it helped me understand.”

The next day in class, I did show the video and although I thought it was a bit dry, all of my students watched. As they were watching, I saw many light bulbs come on, as they started to understand what was going on in DNA replication. I was impressed that my student not only took the initiative to find the video, but also that he was critical of the verbal text I was providing to the class. My words were not explaining this well enough so he found something better. Now, I have students emailing me video all the time, which makes me happy. This means that not only are they thinking about biology, but also they are taking the time to look up clips on YouTube. I hope this means that they are watching them.

AP Biology Labs

In my AP Biology class, the curriculum dictates 12 different labs that the students are required to do. Because the students chose to be in the class, they are generally excited about what they are learning. However excited and critical are very different things. They accept what I tell them to do, they read what I ask (kind of), and they blindly participate in the labs, or at least until this last lab we conducted on Tuesday. They were very unenthused and complained, mildly, about what the lab asked. With this change in attitude, it makes me wonder how to meld required curriculum, and what the students want. I know that all curriculums are dictated but AP classes are particularly stringent. I think the new approach would be to make the students aware that they can question what they are doing, but still require them to finish the class.

Next week I have plan to have the students conduct the next lab. Do I still require that we participate in the lab? Or do I change everything to what they want to do? At the beginning of the year, I asked these students what they expected out of the class, and they unanimously replied that they wanted college credit. The only way to get credit is to earn a 3 at the least. So it seems like a disservice to scrap the curriculum, and do what the students want. Somehow there must be a way to put a critical eye on these students, and still complete the course.

The Ordinary Day

Today at the Critical Literacy Conference at American University, Professor Harste read us a book entitled, "Once Upon an Ordinary Day" by Colin McNaughton and Satoshi Kitamura. This book, on the surface, was very uplifting. As some of the participant mentioned, the book does a great job at making creative teaching seem like a wonderful thing. The student in the book loves what this “Mr. G” does with the class, and as a reader, I did too. But we then began to discuss how this book must be read from a critical eye. I agree with the other participants that the students we teach would not have a home that looks like the students in the book. We have students that crave “ordinary” as one person stated. However this I have a problem with. We, as teachers, have a duty to our students to be consistent, but that should never force us to be ordinary. Mr. G’s extraordinary lesson sparks the student to think and ultimately enjoy one day at school. He goes home excited for the next day. Students should know what to expect in the day, and teachers should provide the stability that they crave, but we should always create extraordinary experiences as Mr. G does. The students should go home smiling as the little boy does in this story, and being ordinary is not the way to do this. We should never settle on an “Ordinary Day.”

Mr Krabs

Thinking about critical literacy in my classroom, I thought that I needed to “break my students in.” They would not know how to look at a piece of literature, a poster, or even something in class and question what they were seeing. I was called out of class one day this last week, and left a handout for the students to complete. The main topic was creating Punnett Squares using SpongeBob and friends as the species being crossed.

I thought that the students would be engaged because of the often interest in SpongeBob. However, when I got back, the students were upset. The handout said that Mr. Krabs had a baby Krab, yet on the show, Pearl is his daughter, who is not a Krab. My students were very concerned with this inaccuracy. I was shocked that they took the initiative to question what I asked them to do, and analyze the writing with a critical eye. They pointed this out without my instigating. I think that this questioning is the beginning of things to come. Once they start to analyze what they see, they wont be able to stop.