Listening to my concerns about my son's abilitiy to learn on the phone the other day, my stepmother told me to relax.
"He's a boy!" As a former pre-first grade teacher who helped kids transition to first grade better, she ought to know. She has two of them herself. It seems boys literally see the world differently than girls. They interpret objects through motion much more than through sound. Girls are more sensitive to sound. They prefer to have their teachers stand still.
According to a recent Reader's Digest article, David Chadwell, South Carolina’s coordinator of single gender education, decided it was time to draw the line in the classroom. Now, apart from homeroom, recess and lunch, girls and boys learn in separate classrooms and under different parameters. The teacher in the boys' classroom moves around a lot more and speaks with an excited voice. The teacher in the girls' classroom is more sedentary and watches her tone so it's not interpreted as yelling.
It would help if my son had an energetic male teacher, but he does not. So we resort to lots of extracurricular movement and excitement at home. It can be exhausting, but one thing I've noticed: when I play my flute he calms down. It relaxes us all, and for a single moment in time, we all exhale...
