When making a phone call home or emailing a parent about a student, do you naturally gravitate toward the female contact person, the male contact person, or are you 50/50?
When talking to a group of parents, do you tend to make more eye contact with the males in the room or the females, or are you equal?
Does your school have just as many events that encourage males to show up as they do females?
These are not trick questions, but spend a few moments to think about these scenarios.
Here's the main question we need to ask ourselves; are our actions as educators encouraging a lack of presence among males in our schools?
Are we doing enough to eliminate the cultural mindset that education is more of a 'female' kind of thing?
It's not anything new, but we all know most educators are female, and at the elementary levels you will be hard pressed to find any males outside of the maintenance/custodial department.
Now, research is quite clear that students with two parents who are both actively involved in their kid's education perform better academically and are more likely to develop a wider range of interests.
Having said that, what are we doing to ensure we are encouraging both parents to be actively involved in their child's education?
What are we doing to ensure we have more males in education roles so we can move away from education being just a 'female' thing?
This topic really got me thinking about cultural biases and about our education system and our society as a whole...
What do you think...?
I'd like to thank Chuck Baker for the inspiration as he did a great job leading a session on 'dads in education' at #edcampstl.
When talking to a group of parents, do you tend to make more eye contact with the males in the room or the females, or are you equal?
Does your school have just as many events that encourage males to show up as they do females?
These are not trick questions, but spend a few moments to think about these scenarios.
Here's the main question we need to ask ourselves; are our actions as educators encouraging a lack of presence among males in our schools?Are we doing enough to eliminate the cultural mindset that education is more of a 'female' kind of thing?
It's not anything new, but we all know most educators are female, and at the elementary levels you will be hard pressed to find any males outside of the maintenance/custodial department.
Now, research is quite clear that students with two parents who are both actively involved in their kid's education perform better academically and are more likely to develop a wider range of interests.
Having said that, what are we doing to ensure we are encouraging both parents to be actively involved in their child's education?
What are we doing to ensure we have more males in education roles so we can move away from education being just a 'female' thing?
This topic really got me thinking about cultural biases and about our education system and our society as a whole...
What do you think...?
I'd like to thank Chuck Baker for the inspiration as he did a great job leading a session on 'dads in education' at #edcampstl.