The Girls in Summer School

We’ve had summer school now for 10 days, and we only have 9 days left, which is ridiculous. We have 10 girls and 1 boy in our summer school class. It’s fantastic. They are so well behaved and positive. They are also surprisingly competitive. Many of them have commented on how much they like summer school. One girl said this was the first time she was interested in school and excited about learning. (I can’t believe an 8th grader said that.) So far, they’ve had 3 tests, 1 notebook grade, 10 participation grades, and 24 homework grades. The average grade in our class right now is an 89.

I have started noticing the little differences in an (almost) all girl class (our one boy is on a trip right now). Last Wednesday, a girl suggested that we all wear pink the following day. So that the one male student wouldn’t be left out, I suggested we all wear pink or red. Today during break, one girl touched up her nail polish, and one girl fixed another girl’s curls.

The only male in our class today is Mr. Taylor. The first time he taught, we talked about how much different his booming voice is from my voice and Adryon’s voice. It’s great; he’s a natural. He told a student today that he liked her haircut. She calmly replied, “Oh, I didn’t get my hair cut. I just got my weave taken out.” Classic. He’s going to learn so much from these girls.

I’m starting to believe in single-sex classrooms. I think girls and boys learn differently, but I think the change to single-sex classrooms would have a bigger affect on the classroom environment. The girls seem more confident, and they participate more in summer school. When they first started summer school, they wrote on information sheets that they didn’t like math because it was confusing or because there was too much to remember. I hope we are changing their minds.

Then again, some of the changes I notice between our summer school students and the Delta students I had could be due to the fact that these students are grouped by performance level—they all did poorly last year in Algebra I. Whatever it is, these girls (and boy) are a pleasure to teach.