What's Going Down

In their first chapter, Smith and Wilhelm review much of the research that raises concerns regarding boys and literacy, and lets face much of it is true. Boys do very often fall below the the mark when it comes to reading and writing and there are a lot of studies that back it up. I, myself was one of those boys.

They bring up a study that was done during the late 1980's by the IEA that involved 32 nations and in that study, girls performed better in literacy task and boys did better in math and sciences. I remember this study happening and I'll get to that in a minute. First, boys problem with literacy task isn't unique to the U.S.  and  Second, when that study concluded schools started began to adjust the way math and science were being taught. Of course years later that gap between boys and girls in the math/science are closed but in the literacy area the gap between boys and girls stayed the same , maybe even grew. Why? I remember that study, because when I was in Mid-School going into High-School and our schools faculty was actively engaged in a conversation with us the students on how to level that field as it were. It was a 6-12 independent school. by the time I graduated a lot of the curriculum around math and science had changed. For the most part English classes didn't change to much, they did approach them more like they were college courses in the way that they were taught in semester blocks so we had a choice in what we wanted to take. I was lucky, I was a disengaged student at a private school.

The point is that boys and girls are different and learn differently and there is a lot of research and studies that back it up. Teachers seemed to find it easy to relate to gender differences. "We've been fascinated to see teachers who would never link a troubled classroom to their students' racial, ethnic or social class background feel comfortable linking the problems to the relative proportions of boys and girls" (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002). The fact is, schools, for whatever reason are failing boys. And Standardize Testing may not be an accurate means of assessment. Smith & Wilhelm believe is some way the methods of assessment maybe or are bias as well as the data that has measured literacy in boys.  The research that these men are doing with this book hopes to fill some of the holes in the existing data and research and change the way we teach our students reading and writing.

A lot of this first chapter might be considered "inconsiderate text", even Smith & Wilhelm suggest skipping it; the authors presents the research that has been done in the past that helped them scaffold their own research. Still I thought there was a lot of note worthy parts.  Two major parts stuck out to me, Shannon Trujillo, in her blog covered the "What This Makes Us Think About: Getting to Know Our Students" in which the lay out a method for figuring out who your students really are so that you can approach the teaching to fit the students needs. They give us 4 tips-- 1. Personality Profiles, 2. Information Exchange: Inventories, Surveys and Letters, 3. Daily Student Officer, and 4. Sharing Their Music. Check out her Blog, she does a great job expressing their points. The other part that grabbed me was the section that preceded the part about "getting to know your students" entitled "Three Worries". In this section Smith and Wilhelm confront the concerns that they have over the existing research and how that research and data has informed their thinking and how they are going to address these issues in their work with this book.   

Three Worries

1. Essentializing and Oversimplifying Our Students: Much of the research seems to believe that gender has an impact. They make the point to not lock kids into generalizations or stereotypes.

2. Losing Sight of Individuals: That by grouping or generalizing the students and not embracing them as individuals, we as teachers might not meet their needs.

3. Narrow Visions of Success: That literacy assessment is done entirely through their success at school and not seeing what is going on in other parts of their lives.