Sometimes at my new work I spend a great deal of time reading building code and Material Safety Data Sheets. Surprisingly enough, I actually found that interesting, at least for a certain time span.
It used to be that things buildings- and construction- related were mysteries to me, falling into this realm of mystically un-knowable knowledge that most males all seemed to just be born with, but most females were automatically never to touch. Not like there was anything overt about that, it was just stuff men knew about and little girls like me didn't. Any information about these things that I overheard were all carried on by men who I was less comfortable around anyway so why would I want to join in as a shy little girl, plus they all contained references to this whole network of information I just had no access to, so of course couldn't contribute, so of course felt confused by and never particularly confident about these topics when they came up later in my life.
It turns out I just had to have somebody explain to me what the jargon means, what tools exist and how they are used, what practices are followed, etc. The difference between knowing and not was just that: taking the time to acquire the information, and most importantly, learning it from someone who recognized that I just hadn't learned it yet, not who assumed I didn't know because I was stupid, or a girl and thus stupid.
If we don't teach girls technical things, then of course they aren't going to know technical things, because you have to learn about something to know about it. It's not some inherent gender difference, it's not some inborn differentiation of knowledge, it's just whether you bothered to learn or not, and somebody who already knew bothered to help you learn.
Any inborn inherent stuff that might shape this situation could come from gendered tendencies to think differently due to physically different brain wiring, perhaps leading to different levels of interest in the information. I'm not entirely convinced that that is enough of an explanation in itself, because does interest drive exposure, or does exposure drive interest? There's more than one way to think through any sort of problem, and while people have natural strengths and weaknesses, we've seen that the brain is plastic enough to get good at many things with practice--as long as you do, actually, have a chance to practice and not just hold the flashlight. I didn't give a damn about cars and houses when I was little: I wanted to run into the woods and write stories in my head--although I did also want to build forts and a tree house and I liked my lego set a lot. So I wasn't exposed to fixing cars or building stuff because I wasn't really interested, and if my dad needed help, he asked me to hold the flashlight. If I had been pushed into doing these things instead of just passively watching, as I had been pushed into doing other things that I am now confident in my ability to do, would I have been more interested, and thus know more than I do today about them?
Who the heck knows, and who really cares. The point is, like I read in a National Park Service pamphlet on communicating science: "If you don't know how to fix a car, you're not stupid, you just didn't learn how to do it yet." Don't assume you can't do something just because you haven't learned about it before, and just because there are plenty of other people who have and you aren't like them. You aren't like them, in the sense that you haven't tried and they have. So try.
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Participant Archetypes
I'm working on a physics post, but it's a monster so it'll take a while.
In the meantime, here's some fun anecdotes from my many varied experiences working with many groups of children. You start to see patterns, you see. My job is to recognize the scared from the merely quiet and the safety-rule breakers from the merely loud ones, and engage everyone accordingly.
Some Kid Archetypes:
Know It All Kid. This kid, as I've encountered him, has been exclusively male. He claims to know all sorts of things about rock climbing or high ropes course, by virtue of having done it maybe once before in his life or of some other obscure thing like "climbing hay bales"--and is going to make a comment on everything you do. He's going to want to do it himself, is often not going to trust YOU to do it, and furthermore is going to push every single boundary of safety that you set just because he "knows it already" and the rules don't apply to someone who already knows. The one I've dealt with recently combined Know It All with Doesn't Actually Know Anything, so that he'd try to tie his own knot or clip himself in without actually knowing how, we'd correct him and he would claim that "no, I've got it!" and physically resist any attempts at correcting him, and we'd have to pull out our extreme sternness and generally watch him like a hawk to make sure he didn't do something ridiculous like untie himself halfway up the climbing tower.
Know It All Kid is a close cousin of Annoying Question Kid. Annoying Question Kid is also pretty much exclusively male, is usually prepubescent (because having a high pitched voice increases the annoying factor, unfortunately), and generally likes to glue himself to female instructors and, you guessed, Ask.Annoying.Questions. "What's this rope for?" "What do we have for lunch?" "What do you do that for?" "When do is it my turn?" "What does that thing do?", etc. Not that asking some of those things are bad, but Annoying Question Kid is usually so busy asking questions that he can't focus on what you are telling him to do vis a vis safety. He walks under ropes even after we've told him not to a handful of times, he runs up to climb without a helmet or even tying himself in...he's just in his own little world.
The I'm Way Too Cool For This Kid comes in both male and female varieties, usually more male in middle school than female, and often encompassing a large swath of high-school-aged participants. Personally, I can handle me some I'm Way Too Cool For This Kids, because they're not, and I have no problem goading them despite being Automatically Sooo Uncool for trying. A whole batch of them does make the day more frustrating, though. Note: there is also sometimes a Smart Ass Kid, who usually makes "haha, gay" jokes about everything you say, and he is usually very much in this category.
There is fairly often an I Hate Nature Girl, who spends pretty much the entire time decrying about how she is sooo not a nature person. Sometimes she is the same person as Scream At Every Little Thing Girl, who, when I'm trying to distinguish between genuinely-freaking-out verses just screaming because that's what girls are supposed to do, right? (giggle) really really gets on my nerves.
I've dealt with Excuses Kid of both genders, who, rather than, you know, being afraid, or having difficulty climbing something that is difficult, just has a rock in his or her shoe, or forgot to drink some water before climbing, or didn't sleep well last night, or suddenly has a cramp or a stomachache, or, oh, well, helmet's too loose, shoes are too big, etc. It's always a reason to just come down, and maybe try later, only when trying later, now has another weird cramp, or just remembered that he or she has a cut on his or her hand and shouldn't use it, or...you know.
There are Ultraquiet Ones who just don't say much, even when you are belaying them and they just stop somewhere and you try to ask them what is going on. They don't communicate what the problem is, they don't communicate what they want, they just sit there waiting for input from others. Since extremely freaked out people can go quiet like this, these kids are tough because it is hard to determine if and when they really need rescue.
Then there are the Adults, who are even worse at pushing themselves past things that challenge them than kids, whose teamwork is often marred by long-set behavior patterns they have the utmost difficulty noticing and changing, and who are appalingly bad about thinking that safety rules don't apply to them.
In the meantime, here's some fun anecdotes from my many varied experiences working with many groups of children. You start to see patterns, you see. My job is to recognize the scared from the merely quiet and the safety-rule breakers from the merely loud ones, and engage everyone accordingly.
Some Kid Archetypes:
Know It All Kid. This kid, as I've encountered him, has been exclusively male. He claims to know all sorts of things about rock climbing or high ropes course, by virtue of having done it maybe once before in his life or of some other obscure thing like "climbing hay bales"--and is going to make a comment on everything you do. He's going to want to do it himself, is often not going to trust YOU to do it, and furthermore is going to push every single boundary of safety that you set just because he "knows it already" and the rules don't apply to someone who already knows. The one I've dealt with recently combined Know It All with Doesn't Actually Know Anything, so that he'd try to tie his own knot or clip himself in without actually knowing how, we'd correct him and he would claim that "no, I've got it!" and physically resist any attempts at correcting him, and we'd have to pull out our extreme sternness and generally watch him like a hawk to make sure he didn't do something ridiculous like untie himself halfway up the climbing tower.
Know It All Kid is a close cousin of Annoying Question Kid. Annoying Question Kid is also pretty much exclusively male, is usually prepubescent (because having a high pitched voice increases the annoying factor, unfortunately), and generally likes to glue himself to female instructors and, you guessed, Ask.Annoying.Questions. "What's this rope for?" "What do we have for lunch?" "What do you do that for?" "When do is it my turn?" "What does that thing do?", etc. Not that asking some of those things are bad, but Annoying Question Kid is usually so busy asking questions that he can't focus on what you are telling him to do vis a vis safety. He walks under ropes even after we've told him not to a handful of times, he runs up to climb without a helmet or even tying himself in...he's just in his own little world.
The I'm Way Too Cool For This Kid comes in both male and female varieties, usually more male in middle school than female, and often encompassing a large swath of high-school-aged participants. Personally, I can handle me some I'm Way Too Cool For This Kids, because they're not, and I have no problem goading them despite being Automatically Sooo Uncool for trying. A whole batch of them does make the day more frustrating, though. Note: there is also sometimes a Smart Ass Kid, who usually makes "haha, gay" jokes about everything you say, and he is usually very much in this category.
There is fairly often an I Hate Nature Girl, who spends pretty much the entire time decrying about how she is sooo not a nature person. Sometimes she is the same person as Scream At Every Little Thing Girl, who, when I'm trying to distinguish between genuinely-freaking-out verses just screaming because that's what girls are supposed to do, right? (giggle) really really gets on my nerves.
I've dealt with Excuses Kid of both genders, who, rather than, you know, being afraid, or having difficulty climbing something that is difficult, just has a rock in his or her shoe, or forgot to drink some water before climbing, or didn't sleep well last night, or suddenly has a cramp or a stomachache, or, oh, well, helmet's too loose, shoes are too big, etc. It's always a reason to just come down, and maybe try later, only when trying later, now has another weird cramp, or just remembered that he or she has a cut on his or her hand and shouldn't use it, or...you know.
There are Ultraquiet Ones who just don't say much, even when you are belaying them and they just stop somewhere and you try to ask them what is going on. They don't communicate what the problem is, they don't communicate what they want, they just sit there waiting for input from others. Since extremely freaked out people can go quiet like this, these kids are tough because it is hard to determine if and when they really need rescue.
Then there are the Adults, who are even worse at pushing themselves past things that challenge them than kids, whose teamwork is often marred by long-set behavior patterns they have the utmost difficulty noticing and changing, and who are appalingly bad about thinking that safety rules don't apply to them.
Friday, May 21, 2010
To Comfort the Afflicted and Afflict the Comfortable
So, in leui of those great technical opportunities that I was supposed to somehow be able to secure with my B.S. in physics while still living in a tourist town, I picked up some side work continuing my high and low ropes course experience.
I don't mean to imply that it is a drugerious job: I like hanging out it the trees, and still find belaying for people and instructing them in team challenges rewarding. The job is also for a conference center--where money is the bottom line, staff are merely expendable timecards whose time in operation must be minimized above all, opportunity for professional training or advancement are negligible to nonexistent--welcome to the real world. Those who can't stand middle schoolers need not apply.
One thing this job has allowed me to do is observe a heck of a lot of middle schoolers. Middle schoolers in large groups. Sixth graders, seventh graders, and eighth graders, male and female, (although mostly white, unfortunately) public school and private.
Working with these groups has radically changed my opinion on the merit of private school.
The private school kids, be them sixth, seventh, or eighth grade, are a pleasure to work with. They are attentive and polite, they really by gosh do encourage each other, they make truly insightful comments while climbing or during processing, they make references to Winston Churchill and physical laws.
The public school kids, on the other hand, have to be constantly told to pay attention; are full of such witticisms as "this is gay" and "hahaha, you fell"; trying to facilitate discussion with them is like pulling teeth; and an alarming number of the evaluation we ask them to fill out fail to display an adequate grasp of the concepts of sentence, subject, and predicate--much less provide any specific or helpful comments about what could be improved. "IDK" and "make boring fun" are my two favorite answers. And by "favorite", I mean the ones that make me most want to hang my head in despair.
I used to have such faith in our public schools, believing the a la Degrassi hardships of popularity, fitting in, and gym class to be necessary character building experiences, thinking private schools were a waste of money for an education that was not necessarily any better, their whole existence a mark of somewhat elitist parents.
There are several factors differentiating the public and private school experience, which might explain the vast differences is emotional maturity. Money of course leads to greater opportunities, in terms of better funded teachers, and more chances for the kids to also be able to afford developmentally beneficial extracurricular activities. Parental involvement at all is huge, and while not always present for private school children and certainly not necessarily absent for public school children, it is probably still more likely to be present for private school children, since the parents care enough to send their child to a school they have to pay for.
In the end, though I think a lot of it is about challenge. I was challenged in public school because I wanted to be, because I was pre-capable, for whatever reason, of challenging myself.
It is immediately obvious to me that the private school kids willingly challenge themselves, because they see the value in challenge for challenge's sake. They also deal well with challenge. The ones who start to climb and get afraid are capable of sorting it out, prioritizing, and either consciously pushing themselves in or having the self-knowledge to say "I have reached my limit and would like to stop now."
The public school kids do not, generally, challenge themselves. The ones who aren't inclined to be afraid just do the activitly quickly, goof around, comment on how easy it is, and go off without processing how it could have been made into a learning experience. The ones who are afraid cannot be convinced to try, or when they try reach a spot where they are afraid and cannot cope. They cry, they are non-responsive to processing or encouragement, so we let them down and they go off inside of themselves, internalizing a negative experience. The emotional maturity, the ability to accept and deal with challenge, is greatly limited, when compared to like-aged private school groups, and even in some cases with private school groups two grades lower.
I think public schools don't have the resources nor the mentality to challenge kids enough, unless, like me, they had supportive and involved parents, and had learned to seek it out. All this standardized testing as benchmark, and lowering expectations so that passing is possible to more people. No Child Left Behind, and all that. Everyone's a winner. Here's a gold star for trying.
Everyone is not the same though, and everyone is challenged by different things. Public schools don't have the resources to tackle each student's individual need for the correct challenge; private schools undoubtedly have more of those resources. Many privet schools also have higher standards in general, and that is really important too. Allowing people to succeed without being challenged does them a disservice in the long run, even if the standards cannot be met by all. Dropping a standard ensures that some who otherwise might have will never develop the tools to meet it. An opportunity to gain emotional maturity--in my opinion equally as important as knowledge--is lost, and we all know what a pain an emotionally immature eighth grader is to be around. At least, I could tell you stories. Exasperating stories.
No Child Left Behind does exist for a reason. We don't want to just abandon the failing kids, goodness knows. In the afterschool girl's program I am doing, I work with girls from the complete opposite end of the social hierarchy as the stereotypical private schooler. Girls kicked out of public school, girls generally failing and falling behind in their classes, children of poverty-line single mothers drawing largely from the African American and Hispanic communities here. Because we have a one to one mentor/student ratio, we can get the focus out of them. We have the resources to find what works for them, find what pushes them. Attacking and overcoming the challenge of rock climbing is one of the center themes of our program, and the program often dramatically improves the low self-confidence and behavior issues that get them referred to our program to begin with. These girls are smart and capable but for various reasons aren't stimulated in public school.
Unfortunately, with state budget cuts and state budget cuts, I don't imagine this problem is going to get anything but worse. The issue is obvious in an experiential learning/outdoor education setting, and experiential learning is both handy at addressing this sort of thing, and not the kind of thing many schools have the resources to provide.
I don't mean to imply that it is a drugerious job: I like hanging out it the trees, and still find belaying for people and instructing them in team challenges rewarding. The job is also for a conference center--where money is the bottom line, staff are merely expendable timecards whose time in operation must be minimized above all, opportunity for professional training or advancement are negligible to nonexistent--welcome to the real world. Those who can't stand middle schoolers need not apply.
One thing this job has allowed me to do is observe a heck of a lot of middle schoolers. Middle schoolers in large groups. Sixth graders, seventh graders, and eighth graders, male and female, (although mostly white, unfortunately) public school and private.
Working with these groups has radically changed my opinion on the merit of private school.
The private school kids, be them sixth, seventh, or eighth grade, are a pleasure to work with. They are attentive and polite, they really by gosh do encourage each other, they make truly insightful comments while climbing or during processing, they make references to Winston Churchill and physical laws.
The public school kids, on the other hand, have to be constantly told to pay attention; are full of such witticisms as "this is gay" and "hahaha, you fell"; trying to facilitate discussion with them is like pulling teeth; and an alarming number of the evaluation we ask them to fill out fail to display an adequate grasp of the concepts of sentence, subject, and predicate--much less provide any specific or helpful comments about what could be improved. "IDK" and "make boring fun" are my two favorite answers. And by "favorite", I mean the ones that make me most want to hang my head in despair.
I used to have such faith in our public schools, believing the a la Degrassi hardships of popularity, fitting in, and gym class to be necessary character building experiences, thinking private schools were a waste of money for an education that was not necessarily any better, their whole existence a mark of somewhat elitist parents.
There are several factors differentiating the public and private school experience, which might explain the vast differences is emotional maturity. Money of course leads to greater opportunities, in terms of better funded teachers, and more chances for the kids to also be able to afford developmentally beneficial extracurricular activities. Parental involvement at all is huge, and while not always present for private school children and certainly not necessarily absent for public school children, it is probably still more likely to be present for private school children, since the parents care enough to send their child to a school they have to pay for.
In the end, though I think a lot of it is about challenge. I was challenged in public school because I wanted to be, because I was pre-capable, for whatever reason, of challenging myself.
It is immediately obvious to me that the private school kids willingly challenge themselves, because they see the value in challenge for challenge's sake. They also deal well with challenge. The ones who start to climb and get afraid are capable of sorting it out, prioritizing, and either consciously pushing themselves in or having the self-knowledge to say "I have reached my limit and would like to stop now."
The public school kids do not, generally, challenge themselves. The ones who aren't inclined to be afraid just do the activitly quickly, goof around, comment on how easy it is, and go off without processing how it could have been made into a learning experience. The ones who are afraid cannot be convinced to try, or when they try reach a spot where they are afraid and cannot cope. They cry, they are non-responsive to processing or encouragement, so we let them down and they go off inside of themselves, internalizing a negative experience. The emotional maturity, the ability to accept and deal with challenge, is greatly limited, when compared to like-aged private school groups, and even in some cases with private school groups two grades lower.
I think public schools don't have the resources nor the mentality to challenge kids enough, unless, like me, they had supportive and involved parents, and had learned to seek it out. All this standardized testing as benchmark, and lowering expectations so that passing is possible to more people. No Child Left Behind, and all that. Everyone's a winner. Here's a gold star for trying.
Everyone is not the same though, and everyone is challenged by different things. Public schools don't have the resources to tackle each student's individual need for the correct challenge; private schools undoubtedly have more of those resources. Many privet schools also have higher standards in general, and that is really important too. Allowing people to succeed without being challenged does them a disservice in the long run, even if the standards cannot be met by all. Dropping a standard ensures that some who otherwise might have will never develop the tools to meet it. An opportunity to gain emotional maturity--in my opinion equally as important as knowledge--is lost, and we all know what a pain an emotionally immature eighth grader is to be around. At least, I could tell you stories. Exasperating stories.
No Child Left Behind does exist for a reason. We don't want to just abandon the failing kids, goodness knows. In the afterschool girl's program I am doing, I work with girls from the complete opposite end of the social hierarchy as the stereotypical private schooler. Girls kicked out of public school, girls generally failing and falling behind in their classes, children of poverty-line single mothers drawing largely from the African American and Hispanic communities here. Because we have a one to one mentor/student ratio, we can get the focus out of them. We have the resources to find what works for them, find what pushes them. Attacking and overcoming the challenge of rock climbing is one of the center themes of our program, and the program often dramatically improves the low self-confidence and behavior issues that get them referred to our program to begin with. These girls are smart and capable but for various reasons aren't stimulated in public school.
Unfortunately, with state budget cuts and state budget cuts, I don't imagine this problem is going to get anything but worse. The issue is obvious in an experiential learning/outdoor education setting, and experiential learning is both handy at addressing this sort of thing, and not the kind of thing many schools have the resources to provide.
Friday, March 12, 2010
an educational experience
The thought occurred to me as I was driving back from West Virginia, and smelled a lot of road-kill skunks.
Might one take the perspective that it might be worth it, maybe once only, in a person's life, to be skunked?
Just to know what it's like, (which I'm sure is unpleasant), just to have the honest-to-god "country kitty" bragging rights. Live exists to live it, after all.
Might one take the perspective that it might be worth it, maybe once only, in a person's life, to be skunked?
Just to know what it's like, (which I'm sure is unpleasant), just to have the honest-to-god "country kitty" bragging rights. Live exists to live it, after all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)