Dear Olaola,
I used to have such a problem several years ago. My students were
17 years old and the class studied both English and Russian, it was the
extended Maths class, and the girls were preparing to take Russian for
their final high school exam whereas the boys, who were excellent in English,
upper intermediate, were taking extended English.
The problem during my classes was mainly discrimination of the girls in
class, but as the boys were so proud of themselves I also had problems
with controlling their behaviour, they would play cards during the lessons
for example and had rude comments.
As I didn �t receive any understanding/sympathy from other teachers who were not
sensitive to such problems and treated me like the ugly duckling in
the college (Lyceum) I decided to solve the problem on my own.
I focused the lessons on the boys giving them many essays, compositions
to write and showed a lot of admiration to their skills... but I met with the girls after their lessons when no boy was
present at school and I did extra lessons for them as they were ashamed of uttering
a word in English in front of them, for free of course, but we also talked a
lot and together we tried to find some remedial solution. And one day, after having thought a lot (!) about the problem, I said to
them, taking a big risk: my dear girls, please don�t judge me wrongly and have some more patience
with the situation, I will try to treat them [the boys] as kings (!), at the
beginning they might not notice that, but as I will also exaggerate, sooner or
later they will do. Our force is that we are here together in group and
that I do love both you and them and we shall win! ;-)� The girls always
knew what I was planning for the �boys� lesson� and also knew that I would give
them good marks at the end of the semester as I saw during these extra lessons
their hard work, even though the boys� outcome was visibly higher. The girls were to be very kind with the boys as well...
What happened after 4/5 months.... One of the boys, their leader, the
one I had problems to show my affection to, wrote to me a letter in form of the
class essay, for as usually I assigned a long essay but that time
I said they could invent their own subjects... After having read his 7 page long essay I
cried as I was so moved... he basically confessed to me about his life, the
class situation and how much he wanted to change, had a girlfriend who was a very
good person and that thanks to me and my love he noticed, together with other
boys, that the girls in his class were pretty and that I was having extra
classes for them (=the girls) and never reported about them (=the boys) to the head teachers and parents
and by the division of the class I united them etc...
The following year teaching in this class was a real pleasure for me! The boys
added me to their IRC channel (where they shared with me their problems) and started to treat the girls as their
precious schoolmates... they then told me that I (together with the girls) won their respect thanks to treating them better than what they deserved and that they had found pleasure with
irritating people and when they found out that it does not work with me/us (as
the girls tended to follow me) they quitted it and reflected...
Still I was curious what was the reason of their bad behaviour towards
women... Hmmm, they all were tall, handsome...and thought the world was their
oyster!
I won�t forget the last classes, the extra classes I did for them before
the final exams. Some other students from the school � I didn�t teach
them � also asked me to participate in the lessons and when they saw the
atmosphere, the respect my students showed to everyone, the sense of humour, love,
were so shocked that they said: �it �s been the first lesson I feel so
good in this Lyceum�.... If they knew how many sleepless nights I had had
before I achieved the result.... ;) But it is true that you can win thanks to love....
I hope Olaola that you will find some solution and that my happy end
story will help you a bit... I will keep my fingers crossed for you!
