Local Matters

 Local matters is a heavy article to read. Promising Girls/Unpromising Boys struck me while reading, which reminds me that we have similar situations everywhere. Talking about the STEM field, many people think it is for men and not for women. That is one reason why there are not many women in the STEM field. I was in an electronics engineering program when I was in my home country. We had only eight female students in the whole cohort. I watched the video about gender stereotypes; I cannot believe gender education could affect students’ thinking so much.

When my daughter was young, we sent her to learn Kungfu, she loved it, and she likes to practice and was proud of it. Suddenly, one day, one of our relatives said to her, Kungfu is for boys, girls should not learn it. That saying reminded her she was unnormal when she stood in the group of boys.  Since then, she never wants to go back again no matter how much we explained to her Kungfu can benefit her.

I can extend this topic a little bit further. Labelling is also hurtful to students.  During my practicum, I was teaching adapted math 9. In the beginning, I am not so sure and clear about what adapted means. When I started to teach, I can feel students were labelled by their peers and even by themselves as “not good at math,” “not smart,” “promising students.” Those labels have been eating their confidence, and they feel stressed and anxious when they try to solve math problems or take exams because they are afraid of making mistakes that prove the labels are right for them. For that class, the first thing we need to do was to build confidence and took off those labels. We start from easy and simple, working step by step and eventually, out of 16 students, we had 5 students got extending and almost two-third of them will be back to regular 10 in the fall.  Without negative labels, people can live and learn free and confidently.