A Boy's Booster: All-male special classes try to equalize learning

Seth Berhns concentrates on learning in "the Barracks" at Kernersville Elementary School.

Seth is one of 18 fifth-grade boys who participate in the all-male classroom at the school. The class lasts for 90 minutes and is held each day.

"It's fun," said Seth, 10, who wants to become a Marine. "There's not many girls around, so I can concentrate."

In teacher Stephanie Lee's barracks, boys are taught in a way that is tailored to their learning styles and based on research of single-gender classrooms. There are nine boys in the class at a time. That allows Lee and the volunteers who help her give the boys more one-on-one time for reading, writing and computer games.

Lee came up with the idea for the all-male classes at the school three years ago. Each year, she handpicks her boys, all of whom have struggled with their schoolwork in the past.

Lee's small classroom is decorated with motivational messages, camouflage curtains, miniature military tanks, planes and combat trucks.

And at times, the music of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra plays softly in the background. The orchestra will be coming to the area soon, and Lee wants to take the boys to see a performance.

The military imagery began as a tool to engage the boys, Lee said. School officials also say that the core values of the military mirrored what the school wanted from the boys -- pride, discipline, respect and responsibility.

"We're in the entertainment business … a lot of it is the focus and the motivation, and that's the key, it's motivation," said David Fitzpatrick, the principal at Kernersville Elementary. "Now we are finding some ways we are turning some kids on to ‘this is pretty cool after all.' Half the time I don't think they realize they are meeting goals and objectives because it's presented differently.

"It's the same package, it's wrapped differently."

Narrowing the gaps

Lee's class is part of a single-gender classroom project paid for with money from a nearly $145,000 grant from The Clearing House, a payment-services company. The money is used buy school supplies and helps to pay for teacher training and after-school and summer enrichment activities for the boys.

School officials said they hope that the single-gender-classroom project will be a way to bring boys who are struggling with reading and writing up to speed before middle school.

There are about 550 elementary and middle-school students, mostly boys, in single-gender classrooms in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, officials said.

There is "a lot of flip-flopping of which gender is performing best," schools Superintendent Don Martin said.

The school board has set gender-gap goals for each school, and the system will soon issue an updated test score report by gender. The system will also look at the gender gap for different ethnic groups and free-and-reduced-meal students, Martin said.

This year, elementary, middle, and high schools in Kernersville are working together to make sure their boys stay on track.

Next month, Lee will start training teachers at Kernersville Elementary and other schools -- East Forsyth Middle School, Kernersville Middle School, and East Forsyth High School.

Fitzpatrick said that school officials have seen a rise in end-of-grade test scores among the boys.

"We realized last year that while the kids were having success here in the school, they were meeting failure head-on when they left us," Fitzpatrick said. "That's why we needed to broaden it, that's why we needed to have a safety net for kids outside of the school."

Elena Silva is a senior policy analyst for Education Sector, an independent nonprofit education research group based in Washington. Researchers have found that single-gender classes and schools can help students socially, emotionally and developmentally, she said. But other evidence "is not overwhelming in any way," Silva said.

"There is a lot of anecdotal evidence and there are certainly a lot of people that feel giving children and parents more educational options … single-gender schools or classes, is part of improving public education," Silva said. "The downside, I think, is only that there's not strong evidence from an educational basis."

Silva said that there are also variations in learning styles within genders.

"There is the fundamental question about whether setting up parallel separate systems of education, whether it be classes or schools, is going to advance equity or get in the way of equity … whether it's going to make education, since it's gender centered … is it going to make it better or make it worse," she said. "The other question is whether or not it's based in educational practice. Is this strategy based on a need to improve teaching and learning, or a need to develop social, emotional and developmental aspects. If it is based on the social, emotional and developmental, we need to say that."

Lee tries to give her boys different kinds of learning experiences by mixing learning sessions with "brain breaks," short periods of time when she asks the boys to interact with one another.

For example, in a recent class she told the boys that they had 30 seconds to shake hands with three people and find out their favorite junk foods.

"Research says that movement is important," Lee said. "Every time you touch another person, it releases a chemical in your brain that relaxes you, so when they come back to me, they're all smiling, they all know everybody's favorite junk food, they're ready to go back to work again.

"It costs me a minute of instructional time and I get it all back when they sit still."

Learn in different ways

Most of the students in the class are white or Hispanic. And Lee said that race is not a factor in which boys she picks.

What the boys have in common is that they all have problems with reading or writing. Some are just learning English. Others just never took an interest in learning the subjects, Lee said. Most of the boys are outgoing and enjoy getting together outside of school with Lee and former Barracks students.

Tom Ward, whom the boys call "Little Bear," and Lori Combs volunteer in Lee's classroom.

Combs' son, Logan, was in the first all-male class at Kernersville.

Logan's English grade jumped from a C to an A after being in Lee's class, Combs said.

"There's a fairly large research base that says that boys and girls are equally intelligent, but they learn in different ways," Lee said. "I have two boys and a little girl at home, and my girl's only 4 and I can already tell that she takes in information in a different way."

Kevin Perez, 10, transferred from Bolton to Kernersville Elementary this year. He said he has made more friends because of the Barracks.

"They don't get me in trouble like the other friends I had and they're nicer," Kevin said of his friends in the class. "The other friends that I used to have at Bolton, I always did stuff with them and I always get in it and always get in trouble."

Kevin said that his new friends don't joke around too much in class. "They do it sometimes, but they don't hurt other people's feelings."

■ Lisa Boone-Wood can be reached at 727-7232 or at lboone-wood@wsjournal.com.