Photo by Sreehari Devadas
When gender becomes a fault line
I kind of blew it when I paired Rose and Matteo in our first seating arrangement.
But… this was August. The start of a new school year. How could I have known that those two secretly liked each other?
With odd numbers of boys and girls, one group would need to be mixed. Rose and Matteo seemed the natural choice. Why?
Individually, they struck me as confident and mature—the type of kids who could model positive cross-gender interactions in a learning setting. Rose and Matteo’s sensible approach to a boy-girl grouping (I presumed) would set a precedent for their classmates in future seating arrangements.
I presumed.
Keep in mind that I was oblivious to the chemistry.
When sixth graders develop a crush, they generally express their fondness by treating the other person like a scrap of moldy cheese.
Which is what moonstruck Matteo and Rose did. Hoping to divert attention away from their stirrings, they overcompensated by acting as if they hated each other. Whenever I wasn’t looking, they inched their desks apart. They refused to talk in small-group activities. And every day, they complained that my seating arrangement was unfair.
Looking back, I suspect that Rose and Matteo's behavior didn't create the faultline so much as reveal it. Their mutual avoidance became one more expression of a widening divide.
During our morning meetings, same-gender greetings were lighthearted: “Howdee, Stevo!” Ryer would say with a laugh and a playful pat on his friend’s back. “Mornin’, Ryer!” Stevo would reciprocate with his own cowboy twang and playful pat on Ryer’s shoulder.
Cross-gender greetings, by contrast, were detached and cold: Half-turning to his girl neighbor, Stevo would shift his eyes to the floor and mumble, “Good morning, Emma.” Then Emma would sigh, roll her eyes, and mumble back. “Good morning, Steve.”
The divide spread to class discussions, where thinking grew polarized. For instance, in a brainstorming session about reducing waste at the Christmas party, Imani offered her idea: “Maybe we could bring our own mugs and just drink hot chocolate.”
“No,” said Tyler.
“Can you explain why you disagree?” I asked.
Tyler exchanged glances with Matteo and Marcus, then looked back at me and shrugged. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“I think we should drink pop at the party,” offered Noah. “Soda cans are recyclable.”
“Yeah!” cheered the other guys, clapping. Several girls rolled their eyes.
Symptoms of the gender divide now sprang up in other places. Some offshoots were mildly entertaining. One morning before school started, I noticed a circle of girls laughing as they took turns writing something in a notepad. When I asked what they were doing, Grace said, “We’ve got a bet going on which boy will be the next to get an afro.”
Other symptoms made me sad. During our midday brain reset breaks—geared for building class cohesion—there were girls-versus-boys arguments about fairness. When we switched to improvisation games, kids avoided laughing or smiling if participants were from the opposite gender. At our annual sixth-grade Medieval feast, ladies and lords refused to applaud each other’s songs and skits.
As I suggested earlier, pairing Matteo and Rose was an oversight, a slip that rippled into the group dynamics. To be certain, however, Matteo and Rose were not at fault.
I had some learning to do—and a few mistakes to make—before I would uncover what was really driving this divide and discover a more healing way forward .
In the next piece, I'll explore several controlling maneuvers that I tried. Control occasionally suppresses symptoms, but it does little to cure infections.
Names and identifying details have been changed to protect student privacy.
This essay begins a five-part exploration of boys-versus-girls group dynamics.
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If you're interested in the ideas behind this essay, explore Solutions That Heal: Responding to Infectious Behavior in Learning Spaces.