Examining the Teacher's Perception Towards Gender Nonconforming Students

In the United States, there are people from all over the world who come from different backgrounds and have faced horrendous things. Some of these people feel that their race is inferior to others, but deal with it in different ways. Although the tension between whites and minorities was at it’s strongest in the 1950’s, today’s world still deals with racial discrimination. The question “Is one race superior to all others?” Some overcome this by believing one person can change how other races perceive them or by confronting the public and shining light on what’s going on in the world. Throughout this paper I will discuss how every person overcomes the stereotypes they face everyday. I will then analyze how stereotyping and discrimination

African American students account for the larger majority of minorities in public schools in the United States. Most areas in the northern part of the United states and coastal areas are ethnically diverse. However, down south this is not the case. Students of color will experience a harder time in the education system. African American students meet the obstacle of educators who will not want them to succeed based on a preconceived thought. In fact, Caucasian teachers make up for 85% of all

African Americans are not the only ethnicity group to be singled out with behavior. Racial and ethnic minority students report experiencing low teacher expectations, having less access to educational resources, being placed on lower educational tracks, and being steered toward low-paying employment (Kozol, 1991; Olsen, 2008).This low expectation is causing

Society’s understanding of gender roles debate about gender equity and have always been connected to the social roles that men and women we assigned to shape Americans views of education for girls and boys. What has also been affected is race and social class between females and males who attend schools. Ideas of what women and men are suppose to be and do have cut across different classifications. Ending unfairness in schools has rested on change to gender roles mainly women.

When you send your children off in the morning to go to school, no matter what grade they are in whither it be elementary, junior high, or senior high, you expect that they will receive the best education that they can get. They should be asked challenging questions, encouraged and called upon to participate in class, they should also be given as much help as they need to secede by the teacher. However, this is most commonly not the case. Parents and the children themselves are unaware of what is going on because gender bias is not a noisy problem. Most people are unaware of the secret sexist lessons that occur every day in classrooms across the country. In this essay I will use two essay's from the reader:

Due to the mismatch of race from teachers to students in schools, the minority students have a harder time receiving a higher education.“When minority students see someone at the blackboard that looks like you, it helps you reconceive what’s possible for you,” said Thomas S. Dee, a professor of education at Stanford University. By having a teacher with the same race as the student, creates a bond in knowledge of the barriers that minorities have to jump through. It also lets students see that even though they might be in a tough situation, they are able to receive a high level of education and may be able to reach their dreams. In an article in the Nea Today titled When Implicit Bias Shapes Teacher Expectations, they explain that the opinion

In the history of The United States, there has always been a history of discrimination that has come from many different areas by many different people that have led to violent discrimination acts to members of our society (Miller, 2003). These violent acts have been based on members of society bias views of others race, sex, disabilities, sexual preferences, and religion (Greenhouse, 1993). The members of these groups that have been discriminated upon are minority members of our society that have had to fight for their rightful place as a member of the American Society, and still, fight prejudice today.

Oppression and discrimination has plagued our society since early times. As a collective society one would think that over time oppression and discrimination would turn into acceptance and equality. Conversely, our society has taken sluggish steps towards diversity, acceptance and equality. Our society is focused on labeling people and putting them into limiting boxes. Oppression occurs across various groups of people based on gender, sex, race, religion, and disability. Members of these diverse groups are discriminated among work places, schools, and other places. Work places and schools promote diversity and non-discrimination, however little seems to be practiced. Oppression across generation leaves damaging consequences hindering society in the growth towards a more accepting environment.

Research by Husband suggest negative impressions and expectations teachers may have towards Black male students, consequently lead to unhopeful results. Educators with unfavorable perspectives regarding African-American male students may cause the student to be less engaged. Hopkins reports that the configurations of schools were never calculated for Black males, “because of the ubiquity of hegemonic, mainstream systems that were not even designed for them from the beginning, it’s no easy task” (Hopkins 82). Hopkins contends the reading barrier of African- American males persist live without a shift of the consistent pattern or model of the dominant group to the “construction, reconstruction and revision of their own lives and thus rebuild and reclaim their communities schools”(Hopkins

The questions that will be asked are all open-ended and will assist in determining why some African American females don’t fare as well as other ethnicities academically in the public school system. The questions will be rephrased with probes and pauses, depending on how much information is received from the participant. More questions will be added as I proceed through the research process and gather more information from the participant. The focus will be on African American females, and each question that is asked will be recorded and examined in their own words from their perspective. At the end of the study, I will conduct a formal analysis and construction of meaningful findings.

Discrimination of all sorts is known as one of the most controversial problems we have in our world. Humans want to see people who are like to them, it's natural instinct to focus on racial groups, religion, sex, and color. They are some countries in the world that are more free than others, such as the United States of America. Unfortunately, there are still certain groups of people who don't show respect to minorities and immigrants. It is essential to respect each person, and that every individual can be given the same opportunities. Despite efforts to combat discrimination, the act still manages to exist through prejudice and stereotypes in schools, workplaces, and daily life.

A teacher is an important key element in the educational system as well as a role model. Some teachers hold traditional gender stereotypes about their students’ views of what is expected of them. Many children develop social

“Boys and girls learn and teach each other what are the appropriate behaviors and experiences for boys and girls and make sure that everyone acts according to plan. What’s less visible are the ways the teachers and curriculum overtly and subtly reinforce not only gender differences, but also the inequalities that go along with and even produce that difference” (Kimmel, p.197). In other words, Kimmel argues that education is considered an institution that reinforces and produces gender inequalities by separating the genders into different rules, sports, and play role, which results in gender inequalities in our society today.

In every human culture, one of the first organizing principles we learn as children is the distinction between males and females, to which we continue to expand on this knowledge of what societal tasks or roles are socially acceptable of each sex (Bem, 1981). A prejudice against women has been documented in research since the 1960s, more specifically when women fail to comply with gender stereotypes. For example, when women possess uncommon gendered specified characteristics or professions, it is not considered gender appropriate behavior (Basow & Silberg, 1987). While women dominate the profession of teaching in elementary schools or middle schools, males dominate the profession of full-time faculty at degree-granting post-secondary institutions by 53%, whereas women account for 44% of full-time faculty (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2015). The faculty that is considered in the statistic previously mentioned included professors, associate professors, assistant professors, instructors, and lecturers (NCES, 2015). Students’ experiences with various educators throughout their education may instill implicit biases, and these biases may be influencing the perceptions of what students define as a “good” educator (Arbuckle & Williams, 2003).

Males and Females no matter the age face gender stereotypes everyday of their lives. As we are brought up we are taught to be our own individuals with our own ideas, but society tends to break that down. When we think about school, Gender Stereotyping doesn’t really come to mind, but if you think about it that’s where is all begins. In school, they have “dress code”, wear everyone falls under, meaning you can’t just wear whatever you want. Also, in schools when it comes to activities boys are pushed more to do outside activates compared to girls that do inside activities. Overall kids themselves start to separate themselves into two categories, boy with boys and girls with girls. Even though males and females are different, we should still take the time to teach kids that they aren’t put into two separate categories, but that they should be the person they want to be.