from Dillon

I was glad to see that Dillon showed up at our blog - I figured he would have something interesting to say. So I am giving him his own post because he brings up a point we will be coming back to a lot this school year. This is his comment:

YES, I finally found it. Well looks like I'm not the only one here. y'all know what? This WV thing is not that bad. But really I'm just a little sad that our teacher doesn't let me sit in the back. What if I was far-sighted? That would kinda mess up my whole studying thing I try to pull off every day. But since my vision is 20-20 I guess I'll live. But the whole "all guys are bad so they must sit in the front" thing kinda freaks me out. Some of you girls, sorry y'all, should sit in the front for awhile. But you know, nothing in this world is fair, and that's my WORLD VIEW!

Maybe I didn't do a very thorough job explaining my seating plan when we started class this year, but I am providing a place now for us to discuss this issue, if you like. Here is a quote from a website that explains a lot of the research on brain differences between the sexes and what it means for education:

That basic difference in the ability to hear has major implications for best practices for teaching girls vs. teaching boys. If you have a classroom with a female teacher who is speaking in a tone of voice which seems normal to the teacher, it's a good bet that the boys at the back of the classroom aren't paying much attention, in part because they can barely hear what she's saying.
Conversely, if you have a male teacher speaking in a tone of voice which seems normal to him, a girl in the front row may feel that the teacher is practically yelling at her. Remember that she is experiencing a sound four times louder than what the male teacher is experiencing. The simplest way to accommodate these differences in a coed classroom is to put all the boys in the front and the girls in the back

That is only one of the reasons why I chose to seat the boys in the front of the class. There are many other differences in the way boys and girls learn. Since we don't have the option of teaching them separately, we have to find ways to make our coed classrooms function better. To read more of this fascinating stuff, check this out. Let me know what you think!