How to support my Yr 7 daughter dealing with sexism from boys in her class?

[AJ65]

DD is having a hard time adjusting to her 'enormous' and 'overwhelming' secondary school and is having a particulary hard time with boys in her class behaving like little thugs.

eg She was partnered with a boy for a class yesterday and he kept getting things wrong, so she kept telling him he was wrong and then he got angry and told her to 'calm down' although she hadn't been raising her voice or acting agitated. Males trying to keep females in their place by telling them their being overemotional when they're not is pretty classic sexism in to my mind!

eg She tells me a lot of girls don't like to speak up in class because the boys laugh at them and put them down when they do.

This is particularly difficult for me because I went to an all girls school and was very aware of the privilege of not having to compete with (or for) boys during school hours.

I've told her she just has to be doubly calm, keep her head, and keep on speaking up in class. It's tough, but it's her education that matters, not theirs.

Any other advice?

Hmm, in my experience 11/12 yo boys can get cross very quickly and accuse anyone of shouting etc even when they have been perfectly calm. Certainly this is the case with my previously 'normal' 12yo who suddenly flies off the handle at the tiniest of things. He doesn't limit it to me. DH and DS2 are equally targets.

It isn't necessarily sexism and is perhaps just more to do with hormones and difficulty in controlling frustration.

I think you are over thinking this. My dd is in year 7 and has been paired with boys and I can imagine her being bossy and telling them that they keep getting things wrong is irritating and not particularly helpful. Maybe she should try a different approach and ask what help he needs?
The use of the word calm down is not in my opinion a phrase to be used only for women, I would and have said that to both males and females as part of a conversation.
However I do agree girls should not put up with any sexism at all at school even at this age.

NewtsSuitcase - I get that, but she's pretty hormonal too, so why should she make allowances for boys?

I just don't think this is a tangible enough of an example to call it out with your dd or indeed the school.
I'll give you an example of which one did contact the school and really did empower my dd not accept such sexism and it sexual harassment and that was when an older boy approached her in the corridor and asked her is she "wanted to suck my penis"
Now that is something to get worked up about!

Sorry grammar is awful in my previous post

Whitegrenache - hmm, how often does 'bossy' get attached to boys? Seems to me that boys are told they have 'leadership skills' and girls are told they are 'bossy'!

Maybe you have a point with Regards the word bossy.
But still don't think based on this one example that it's enough to demonstrate an issue

Has she asked for support?

I'm not sure this is particularly an example of sexism.

If I'd been 11 and a classmate had told kept telling me I was wrong, I think I'd have got annoyed regardless of whether they were male or female.

Perfectly fine to encourage her to speak up in class, but she needs to be considerate to her classmates (and yes, I'd have said the same thing if she was a boy).

I guess being paired in class is supposed to be about learning to cooperate. So someone saying "you're wrong" needs to explain why. Was your DD doing that, and the boy wouldn't listen?

Mxyzptlk - sorry, no, she wasn't saying 'you're wrong', she was correcting his mistakes. And, yes, repeatedly, because he kept getting stuff wrong.

Whitegrenache - I'm sorry your DD had to deal with that. I hope she reported him, that sort of thing really has to be nipped in the bud.

Thanks. Thankfully she is a feisty little thing and she thought he was just being immature and silly and walked away without engaging with him. However I did use it to explain to her that that sort of language is never acceptable and she never has to tolerate it.

Is it her job to correct his mistakes?

Whitegrenache - good for her! Hope he was suitably humiliated and didn't try it on anyone less feisty!

Ginorchoc - it's not 'her job', but it's hard to work on something together if one person doesn't understand what they're doing!

In a work situation would you put up with a colleague getting things wrong all the time?

Ginorchoc, surely it is if they're meant to be cooperating to get something done.
How would you suggest dealing with it?

There is sexism in schools and it's definitely a topic worth talking about, but I agree your specific example does not sound like sexism.

When I taught mixed ability sets in year 7 (we set by ability from year 8) I'd often pair a more with a less able child for a small segment of the lessons. Very able children are stretched by trying to explain concepts, or grammatical rules, or whatever in language their partner will follow. If you "just get" something your understanding is challenged, enhanced and deepened by explaining the mechanics. Changing register appropriately is a hugely important communication skill which many adults struggle with. Obviously the less able child benefits because it's often easier to understand something explained by someone closer to your wave length, but actually the potential is there for the more able partner to benefit more.

It sounds as though your daughter needs a lot more guidance from her teacher in order to benefit from this kind of pair work. Just shoving an able and less able child together without guidance and constantly monitoring leads to the useless situation you describe in which neither child gained anything and both were upset and frustrated.

There is so much sexism in schools (the feeling intimidated and reluctant to show intelligence by answering is one example, as is peer pressure towards certain subject choices etc and there is sometimes even more blatant sexual harassment as someone else says).

Your example was just a missed learning opportunity due to your daughter not knowing what she was meant to be doing on anything beyond a superficial level, and bad teaching or teacher not being able to devote enough time to your daughter's needs due to more urgent problems in other pairs.

Agree with others that it was up to your daughter to try to explain to the boy why he was wrong and how they could move forward (or perhaps listen to his point of view - depending on the subject disagreeing with her does not make him "wrong"). If she couldn't she should have asked the teacher to intervene.

From your posts I'm getting the impression that everything the boy said your DD just shot down - no wonder he got frustrated and asked her to calm down (nothing to do with her getting emotional, more a plea to stop her going on at him, I'd think!)

Evelynismyspyname - if she had been explicitly told that she was being put with a less able child, I'm sure she would have been much more understanding, but she wasn't; they were just put together for that class and she was supposed to work with him.

RedSkyAtNight - I think it was a Geography class and there are right and wrong answers in Geography! If it were PRE or English, there might be more room for subjectivity, but Geography is fact based.

AJ65 seriously? You expect the teacher to tell her that explicitly? All the children have sussed each other out by late November, and it is disingenuous to suggest that your daughter didn't realise her partner was less able. It would be incredibly unprofessional to say to a child "I'm pairing you with a less able child" - think how that child will feel, and what saying that explicitly would do for their working relationship! Children usually have the empathy to work relative ability out very quickly, and act accordingly. It's a social communication skill.

The teacher should have provided guidance on how to work together, and monitored and stepped in once it was clearly going wrong, but not said "Clever Child I'm pairing you with thickie here, just so you know" ...

Honestly wouldn’t know however as a child I really struggled (Dyslexia) and had a peer corrected me I would have been pretty angry as well, it’s humiliating however not your child’s fault. It’s something the teacher should address.

Ironically I was called “thick” when I was at School Evelyn and diagnosed with Dyslexia as an adult. Nice.

Yes - children shouldn't be being paired up in a situation where one gets to frequently tell the other they are getting everything wrong. That's a million miles away from the point of a pair work activity. Either it was very badly set up by the teacher, or the OP's DD got the wrong end of the stick about what was actually expected as an outcome. You can't blame an 11 year old for getting the wrong end of the stick though - evidently something was wrong with the design of the lesson or the way instructions were given or the monitoring and "teaching by walking around" to steer pairs back on course during the lesson (or indeed with all 3 of those things).

Doesn't make it sexism though! There are so many examples of sexism in schools but this is an example of poor teaching and learning.

Gino I'm not quite sure how to interpret your comment, but I used the term here for hyperbolic impact to drive home to the OP how very inappropriate it is to explicitly label a child lower ability when talking to one of their peers.