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GREENSBORO — Peer inside Kevin Brenner’s third-grade class at Wiley Elementary and you’ll see what you might expect: students squirming around as they work on a science or social studies project.

You’ll also see something you don’t expect: only boys in the classroom.

Look across the hall, inside Angelia Higgins’ classroom: only girls.

This year — in these two classes only — boys and girls will learn apart from each other at Wiley Elementary.

“If you keep doing the same thing, you’re going to get the same results, and we can’t keep getting the same results,” said Wiley’s principal, LaToy Kennedy, paraphrasing Albert Einstein.

Same-sex classes — and even same-sex schools — have gained momentum in education circles in recent years.

Researchers have long sought to understand the differences in how boys and girls learn in the early grades and whether separating the sexes has value.

But at Wiley, anyway, this bit of research is less about education techniques and more about trying new things to improve learning at a long-struggling school.

“I never thought of it as an experiment,” said Higgins, who came up with the idea during a summer conference. “I just thought of it as teaching.

“I think they are not being distracted by each other, it’s just another piece of that puzzle that we don’t have to deal with.”

Wiley serves some of Greensboro’s poorest neighborhoods. Most of the school’s approximately 265 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

The school has failed to meet federal testing standards since 2004. Test scores have improved during Kennedy’s three years at the school, but it has still been a challenge to lift math and reading performance.

In fact, it was her concern for boys’ math test scores that got Higgins thinking about same-sex classes. During that summer conference, there was lots of talk among teachers about same-sex classes and the need to engage boys early in school.

Higgins wanted a boys-only math class. Kennedy, who considered same-sex classes when she arrived at Wiley, decided it would be easier logistically to separate the children by gender for the entire day.

Brenner and Higgins swap the girls and boys about halfway through the day. Brenner teaches social studies, science and writing, and Higgins teaches math. Both teach reading.

Brenner said he starts both groups at the same place in a lesson, and they finish at the same place. The differences lie in how they get from beginning to end.

“The journey has been the biggest difference and the most exciting,” Brenner said. “The boys are finishers; they want to get it done. With the girls, they go deeper.”

When Higgins worked on math word problems with the students, she found that the girls learned the math easier if she gave them the numbers and let them develop the “story” around the problem. The boys quickly looked for the numbers and cue words to solve the problem.

“I pretty much have to do two lesson plans,” she said.

Guilford County Schools began experimenting with same-sex education in 2003. It established an alternative high school for boys at N.C. A&T and another for girls at the all-female Bennett College.

About 100 boys attend the A&T program; 110 girls attend the Bennett program.

The results have been mixed. The Bennett program saw small gains in test scores last year, but the A&T program failed to meet federal testing goals.

At Wiley, teachers have been intrigued by some of their early observations. As expected, behavioral differences have popped up, but they’re not what the staff expected.

For instance, the boys are much quieter than the girls; they chatter but not nearly as much as the girls. The girls are constantly talking, sometimes about the work, sometimes about anything else.

“With the boys, I have to pull it out of them,” Higgins said “With the girls, you have to say, 'OK, that’s enough.’”

The teachers have found other surprising differences, such as the fact that the girls argue more.

Occasionally, two boys will bicker, Brenner said, but it seldom goes beyond the two boys. The girls, however, argue frequently, and it often involves more than two girls.

“By the end of the year, I’ll have that taken care of,” Higgins said. She’s working with the girls to build team spirit and collaborative skills.

The children seem nonchalant about being separated.

The girls and boys sit at separate tables during lunch, less than 3 feet from each another. They pay little attention to each another.

“They make you get in trouble,” Destiny Reaves said about the boys. “They talk to you and tell you they like you and stuff like that.”

The boys seem equally uninterested in returning to classes with girls. When they talk about it, they say how much fun it is to be with other boys.

“I get to hang out with boys and all that stuff and play football,” Jaylen Brailey said.

Odessa Lawrence teaches fourth grade at Wiley. She also has a son, NaKyza Burton, at the school; he’s one of the third-graders involved in the experiment.

Lawrence says her son has had better grades and behavior since school started this year. She gives credit to Brenner, Higgins and Kennedy, but being in a class with only boys has helped as well, she said.

“With the school itself, I think the teachers and the principal do what’s best for the students,” she said. “But also, with all the boys in there, the competition is there. I think with the girls in there they hold back some.”
 

Lawrence said that if the data show the students improve this year, then the program should be continued, maybe through middle school.

Everyone involved knows hard evidence is needed to show whether the same-sex classroom test is working.

Kennedy said the school will collect test scores to compare where each student was academically in the second grade versus where they are this year. She wants to have enough information at the end of the year to decide whether to continue separating girls and boys.

“The stakes are high,” she said, “because we’re dealing with children and their education.”

The teachers say they already see benefits emerging from same-sex classes. Brenner points to a recent lesson he attempted with each group of kids.

He was teaching them about how the Earth spins on its axis as it revolves around the sun while the moon orbits the Earth. The kids took turns being different celestial bodies, moving as each does.

The girls love dancing, Brenner thought, so he figured they would pick this up instantly.

It was the boys, however, who picked it up. The lesson left the girls confused.

A few days later, he went over the lesson again with the girls, but this time he employed a different technique: an overhead projector and reading material. The girls got it.

“It was a big teaching moment for me,” he said, “because my assumption was wrong, but in the end they both got it.”

Contact J. Brian Ewing at 373-7351 or brian.ewing@news-record.com