Chapter Twenty-Eight: More Spice than Sugar

Chapter 28 – More Spice than Sugar

Boys are bad, girls are good

To some extent, we, as Americans, condone boys who curse, fight and misbehave. We may not encourage these behaviors, but we don’t consider them outside the norm for boys. Thus when most boys are sent to Prospect, they fall somewhere along a familiar continuum, their behavior has clearly crossed a line between acceptable and unacceptable, but their behavior isn’t classified as abnormal, it’s the frequency or intensity of the misbehavior.

Girls are another matter. We don’t expect girls to handle disagreements with fists, we expect them to gossip, scapegoat, exclude and use mean words. The girls at Prospect defy these female stereotypes. That is not to say they don’t gossip, scapegoat, exclude and use mean words, but that they also pack a mean punch.

Prospect girls make up only 20% of my student population but 80% of my problems. I have a theory that when girls start to act out, the signs are more subtle than with boys, thus it isn’t until the girls are really in crisis and have become violent and out of control, that they are sent to Prospect. At Prospect there are almost no girls who are “somewhat” difficult, most are “incredibly challenging.” My Prospect girls, as a group, are worse than the boys and their behavior is worse when they are around boys.


The girls use their verbal skills to focus on and exacerbate brewing disagreements. They form and reform cliques. Harassing phone calls are made in the middle of the night. Minor skirmishes break out – hair pulling, pencil stabbing, objects are thrown, clothes are torn. Then, if we aren’t careful, if we don’t read the tea leaves and heed the rumors, there is a full-fledged rumble.

We have a girl problem.

I recognize the girl problem early in the semester and began reading books and articles about it. I decide to try single-sex classrooms. Segregating people by sex is in opposition to my beliefs; I know separate is not equal. But we need to do a better job with these girls and other schools have reported success with single sex middle school classrooms. I am desperate; I need to try something.

My desire for an all-girl classroom is really not terribly radical, even for Lakeboro. SBAA, one of the four alternative schools in town is a school for forty middle and high school girls. I can’t attest to the results, but I know SBAA has a long waiting list and I have only heard positive comments about it.

So I am ready to give a single-sex classroom a shot. The trouble is, my staff is not. In fact they agree they would rather be shot than give all-girl classrooms a shot. I point out that most of the girls’ problems are related to boys: Nishonda stole Selma’s boyfriend, Eli, and since Tyryona and Selma are friends they plan to fight Nishonda who calls on Estralitta for back-up but since Estralitta stole Tayshaun from Jillane, Jillane will join Selma and Tyryona to fight Nishonda and Estralitta. Separating the girls from the catalysts of their anger could help.

My teachers counter by half-heartedly citing many girl problems unrelated to boys, but I think my teachers believe an all-girl environment is a fine idea actually - just not in their classroom (NIMC!). I know forcing someone to run an all-girl classroom will doom it to failure. So instead I begin a slow campaign to persuade someone to try it. I photocopy articles on the success of single sex classrooms and try to mention the idea at least once a week. In the meantime, the walkie-talkies continue to blare with the names of girls, girls, girls.