Gender & Atomic Theory

[Izzy Charlton]

In the classroom I am observing, I haven seen many instances of gendered behavior. However, I have noticed that gender greatly influences the interactions students have with other students. Friend groups are often exclusively one gender, with a few exceptions. I have also noticed how having a male teacher impacts the classroom gender dynamics. Mr. Wiebe connects well with all of his students, but I have noticed he is particularly impactful for male-identifying students. Mr. Wiebe is able to relate to male students, especially those who don’t show up to school consistently or neglect their work. I have witnessed many positive interactions between Mr. Wiebe and struggling students, but every single time the student was male-identifying. I think this is due to their shared experiences being male, but also because the struggling male students tend to be disruptive in class. I’ve noticed that whenever a female-identifying student is struggling, they often turn to a friend quietly for help. Whenever a male-identifying student is struggling, they often do not even attempt the work and resort to distracting fellow classmates instead. I know this is not reflective of all students, but it is an interesting pattern I have noticed in his classroom. Another interesting observation is that I have seen a lot more androgynous presentation in this class than when I was in high school. I touched on this in my previous blog when talking about identity formation, but there does seem to be exploration of clothing and appearance. It’s cool to see how much exploration of expression has changed so much in this group that is only 6 years younger than me.

With my own educational experiences, gender played a large role. I spent K-8 at a small, Catholic school where gender regimes were heavily enforced. I think there were much stricter expectations on me to be a good obedient student than some of my male classmates. Growing up as a bit of a tomboy, I tried to rebel against these expectations as best I could, but there wasn’t much room to do so. Because I had to wear such a feminine uniform, which included a navy blue skirt, I never wore feminine clothing outside of school. I never really liked wearing skirts or dresses because I was always expected to wear them to be a “pretty girl.” When I went to the public school systems for high school, I finally got to decide what I wore to school everyday. It was a very small freedom, but it felt significant to me. However, even though I could hypothetically wear whatever I wanted, I noticed that a lot of the girls still dressed very femininely. I never went to the extent of wearing skirts and dresses to school, but I still dressed in a manner that was deemed “acceptable” for young girls to wear (i.e. skinny jeans and a t-shirt). Now that I have been to Carleton, I know that there was relatively little fluidity in terms of gender expression in my high school, but it felt much freer because of my experiences at the Catholic school. Reflecting on these experiences has made me much more aware of how present gender norms were in my life, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

Returning to Mr. Wiebe’s classroom this week, I noticed that the students seemed more deflated than usual. I am not sure whether this could be attributed to the fact that it was one of the last days of school before break or the introduction to significantly less interesting content. After moving on from the last unit test, this new unit focused on the history of atomic theory (yawn). Where the last unit was hands-on experiments and demonstrations of watching table sugar blow up, this week was entirely lecture-based. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to understand how we got to our current understanding of chemistry. However, I myself, a lover of science, got bored of the content quickly. It’s not engaging to listen to a lecture about a bunch of old white guys and their experiments. I remember talking in class about how important it is for students to be able to see themselves in the classroom, and I didn’t see a single person that looked like me that entire class. I’m sure all of the other non-male students and students of color felt the same. I was wondering how different the class could be if there was a more diverse array of role models available to the students. Unfortunately, when focusing on the history of chemistry and its beginnings, only white men were able to be involved. There were no women or people of color in the field of chemistry in the 1800s. I think it’s important to learn the history of atomic theory, but there could’ve been much more engaging ways of doing that.

When talking about atomic theory, although it was not the most exciting content, I did like an analogy that Mr. Wiebe used. Not only can this content be boring because of its historical aspect, but some of the theories are very abstract and can be hard to understand. Mr. Wiebe discussed the current model of electron movement, which was always a topic that I struggled to understand in high school. While the over-simplistic images of atoms clearly show the orbit of electrons (shown in left image), the actual movement of electrons is far more complicated (right image).

Our current understanding (right image) does not clearly define which electrons are where, like the outdated model on the left. Instead, it is more of a probability map, telling you where electrons are likely to be but cannot tell you where they actually are. As a high school student, I had a hard time grappling this concept because it is so hypothetical. How can we make a map of probabilities but not actually know where the electrons are? It never made any sense to me. I’m sure many high school students struggle with this topic as well, and Mr. Wiebe had a great analogy to demystify this abstract concept. He compared the electron cloud to a fan running on high speed so that the blades spun around quickly. He said that when these blades go fast, it can be hard to distinguish where they actually are. As soon as you try to point your finger and say “there’s the blade right there!” the blade has already made a few rotations around. You can’t truly pinpoint the location of any single blade because it moves so fast. He then explained that electrons worked the same way: their high speed means that we can never really know where they are, they will move to a completely different spot as soon as you see it. Having such a relatable example (the fan on high speed) allowed me, as well as his students, to make sense of abstract atomic theories. I really enjoyed this example and I couldn’t help but think how some examples like this spinning fan can really make a key difference in a student’s understanding of a subject.

[Adam Ross]

I connect with your observations at the beginning, throughout school I always found it MUCH harder to connect with female teachers than to connect with male teachers. The first time I had a male English teacher was 12th grade. Prior to that I never considered myself an English student, but now I’m a creative writing minor! I think students need role models more than anyone can express, and it’s naive to assume that the same person can serve as a role model for male and female students. In this way, it’s a good thing high school and middle school students go from class to class, teacher to teacher, because it gives them exposure to a whole range of potential role models! There was an English teacher at my high school that was very close with my sister really from class and extracurriculars, but when I had her in ninth and eleventh grades I felt like I was such a disappointment to her and we didn’t connect at all. But I got along really well with my biology teacher and continued to come to him after I was no longer in his class.

The history of atomic theory stuff is so cool! And I really like Mr. Wiebe’s analogy that you give, you’re correct that it really demystifies the subject, I think it even hints towards Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

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