Beginning in 2005, Ontario's provincial policy mandates that all students from Grades 1 to 8 must receive at least 20 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every school day during instructional time; this is known as the Daily Physical Activity. The DPA is part of the government's "Healthy Schools Plan" and can range from students doing jumping jacks beside their desks to going for a walk, or playing physically active games in the classroom.
 
On average, regular PE or gym class only occurs twice a week for students under grade 9. In Ontario public high schools, gym class becomes an elective after grade 9 which has resulted in a sharp decline in student gym participation. While the provincial government's DPA initiative recognizes the importance of youth exercise and attempts to institutionalize regular fitness, the program falls short of actually meeting students' physical health needs, and it does not apply to high school students. That is why physical education needs a major facelift in Ontario.
 
In 2013, the National Academy of Medicine published a report stating students should be doing at least 60 minutes of vigorous or moderate-intensity physical activity at school, with more than half of the activity occurring during regular educational hours. In America, there is a movement to get the Department of Education to actually designate physical education as a core subject like math and reading, which reflects the level of importance fitness shares in a child's cognitive development.
 
All in all, this means that 20 minutes of classroom physical activity a day, infrequent gym classes, and optional team participation is not doing enough for students' health. There is a predominate culture of viewing gym class as merely "play time" interrupting regular lessons, and students in public schools are not required to join a team sport. However, more and more research is illustrating how important physical education at school is for a student's mental development and physical health (and that's without going into the added mental benefits of fitness, like reduced stress).
 
This is why lower school students at St. Jude's Academy take PE every day. In addition to regular gym class, each student participates in field days and is encouraged to take athleticism beyond the school. In grades 5-8, St. Jude’s delves deeply into the athletics with skiing, curling, rock climbing and tennis. Instead of going skiing or curling once a year, our students go multiple times in order to become proficient in these areas. St. Jude’s is a member of the Small School Athletic Federation (SSAF). With the SSAF, the school participates in competitive team sports: soccer, basketball, volleyball, and track.

Sources: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/05/23/physical-education-schools/2351763/


Last time I talked about the gender imbalance in STEM classes, programs and careers (in regards to female representation and unequal pay). Now I want to attempt to answer two big questions: why does this matter and what can be done to equalize the trend?

Mostly it relates to the general gender wage gap issue in North America. On average, in the workplace women make 77% of what their male coworkers make despite occupying similar positions and possessing a similar credentials. Getting more women into STEM could reduce the gender wage gap. Not only are there currently more jobs in STEM than in any other industry, but most of these high-tech jobs are high-paying, and STEM is the fastest growing industry today. Attaining STEM gender equality would be a major step towards achieving gender pay equity at large. Think about just a few the amazing scientific advancements and discoveries that we can't imagine living without: the nerve growth factor, the DNA double helix, nuclear fission, the AIDS drug AZT... all of these accomplishments were made by female scientists! And if we continue to limit female students from pursuing STEM programs, imagine all of the other scientific advancements we could be denying ourselves.

Possible Solutions: Addressing stereotypes early on and preventing their effects from snowballing. With standardized testing proving there is no biological impediment to girls thriving in STEM, that means we need social solutions. In our homes and schools we need to encourage girls to pursue a variety of interests, to introduce them to science as equally as the liberal arts, to encourage them to enter STEM programs if that is what they want. We need to nip harmful gender stereotypes in the bud, and teach girls they are just as capable of being scientists as boys. Lack of confidence is listed as the number one roadblock for girls entering STEM. In my personal experience, private schools greatly help to accomplish this goal because, as part of their inclusive nature, all students are expected to engage in all subject matter and are provided with ample opportunities to explore STEM classes and clubs thanks to the better funding in private schools. The private sector is also an important gateway: we need businesses to value female scientists the same as men, and to create programs supporting their female workers until more women start entering the STEM workforce.

If you're interested in learning more about girls and STEM, I highly recommend this fantastic website: https://ngcproject.org/engaging-girls-stem The National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) has a lot of great resources and links to peer-reviewed publications and literature with detailed analyses about this complex sociological issue. In comparison my two posts are only the tip of the iceberg!



My references:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/girls-stem-these-figures-show-why-we-need-more-women-science-tech-engineering-maths-1540590
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tamara-hudgins/why-more-girls-in-stem-is-a-win-for-all_b_9379214.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/celia-islam/closing-the-stem-gender-g_b_3779893.html


The STEM acronym represents the four non-liberal graduate streams: science, technology, engineering, and medicine. Gender parity in North America has been a running concern, but only recently has it become a well-known issue that in OECD countries, women comprise a very small percentage of the pool of STEM students and workers. (The 35 OECD member countries are democratic free market nations, mostly in the First World.)  To begin with, here are some statistics about the issue:
 
  • 57% of bachelor's degrees are earned by women, but only 18% of computer science degrees are earned by women
  • of all physics professors in the USA, only 14% are women
  • women hold less than 25% of STEM jobs in the USA
  • 28% of the world's researchers are women
  • STEM statistics for female visible minorities are even lower
  • in 2012 Yale published a study that proved physicists, chemists, and biologists are likely to view a young male scientist more favourably than a woman with the same qualifications, and that there is a major gender pay gap for female scientists IF they somehow manage to get hired instead of their male co-applicants  

As you can see, it has been well established by many independent researchers that there is a severe lack of women in STEM. Let's look at some of the explanations for this phenomenon:
 
  1. Social Anxiety or Herd Mentality. In the Yale study, many female university students cited high school stereotypes as a major reason for why they chose to enrol in liberal arts courses instead of STEM classes. The female students were anxious to apply to STEM university programs when they knew they could very well be one of the few women in the entire program, let alone in their courses. Let's look at a Canadian example: in Waterloo's Computer Science program, women made up only 12% of the program in 2011. That's a significant decrease in the female to male ratio when women made up over 18% of enrolment in 2001. And that's despite Waterloo's valiant efforts to support women in computer science. It is very hard to encourage more women to pursue STEM programs and break the trend when they must trust other women to also apply at the same time so that they won't feel isolated in a male-dominant space.
  2. Lack of Support and Role Models. This is mostly self-explanatory, but if girls aren't encouraged to pursue their STEM dreams, they might not even stop to consider STEM as a viable opportunity for their future. Teachers, professors, institutions and society need to help open the STEM door for women, and then they can make the decision whether or not they want to walk through. Confidence is another big part of the equation. For whatever reason, girls are less confident in math and science than boys. Studies have shown that when told that men score better in math tests than women, women tend to score worse; but when told that isn't true, both genders score equally well.
  3. Bias. Think about it from the point of view of a female physics PhD candidate: when you know for a fact that the tech industry is biased towards your male counterparts, that you'll face a greater degree of sexism in the workforce, that you'll probably be the only female scientist in your entire department, that you won't get pay equity... why would you try to pursue a job in STEM?
The irony is that up until university, high school girls in STEM classes perform exceedingly well: in most studies, it is revealed that they attain much higher grades than their male peers. Yet, researchers are witnessing a huge drop off with hardly any of these high-performing high school girls applying to STEM undergraduate programs.
But why does it matter? And what can we do about it? Check out Part 2 of my post, coming soon. I'll also talk about how private schools are helping encourage girls to take on and thrive in STEM subjects.

I highly recommend checking out this amazing info graphic on the subject: http://lifehacker.com/why-there-arent-more-women-in-tech-and-why-it-matters-1738317611


Sources:
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Where: Ontario, Canada

Who: A passionate Vice Principal and IB coordinator

Why: I love blogging about education in my spare time!

St. Jude's Academy is an IB School

St. Jude's Academy is an IB School

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