First off, I don't want this to turn into a thread to debate if feminism is good or not. This is a forum on feminism, everyone please ignore anyone who tries to start a flame war. I'm an engineering teacher. I believe that equality and fairness is good for everyone. I teach an introductory engineering class at UWM, this is the first true engineering class that students in engineering take. Last year, sadly I had no female students, we don't get many, this year I have three. I intend to treat them no differently than I would anyone else, but one of them seems to have come in with bad preconceptions about what she can do that I feel could use some help, but I don't want to be discriminatory in my attempts not to discriminate. So I'm seeking advice. On the first day I taught matlab, a technical computing program, the commands and equations needed were on the board and I walked around seeing that everyone was doing ok. Most of them had it open and were working along trying to solve the problems. When I got to her, she had her arms at her sides, and nothing open on the screen. I asked if she was having trouble opening matlab, and she just said "I can't do this". I did just what I would do with any student and suggested that she open matlab and just try to make one command execute then go from there, usually any student will at least try. I went around checking how everyone was doing again, solving issues, when I got back to her matlab was open but she wasn't typing and I asked her what she was having trouble with. She said she didn't know how to program and she wasn't good at math, I told her that the point of this was to teach her those things, she said she just wasn't good at computers and math, she was interested in engineering because she liked to be creative, and to solve problems, but didn't "know computers and math". So my best guess as a teacher is to just make it clear that I expect the same things from everyone by doing what I do with any student who "can't do it" which is telling them to try the next step and ask me questions if they get stuck. The thing that is different here is that most of the time these students who claim they can't do it appear to be really struggling and need to ask a lot of questions before they can move on. She did fine writing matlab code with little help, but only when told to try. I don't think it would help her conception that she is not suited to do technical and math related tasks to stand there pushing her the whole time while she could clearly see that everyone else is just moving along on their own, but I don't want to let her just quit when she has potential. Besides that, I don't know her story, it doesn't seem like she was pushed into engineering since she gave reasons she chose it, but who knows. If engineering is not for her that's fine, many people quit, I just don't want it to be because she thinks she is bad at math when she has demonstrated that she can do math just fine. What do you all think about it?
Help her at all costs. Make sure she passes. We need more engineers and especially females. When I was in school it seemed like engineering classes were way more difficult then they should have been. Trying to learn out of a text book is way more difficult then learning by doing practical engineering tasks. So many students quit because they get frustrated and feel defeated by the memorization and hypothetical exercises of texbooks. If possible show the practical applications of the textbook exercises so they can connect the actual with the hypothetical. Salute to you for being a teacher!
It sounds like you've been doing well so far. Obviously you can only do so much for her. If she doesn't want to learn then she's not going to learn, unfortunately. If you do all in your power to help her, and she still doesn't do well, that's not your fault.
