By Ann Ross Westermann

Since the 1986 restructuring of Collegiate’s Mooreland Road campus, when the Girls and Boys Schools merged, Collegiate’s Middle School has maintained a system of gender-separate classes. During the four years of Middle School, students in grades 5-8 experience all-male or all-female classes, then transition to co-ed classes when they enter the Upper School as freshmen.

Collegiate began as the Collegiate School for Girls in 1915, opening its doors September 23 of that year on 1133 W. Franklin Street in downtown Richmond, with an enrollment of 75 students. In 1960, the Town School and the Country Day School merged and moved their two campuses to 103 N. Mooreland Road, the location of our main campus today. While the Lower School has always been coed, students in grades 5-12 attended either the Girls School or the Boys School after 1960. The current Middle School building (Flippen Hall) acted as the Girls School, and the current Upper School building (Pitt Hall) was the Boys School.

Current Head of the Middle School Charlie Blair, who has worked as an administrator, teacher, and coach at Collegiate since 1979, explained that “the two schools were really separate. When I first got here, we as teachers were not even allowed to walk through the Girls School.” Along the same lines, my mother, Townsend Westermann (‘88), notes that before the restructuring, she remembers the rules being “very strict. It was made very clear by teachers and administration that the Boys School was completely off-limits to the girls.”

Department pictures for the Girls and Boys School in the ‘85 Torch. Photo credit: Ann Ross Westermann.

This system remained in place until 1986, when the school restructured, “with grades K-4 remaining coed, grades 5-8 coordinate (boys and girls take classes separately, but in the same building) and grades 9-12 coed.” As explained in the 1986 Torch, “A majority of the administration’s efforts this year were put into reorganization for next year. The function of the two assistant heads was to work closely with the students on developing the best method of integrating the Boys and the Girls School. The main challenge was to establish a mutual respect and balance between the two schools, which would enable them to combine the best attributes of both.”

The implementation of this system required deep thought and debate, as it would change the dynamic of the school as a whole and how the Lower, Middle, and Upper Schools would function. Blair stated that “ideas began to change and thinking began to change around the experience our kids have, and our leadership believed that for our children to maintain in a single-sex setting all through their school was not in their best interest, so we restructured and became the Middle School and Upper School, and we occupied separate buildings at that point. This decision was made for 9-12 to be a co-ed environment, but that the Middle School would remain single-sex primarily because of the unusual nature of Middle School students and because of the tremendous developmental differences between girls and boys at this age. It felt like it was a great time to maintain that single-sex environment.”

The Torch one year later, in 1986, with each department split up by Middle and Upper School. Photo credit: Ann Ross Westermann.

Collegiate’s administration at that point—head of the Girls School Catharine Flippen, head of the Boys School Malcolm U. Pitt, Jr., head of the Lower School Elizabeth Burke, and headmistress Julia Williams—debated this for a very long time and considered outside research supporting both coed and single-sex education. Blair comments that, “You can argue this thing all day long, and there is all kinds of research that supports single-sex education and research that supports co-ed education. It is all about how you decide to carry it out. What we felt like was that in the Middle School years, particularly in 5th and 6th grades, the difference between boys and girls is so dramatic and with this, we got this opportunity to work with each gender in ways that maybe make it easier in single-sex environments.” He also said that the decision “was worth it. Being able to sit down with all boys and talk about how we treat one another and how we treat girls, and same with girls being able to have these conversations, it all adds to the community, comfort, and support that each kid should feel during Middle School. Overall, it created a more supportive environment and made it easier for kids to navigate through these four years.” Along these lines, the Middle School page of the school’s website states that, “our Middle Schoolers benefit from having most academic classes separate by gender, allowing teachers to focus intensively on the developmental and academic needs of each student.”

Ample research has been done concerning whether single-sex education or coed education is more beneficial to students. The National Education Association (NEA), the largest public school teacher interest group in the United States, writes that “single-gender education and the often-spirited dialogue surrounding it have raised a number of issues concerning the best manner to educate boys and girls.” Each school is different, and each one has different circumstances that affect the culture. Studies have been done through the NEA that further the single-sex education argument by saying that “when children learn with single-gender peers, they are more likely to attend to their studies, speak more openly in the classroom, and feel more encouraged to pursue their interests and achieve their fullest potential.” Cindy Yayan Xiong from the national Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA correspondingly claims that, “separate classes for girls and boys are seen as enabling teaching and learning and reducing achievement gaps. For girls, for example, single-sex education is viewed as a way to enable them to do better in math and science, opening up careers where females are underepresented.” She also writes that “single-sex education counters male-females stereotypes by ensuring that both sexes can take initiative in meeting challenges, assume leadership roles, and pursue activities that in co-educational settings often are seen as too ‘masculine’ for females or too ‘feminine’ for males.”

The Collegiate Middle School. Photo credit: Vlastik Svab.

On the other hand, researchers associated with Arizona State University argue against single-sex education by saying that, “the more time that male and female students spend apart, the more the stereotypes about the sexes are reinforced. Other disadvantages include the costs of training teachers to teach girls and boys differently and the resource demand of staffing both single-sex classes and coed classes at a time when resources are stretched very thin.” Carol Lynn Martin, an ASU School of Social and Family Dynamics professor, furthers this argument by stating that, “the cost of single-sex education is not only a burden on schools, but within society if children fail to learn to work with other-sex individuals.”

“School is preparation for adult life. How can boys and girls learn how to interact as equals in the workplace if they have no experience interacting as equals in school?” This question comes from former president of the American Psychological Association and psychology professor at Claremont McKenna College, Diane F. Halpern, PhD. Halpern admirably sums up the argument for single sex education with her deep research and numerous books on the topic.

The NEA represents public school teachers. Since Collegiate, along with many other institutions in the Richmond area, is a private school, we are given the opportunity to make these kind of decisions to put in place at our institution, with the main goal being the development of the best education for each student.

Students at Collegiate have a variety of opinions on gender-separate education. When asked about whether he liked having gender-separate classes, current 8th grader (and my brother), Robert W. (‘22) said, “When I am in a class with another girl, which happens in my math and arts classes, the teacher will sometimes make us pair up with another girl for an activity, and it is very awkward, because I am so used to being in classes with only boys.”

“I think being separated is good in Middle School, but at the same time, it makes boy-girl relationships awkward in the beginning of Upper School,” writes Molly Woods (‘22). Both students share the same feeling about the gender separation in the Middle School and agree that when put in situations or when interacting with the other gender, it can be uncomfortable.

For some rising freshmen, the transition from Middle to Upper school is smooth, but for others it can be a challenge transitioning to coed classes. Nora Willett (‘21) was a new student to Collegiate as an 8th grader and says that she, “generally liked having all-female classes during Middle School, because I got to know my peers really well, and it was easier to concentrate. I liked having one or two classes combined [co-ed], but those were generally more difficult to focus in, and I would not accomplish as much.” She also says that “the separation was definitely weird, because as a new student, I didn’t get to know the entire class when I came to Collegiate, mostly just the girls.” Likewise, Laura Fairlamb (‘19), who has been at Collegiate since Kindergarten, comments that “it was definitely uncomfortable at first in Upper School, because I did not really know any of the boys in my classes, as I had not seen them or interacted with them in four years.”

All-female class in the Middle School. Photo courtesy of Collegiate School.

The transition to Upper school was an “awkward and weird time” for current junior and fellow Match contributor Claire Deal (‘19), as it is for many others. During Middle School, there is not much interaction between boys and girls, and except for time spent in the cafeteria or on the football field for recess, the genders remain fairly separate. Because of this, many girls and boys do not get to know the opposite gender members of their grade, so when students get to the Upper School, they see a great deal of unfamiliar faces and meet many people, most of whom have been with them since Kindergarten but have been overlooked in the gender-separated years of Middle School.

In Middle School, bodies are changing, personalities are changing, and thoughts are changing. Annie Edwards (‘19), a new student to Collegiate in 8th grade, says that “Adjusting to an entirely different school was challenging to begin with, especially with the fact that I came from a middle school [Short Pump Middle School] that was coed. I think Middle School is difficult for everyone, because you are starting to develop a social life and participate in all these different activities. It is a whole new experience and you are also starting to understand yourself as a person.” Match contributor, Caroline Curtis (‘19) adds that “you are still trying to figure out who you are, you are trying to figure out what you like and what you don’t like, and you are just trying to fit in with everyone else.”

In a study of more than 2,200 mothers and their children, ranging from infants to adults, Researchers from ASU “found that mothers of middle-school children, between 12 and 14 years, were most stressed and depressed, while mothers of infants and adults had much better well-being.” ASU Foundation Professor, Suniya Luthar, explains that “as kids approach puberty, the challenges of parenting are far more complex, and the stakes of ‘things going wrong’ are far greater.”

Elise Cappella, an associate professor of applied psychology at New York University, furthers this argument by stating in an NPR article that, “Early adolescence is a time of major growth. Brain development occurs at a rapid pace. Young people are experiencing physiological changes (puberty), social changes (peer group influence), and personal changes (identity development).” Carl E. Pickhardt, PhD, writes that many children under the age of nine experience a “simpler, sheltered, more secure period of early life.” However, between the ages of nine and thirteen, “the young person starts detaching and differentiating from childhood and parents in order to start developing more independence and individuality.”

It is often that parents see differences in their own children, as they tend to depend on them less and might feel more distant at times. My own mother, alumna Townsend Westermann (‘88), saw the most change in “9th grade, both you (Ann Ross) and [my sister] Ellie (‘16) became more independent. I think mostly because of the school, you guys could have your phones, and there were more opportunities with clubs and other activities. The school gave you independence, but with some restrictions. This independence taught both of you how to make good choices.”

Teachers’ perspectives on coed and single-sex education can vary depending on the teacher’s experience. Match advisor and Upper School English teacher Vlastik Svab has taught English 9 for eleven years, and observes that each year, “boys and girls will always sit on separate sides of the classroom.” He does in fact, assign seats in his classes, “partially to learn names and partially to divide the boys and girls up. However, this only lasts for the first half of the year, and then right as the second semester begins, I tell them they can sit where they want, and they immediately sit by gender.” Svab explained that many students have told him that “both boys and girls are less likely to speak up in a coed classroom, because they don’t want to feel embarrassed.” Svab has taught all-female, all-male, and coed classes. He notices that there are different dynamics for each one, but ultimately says “coed education makes more sense from my experience, because life is coed, and learning how to deal with students of all kinds and people of all kinds is a skill you need in life.”

Middle School Assembly. Photo Courtesy of Collegiate School.

Upper School history teacher Ashley Sipe notes that “when freshmen start out the year, they sit on opposite sides of the room, and they are completely separated.” When asked which system she thinks is more beneficial to each gender, Sipe responded that “It really depends on the student. There are some who do learn better in gender specific environments. Especially when I am doing writing and research, I have found that a lot of times, girls are more comfortable sharing their papers with girls, and boys are more comfortable sharing with boys. From teaching in an all-girls school [St. Gertrude’s], I saw girls be more vocal and participatory in class. As the girls get older, they definitely get used to the coed environment, especially by junior and senior year. I don’t think they should be separate for too long, and the system we have now is great, that you get to experience that and have those rough years of Middle School separate and then come together and have time to adjust.”

Isabella Vita (19’) says that she “liked having coed classes, because when I was a freshmen, it was super awkward. I would rather have both genders in a class. I think it is better with coed classes because it mixes it up.” Vita also explained that “it is funny because now, even as a junior, so many of my classes are still split up, like they were freshmen year. Boys will sit on one side, and girls will sit on the other.” Edwards adds that “I felt more comfortable having girls in my class, and it made my transition to the school more easy and relaxed.” Current junior and Match writer Kate Johnston (‘19), says that when she came to Collegiate in eighth grade, “I got to know all the girls, but I did not know a single guy in our grade, so when I came to the Upper School, I did not know many of the guys.”

Head of Middle School Charlie Blair was asked whether he thinks this system of gender-separate classes will remain in place, or if it is likely to change in the future. He says that, “I think that if we are going to be a vital institution and one that continues to grow and meet the needs of its students, it may do lots of different things. We should be looking at these things and considering them and evaluating them to see what it is that best meets the needs of our students. I am not able to say that I can anticipate in five years it will be gone. Everything should be questioned; everything throughout the school should be thought of and considered. That helps us to reflect on our school and see what is best.”

Featured image credit: Vlastik Svab.