Westminster has maintained a long tradition of single-gender homerooms, but the situation started to change last year when the school began combining them in 8th grade. Last year, on Fridays, homerooms would split up into coed groupings, each containing 10 to 12 kids and an advisor. The experiment was a success, so the school implemented daily coed homerooms for 8th graders. The 6th and 7th-grade homerooms remain single-gender. The administration implemented this change because interacting with peers every day, rather than just once a week, helps students develop friendships more quickly and become closer to one another. The faculty also made this adjustment to better prepare 8th graders for high school, where homerooms are mixed-gender rather than single-gender.
8th Grade Girls Grade Chair Catherine Zidow likes the idea of having coed homerooms meet daily this year and believes that the change is really helping form new friendships and communications. She thinks that having coed homerooms every day is a significant improvement over last year’s schedule of just one day a week, as spending more time with peers fosters closer relationships. “[With] proximity and time, you eventually become close with anyone,” she says. As a 7th and 8th grade English teacher, Zidow appreciates the bonding in different social settings. “There is also the fact that I’m also an English teacher and I teach some gender-separated classes [and] I see the unique and wonderful identity that comes with an English class that’s single-gendered. But I also see that starting to develop in homerooms too.”
8th Grade Boys Grade Chair Patrick Egan views the shift to daily coed homerooms as a pilot initiative with potential benefits for students, despite the logistical challenges it presents. “I think we’re just looking to take that energy . . . so we tried it out,” he says. “And, now I’ll be interested to see what advisors think, what students think because, you know, everything really is a pilot.”
English teacher Francisco Simbaña thinks that this change will really get the 8th graders ready for high school. “By the time [the 8th graders] get to the Upper School, there’s kind of like a knee-jerk reaction, and they don’t really know how to interact with each other,” he says. “And so there’s a lot of time spent trying to get girls and boys comfortable interacting with one another.” Simbaña also notes that the change has reduced logistical challenges by ensuring that the coed homerooms remain consistent throughout the year. “It was really hard to get into a rhythm of who you had in the classroom and to kind of get everyone on the same page or . . . understand who is in the classroom.”
Middle School PE Coach Travis Rutkiewicz sees both advantages and disadvantages of having coed homerooms every day. Rutkiewicz has observed differences in student behavior between single-gender and coed environments, noting that students often exhibit varying levels of expressiveness and liveliness depending on the setting. “In a single-gendered class, the class seems to be more outgoing. And, in the coed homerooms, the classes are a little more reserved and not as silly.” However, Rutkiewicz likes coed homerooms, as they help form friendships across genders. “Kind of like in the locker commons, it helps them to get their chitchat time and intermingle with each other.”
8th grade students have neutral opinions about the transition to coed homerooms, as they feel that the change has not significantly impacted their daily interactions. 8th grader Ariana Shahriari observes minimal interaction between genders in homeroom, as they don’t engage in much conversation with each other. “I have a lot of good friends, and the boys are nice. But we don’t really talk,” she says. “They have their half of the room. We have our half of the room.” 8th grader Hannah Sauerteig has mixed opinions, noting that while coed homerooms encourage interaction between genders, they may also lead to less meaningful conversations. “I am more neutral because I feel that, it does cause for more stiff conversations and not as deeper conversations. But I also feel you get to interact with the other gender as well.”