The lesson of the day was the Battle of Yorktown.
Robert Urkofsky stood at the head of the class with sixty-eight eyes focusing on his every move. He offered a question, and the classroom's thirty-four students jumped on it.
Hands shot up across the room. With each wrong answer, hands were brought down momentarily only to be then raised firmly with an accompanying "I've got it this time."
Some answers were met with boos, others laughs, but all was met with a "No" or a "Not quite" from Urkofsky. After ten minutes of frantic guessing, Urkofsky unburdened their minds
A resounding "oohh" filled the classroom.
This is just a normal class period in Urkofsky's eighth grade history class at Young Oak Kim Academy. Settled in the heart of Koreatown, the middle school opened its doors this past Septmber to 760 students from the surrounding areas.
The reasons why the current students transferred schools varied from the parents' request to problems at previous schools. But the one thing all students knew when they stepped through those doors on the first day of school was that Young Oak Kim Academy would be different.
They would no longer have classes with the opposite sex.
A 2005 study from Cambridge University found that single-gender classrooms effectively improved boys' scores in English and foreign language and girls' scores in math and science.
National Association for Single Sex Public Education's research found that 37 percent of boys in co-ed classes scored proficiently on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test versus 86 percent of boys in single-gender classrooms. Fifty-nine percent of girls in co-ed classroom were proficient on this test compared to 75 percent of girls at single-gender schools.
Leonard Sax of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education told the Los Angeles Times that the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 legalized single-gender classrooms in public schools. Since the act, the number of these schools has risen from 11 to 540.
Young Oak Kim Academy is the first of this type of school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. And it has been a transition for everybody.
Shambo Lerer, a sixth and eighth grade science teacher for both boys and girls says that the different genders had different reactions to their new environment. "The girls immediately felt comfortable, but the boys took a while. They are now improving while the girls have fallen off a bit over the course of the year."
Overall, Lerer rates the productivity of each gender as comparable. But the true benefit of the single-gender classroom is the ability to focus on educational tactics that work best for each gender.
"With the girls, you can give them many instructions at once and they will stay on task. Girls are more project-based, while the boys are structure-based," Lerer said.
Urkofsky, who works only with boys, now uses incentives to capture his students' attention. What he calls "brain breaks" are "kind of mandatory with male students."
Urkofsky usually chimes in with a brain break in the middle of the school's hour and forty minute periods. Students take a break from history and instead have silent fights or do other forms of role-play.
"They like some of the kookiest games. Some of the games you'd think only a third grader would like but no, they're just a group of goofy eighth graders together," Urkofsky said.
Urkofsky also noted that the comfortable environment of the single-gender classrooms has given his male students the confidence to speak in class. "There's a lot less shame and embarrassment about going to the front of the class and making presentations." Urkofsky said.
This confidence is particularly important in Urkofsky's class because he takes a more engaging approach to teaching history. Young Oak Kim Academy offers the History Alive curriculum. Instead of ingesting the material through textbooks, students bring the history alive through acting and games.
"That's why I like working with all boys because once they get through the first time, they'd throw their mother under a bus to do an act out now," Urkofsky said.
And the positive effects of the single gender classroom extend beyond the academic disciplines. Students are divided into multi-grade advisory groups. Sarah Sakr, the student president of the eighth grade for the girls' academy, said these groups only work because they are composed of students from the same sex.
"We don't have to worry about what people think of us because it's just us girls. We can understand each other, what we're going through, what's happening, those things," Sakr said.
Lerer said that the different learning environment coupled with the advisory groups has been beneficial to the students, particularly the eighth graders. Many transferred to Young Oak Kim Academy because of problems at other schools.
"They get a shot at their own eighth grade year. It's a new environment which is almost a shock to them, so it takes them longer to settle down," Lerer said. "Most have come to take ownership of it."
One student who is taking "ownership of it" is Yancy Ponce's daughter.
"My option was Virgil. She went there for a year and it didn't really go that good. So by the middle of the year, I had the opportunity to send her here so I decided to do that," said Ponce. "I think she's concentrating more now. She's doing way better than last year."
Urkofsky credits this change in the student's work to the involvement of their parents. "Overall, I would think that parents who took an extra effort out [to send their child here] are involved with the kid and the kid's got a good attitude," Urkofsky said.
But for many students, the transfer meant leaving friends and re-establishing themselves in a very new environment.
Many students, especially eighth graders, give Young Oak Kim Academy mixed reviews. "The good thing is we can concentrate more. The bad reason is we can't talk to [girls] anymore," said eighth grader Cristian Miranda.
"To be honest, I like the gender difference, but most people actually hate it," said Sakr.
Despite their reluctance to the shool, Urkofsky believes that, with a few exceptions, students are excelling in the single-gender environment.
"If I asked [the boys] right now if they missed girls, I think out of reflex they'd say yes, but if they really were reflective about it, they would still like the structure of it," Urkofsky said.
An Elvis impersonator, complete with funny faces.
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