For 16-year-old Christine Basil, sharing a classroom with only girls allows her to be more comfortable at school ? from speaking up in class to deciding what to wear in the morning.
“I feel like I am at home, like I am with a part of my family,” said Christine, a senior at Mount de Sales Academy, a private Catholic high school in Catonsville.
Without sitting alongside boys, the students are less distracted, she said, and the uniform white polo shirt and blue skirt take the guesswork out of her daily wardrobe.
Classmate ElizabethBinette, 17, agreed.
“The girls can truly be themselves,” she said, saying that more girls feel encouraged to participate in class.
“You?re not embarrassed. We are all sisters.”
As many once single-sex schools nationwide become co-ed, several local single-sex private high schools are holding steadfast to their mission, school administrators said.
Keeping the sexes separate in the classroom removes some common adolescent distractions and allows for more focused programs, they said.
“In activities or academics, you can focus your programs toward a narrower population,” said Louis Heidrick, principal of Calvert Hall College High School, an all-boys college prep school in Baltimore.
“These are adolescent males, and that is one whole issue that is not an issue during the school day.”
Similarly, Curtis Turner, principal at Seton Keough High School in Baltimore, said girls learn differently than their male counterparts, tending to ask more conceptual rather than detail-oriented questions in class.
“The teaching is more effective in that sense,” he said.
However, a single-sex school is not without its challenges, such as ensuring social interactions between the sexes.
“It?s occasionally hard to find a prom date,” Christine said.
At Mount de Sales, the girls join boys from Mount St. Joseph High School in the Mount Club, which provides after-school social activities for students from both schools.Many schools also have mixers, dances, school plays and athletic events for boys and girls.
Heidrick said it?s incumbent on the single-sex school to be aware of the need for appropriate socialization with the opposite sex.
“I do think that you have to be conscious of that with an adolescent ? in our case male ? population,” he said.
