Next Gen Mentors: November Recap
Just like last time, we’ve uploaded the workshop as a 45 min video, as well as both PDFs from the session. We hope any of you who weren’t able to make it get a chance to go through the video together, or anyone who wants a refresher can check them out.
Downloads
Key Themes
The ‘Boy Crisis’
For decades, there has been no shortage of articles, news segments, research studies and books on the so-called boy crisis in education. Books from writers like Christina Hoff Sommers and Warren Farrell identify the problem as the ‘feminization’ of the school system, lack of boy-friendly classrooms or male role models, inadequate physical activity, etc. These are what anthropologist Clifford Geertz would describe as ‘thin’ interpretations of culture—surface-level analysis that don’t get at the roots of the problem.
If this caught your interest…
Read the Angelica Puzio’s short review of The Boy Crisis in the peer-reviewed journal, Boyhood Studies
Watch Niobe Way’s TED Talk, Why “boys will be boys” is a myth—and a harmful one at that
Boys as Relational
The reason that boys as relational learners remain overlooked often has to do with an enduring myth about boys’ lack of emotional capability. Contrary to the stereotype, adolescent boys possess a breadth and depth of emotional and relational abilities. So in order to discuss how to help boys succeed in school, we have to first understand them as deeply emotional, effortlessly observant, highly aware and inherently relational people—even when they sometimes appear to be the exact opposite.
If this caught your interest…
Read The trouble with boys by Stephen Frosh published in The British Psychological Society
Watch another TED Talk, Rita Pierson’s Every kid needs a champion
The Working Alliance
Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley have done multiple research studies on why and how boys succeed in school. They asked thousands of boys and their teachers to map out their most impactful pedagogies (method and practice of teaching). By and large, teachers responded by talking about the craft of their lessons. Boys, however, focused again and again on the qualities and personalities of the teachers themselves. Reichert and Hawley concluded: “Relationship is the very medium through which successful teaching and learning is performed.”
“Boys sustain their engagement in the classroom when they feel held in a positive, trusting relationship to their teacher. The establishment of this relationship precedes their engagement and subsequent achievement.” — Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley
A teaching relationship is distinct from friendships or parent-child relationships because it is a working alliance between students and educators in which they are working together towards the students’ mastery of the subject between them.
If this caught your interest…
Read I Can Learn From You: Boys as Relational Learners by Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley
Or accompanying articles (if you don’t have time to read a whole book!), How Strengthening Relationships with Boys Can Help Them Learn in KQED and Relational Strategies to Engage Boys in NAIS
Educators as Relationship Managers
In thousands of accounts of boys’ experiences in schools, Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley say they did not hear of a single instance in which a boy was able to independently repair a bad relationship with a teacher. This matters because mistakes happen—we say the wrong thing, or let stress or frustration or any other bad feelings get in the way of our relationship with a student. It’s important that we see ourselves as the relationship managers, uniquely responsible for monitoring and addressing relational tension.
If this caught your interest:
Read Relational Learning is the Key to Boys’ Succeeding at School from Next Gen Men’s Learnings & Unlearnings blog series
Watch These Things Take Time, a short film by Jerell Rosales about an eight-year-old boy experiencing heartbreak for the first time