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How to Create a Boy-Friendly School
By Tobi Kibel Piatek | September 10, 2008
The subject of how boys are struggling in school and in life seems to come up regularly in the media. Two years ago, PBS ran a powerful documentary, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Lives of Boys, which “explores the emotional development of boys in
This week, there is an article in Newsweek, Struggling School Aged Boys. Though the medium is different, the message is the same. Many boys, (according to the research) an extraordinary percentage of them, are having emotional or behavioral problems that are affecting their lives, and their ability and willingness to stay in school. Many of the problems are severe enough to cause parents to consult a doctor or health care professional.
As an educator, parent, and citizen of the nation that leads the world in fatherless families, violence and failing boys, I can’t stop thinking about the faces, and the voices of the boys in the film, and the issues and problems of the boys I see and hear about every day. So, the questions keep playing in my head … How can we do a better job of raising our boys? And, what can Oregon educators do to create a boy friendly school - a place where boys feel safe, welcome and able to learn and be themselves?To clarify my thoughts, I contacted Marilyn Brown-Dikeos, whose program Empowered Learning includes strategies that teachers, mentors and parents can use to help boys feel safe and respected in the classroom. She offers the following insights and strategies.
1. Honor the risk of learning. Trying to learn something new can be risky for a boy who is afraid to fail. Help your student’s understand that learning is a process that includes trying, doing, and making mistakes. It is not about achieving perfection. Value a student’s attempts to master a new subject or skill. Celebrate effort and recognize even small accomplishments along the way.
2. Provide safe entry points to learning. Group learning and project based activities offer multiple entry points for students. The ability to choose a role or task which will allow him to work from his strength may help a boy feel confident enough to enter into an activity.
3. Allow students to self-evaluate. Many boys struggle in school because success and failure are tied up with their sense of themselves. A boy who gets a bad grade or fails a test is likely to feel stupid and embarrassed in front of his classmates. Rather than risk failing again, some boys simply stop trying. One way to work around this is to allow students to grade themselves according to the criteria you set. When they turn in a paper ask, “What grade do you think you earned?” Allow them to tell you how they might have done better. Remind a boy that understanding how to do better next time shows that he is learning.
4. Treat them with respect and kindness. Just because boys don’t show their emotions, we tend to treat them as if they aren’t there. In fact, research shows that boys are even more sensitive and more eager to please than girls. Treat them as if they are fragile. They are.
5. Provide opportunities for boys to talk about their feelings – through sports or chess or other games. Boys need to be reassured that their inner lives are NOT shameful, that play violence is not violence. Use their violent games and fantasies as a starting point for conversation or story writing.
6. Boys need to move around. Recess time is being eliminated as school days are shortened. Try to find ways to build action and motion into your activities and schedule.
7. Boys need to feel safe. They need an adult to talk to about bullies, fear, humiliation and their need to be protected. They also need an adult to show them that men are caring, compassionate and kind.
8. Offer opportunities for boys to resolve their own conflicts. Conflict resolution takes communication skills, the ability to listen, willingness to compromise, and often, creativity. It can help boys reflect on their actions, and see them from someone else’s point of view. Best of all, the ability to resolve a conflict without rage and aggression can result in friendship, something that no boy can succeed without. Related Resources: For more information about this subject, help for parents, and classroom ideas, visit the following websites
Raising Cain: Boys in Focus
http://www.pbs.org/opb/raisingcain/
The PBS Parents Guide to Understanding and Raising Boys
http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisingboys/index.html
Boys in School
How to help boys adjust to school and schools adjust to boys.
http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisingboys/school.html
Buy the Program
Raising Cain (DVD)
http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=2175911
Topics: Boy Friendly Schools, Creating a Positive, How to Help, RESOURCES, Relationship Strategy |
August 15th, 2009 at 7:14 am
ann duckworth
mayfieldga@bellsouth.net
The Male Crisis is more complex than many think. The Male Crisis is increasing in many countries. Our society is now entering into a much greater need for information age skills that require a much different manner of upbringing for boys.
This is the reversal - In the nineteenth century, we lived in a very physical world and one that required much strength and courage for boys and later men. This created a form of treatment from a young age to create this strength.
1. Boy children even less than a year old were (and are) given more aggressive treatment to make them tough to compete in the big physical world.
2. Boys were (and are) not given kind, stabilizing, nurturing, mental, emotional, social, verbal, interaction and other kind, caring treatment for fear of coddling the Male child.
3. Boys were (and are) by design not given love, honor, respect unless they display some form of achievement, status, image, etc.
All of this was designed to make boys tough.
Girls were (and are) given more protection from that big physical world, because it was very physical and bad then. Since girls did not have to be tough, girls could be(and are) given much kind, stabilizing, mental, emotional, social, verbal, interaction from a young age without regard to need for strength. Also since girls did not need to be strong, they were (and are) given love honor, respect simply for being girls. This protective treatment extended (and extends today) through adulthood.
Now, we are living in the information age where the needs to make a living have been “completely reversed”. The toughness, aggressive, neglectful treatment given boys is still in place even from infancy. This is creating higher average stress that impedes thinking, learning, and motivation to learn (mental reward received for mental work expended). It also creates higher activity in working class Males, less stability there - activity as stress relief –Middle/Upper class kids do not have this problem and higher muscle tension that inhibits handwriting skills and motivation to write. The lack of kind, caring mental, emotional, social, verbal interaction creates a tremendous lag in mental, emotional, social, and verbal skills. In addition this creates more wariness of social contact due to lack of accumulated skills and more aggression given to boys from a young age. This defensiveness also creates the Male Ego or defensive front boys, later men put on to help protect them from aggression they have received. This further impedes positive social interaction with significant others (teachers).
Girls on the “other hand” are now reaping a windfall of many fine information age skills. The much protection and care girls receive from infancy onward create lower average stress, ease of nature (less need for activity for stress relief), and lower muscle tension that makes handwriting easier, more neat, and more rewarding. The much kind, positive, stabilizing, verbal and other social interaction increase their mental, emotional, social, verbal, and academic skills along with a feeling of love and support as they use that instilled social knowledge in a school setting with teachers. Since girls were (and are) given love, honor, respect, (no need to be tough) simply for being girls, they have an almost assurance of good treatment in society through adulthood. This protection also allows for much more freedom of expression to both vent, gain further support, and more care. This is why girls mature faster than boys. These differences have been socially created.
Now in the information age and as society has become more unstable, more information dependent, and there is massive support for girls, girls are surging ahead big time. Recently there is much more allowed aggression allowed upon Males as more instability allows the valve of aggression on Males to increase, but the valve of protection is still left in place for girls.
Fathers are now unable to secure employment that is leaving boys and men to feel as second class citizens. Also there is the terribly allowed belief that boys not succeeding in school need more discipline or need to learn differently – more hands on training and active teaching. This will make it even harder on boys and poses more stereotyping of Males that such the activity levels are genetically based rather than environmentally produced. This could lead to a societal acceptance of a caste system where boys, later men will be trained and expected to perform more menial labor, while girls will be trained for more white collar positions. To top even that, boys have to generate their own feelings of self-worth, for they are only given love, honor, and respect on condition of sufficient achievement. Boys who are not succeeding in the classroom do not receive the essentials of self-worth; therefore, they must generate this through other areas such as sports, video games, etc.
As a result, boys are now falling far behind the girls in academics and later economically. I feel society in its over reliance on genetics and effort will completely drop the ball for boys until both boys and men begin to react and retaliate in mass in the only way they have been taught. For the sake of all, we need to begin showing everyone how our individual environments greatly affect our thinking, learning, and mental health. Then we can begin to help both girls and boys learn how to change and continually improve their lives.