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Welcome
to the third edition of the Maine Boys Network e-newsletter. The Network's purpose
is to promote the health and successful development of all boys from
pre-adolescence through young adulthood by supporting their success in academic
settings. We do this in several ways.
Members
of the Maine Boys Network offer intensive and compelling workshops to schools
and parent groups focused on successful school-based and home-based strategies
for engaging boys in the classroom and fostering their love of learning. These
workshops combine the latest in boys' developmental research with proven approaches
that together give the adults in boys' lives the information they need to
connect to their male students and support their academic achievement.
Secondly,
the Maine Boys Network engages in research activities that chronicle the
experiences, challenges and successes boys and young men experience in school.
The data generated by this work offers a unique and invaluable look inside the
male school experience. Boys and young men openly describe the classroom tools
that engage them and the relationships that connect them to school and sustain
them. The Network takes this information and transforms it into practical,
concrete steps adults can employ to reach and teach boys and young men.
Thirdly,
the Maine Boys Network talks with the effective teachers that boys identify. We
meet with these teachers and record their strategies that lead to success. Like
the information gleaned from boys, the teachers' wisdom is also transformed
into educational formats that others can learn from.
In this issue, we will hear more from boys and young men
about what school is like for them. We will offer links to some cutting edge
work being done by others in the field. And, we will give you a taste of the
coming attractions being produced by the Maine Boys Network: webinars and
webisodes high lighting effective teachers and the methods they are using to
engage and teach boys. Enjoy the issue and feel free to pass it along to others
who can benefit.
For more information about
the Maine Boys Network, contact Boys to Men at boystomen@maine.rr.com, or Bernie
Hershberger at bhershbe@bowdoin.edu.
Thank you for your interest
in and effort towards supporting boys.
Layne Gregory, LCSW
Executive Director
Boys to Men
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 Webinar Series
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Beginning this fall, the
Maine Boys Network will offer many of its Regional Workshops as a series of
webinars presented to schools across Maine.
The workshops explore and address central issues facing boys today such as:
*Boys and Mental Health: What Schools Need to
know*Packaging Boyhood: Helping Boys Resist Media Stereotypes*Incorporating Choice in the Classroom Using
Layered Teaching
The Webinar Series will be
offered as an alternative to our in-person workshops and consists of a live,
interactive, online forum where participants are connected to each other and
the speaker from their personal or office computers. The webinar format saves
money and allows for easier accessibility by reducing travel time and costs. If you are interested in
hosting a webinar for your school this fall, please contact Andrew Richter at
Boys to Men: (207) 774-9994 or andrewb2m@maine.rr.com |
Guys Read
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Guys Read is a website that
has pulled together readings lists boys might be more prone to be interested
in. The site organizes books by theme and also has recommendations for specific
age groups. >> http://guysread.com
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A Young Man's Experience in School
by Nate Farnsworth, 22
I
graduated the top boy in my high school class. There were maybe five or six girls ahead of me in class rank, but I
never had a problem with that (actually I would have ar gued for weighted grades
at the time; looking back it didn't matter at all.) The girls ahead of me worked very hard, a
fact my friends and I often scornfully reminded them of. The disdain for effort--the much-discussed
'slacker' attitude inevitably took root in my group of high school friends,
even in some the highest achieving boys from our class. Essentially, school became a competitive game
to see who could get the best grades with the least amount of work. Obviously I did pretty well for myself
grade-wise, but I also managed to do little to no actual work. It was like punching time cards every week
but never actually showing up to work-in that the letter on the report card,
like a paycheck, was all we needed.
Some
of my male friends did not fare so well. One of my good friends, a kid I considered one of the smartest guys in
the school, dropped out the semester after he got a perfect score on the
SAT. He was dealing with a difficult
home environment at the time and has since gone on to be successful in college,
but it's hard to imagine how someone so bright could be turned so completely
off from school. And yet that situation
seemed par for the course in my town. Like me, he got good grades on tests and did homework when he felt like
it... he just didn't have parents who were willing to make sure he did
enough. Another friend of mine, who
prided himself on doing no homework, ended up with a midrange B average after
four years, which was pretty impressive considering how often he skipped both
class and assignments. The important
thing is the similarity between the three of us, and the fact that we popped up
across the spectrum in terms of academic success, when the three of us arguably
represented the 'smartest' boys in the school.
How
did I do so well, then? Of the three of
us, I did have the most demanding
parents, which is worth noting, but from an in-school perspective, I'd say it
came down to the teachers whom I worked with. One in particular, who taught a creative writing class, was someone I
really enjoyed working for. His free-form class let me write whatever I
wanted and submit it whenever I wanted, which was nice, and he did constantly praise my writing, which
fueled me to create more. Four years of
writing for him accelerated my intellectual development in enormous ways, and
also happened to inflate my grade point average in enormous ways as well. You see, we got a grade for each class every
quarter, and I took this independent creative writing class every quarter of my
high school career, start to finish. And
he gave me a '100' every time. Plus, I
had him for AP Language sophomore year, during which he gave me another four
'100s.' So that's twenty '100s' on my
transcript, thanks to one teacher. I
never did the math, but I'm guessing he boosted my final GPA by at least five
points, probably more. That being said,
I was producing hundreds and hundreds of pages of fiction, single-spaced and
tiny font. So I did put in hard work, but
it never felt like work--I hardly noticed the hours disappearing as I wrote. The two friends I mentioned above never found
something equivalent.
On
a final note, I'd like to offer the hypothesis that standardized testing and
the emphasis on results over practice and understanding can lead to mutant
competition among the smartest young boys when growing intellectually isn't the
prize. Intellectual-minded boys are just
as competitive as ones who aren't-it's just terrible to see boys coming out of
public schools all over the country who think winning the game means doing the
least amount of work. And yes, for smart
young boys of this generation, it will always be a game. We just need to make sure they're playing the
right game.
What
advice can I offer? Teachers who
encourage smart young guys to find something they're really good at and work on
it are important, but it's difficult for them to devote that amount of personal
attention to more than a handful of students. That being said, it seems to me that more independent, project-oriented
classes would allow these kids to channel their competitive drive against
themselves so to speak, where they can work to improve a skill they hopefully
love doing. Writing is a good example
from the arts, but independent projects in computer programming, music, film,
or even (god forbid) math-based games like chess or poker could be a great way
to engage boys. The emphasis should be
on creating, though. An independent
study where the kid simply learns about film production at an accelerated rate
misses the point. These boys need to be
creating something of their own that they can then look back on and use as a
stepping stone to the next level of mastery: creating and producing movies of
their own, for example, and getting feedback on what they make. In my opinion,
that creative process is essential to harnessing the imagination and focus of
boys in high school. |
College Gender Gap Appears to be Stabilizing with One Notable Exception
January 26, 2010 --
American Council on Education
It appears t he gender gap in higher education has reached a plateau for most groups except Hispanics, where the gap between men and women
is on the rise, ac cording to a new analysis by the American Councilon Education (ACE).
>>http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Search&template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=35353
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Educational Crisis Facing Young Men of Color
February 1, 2010 -- College Board Advocacy & Policy Center
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To Get More Men to Volunteer, Colleges Must Make Extra Effort
March 9, 2010 -- The Chronicle of Higher Education
College men participate in
campus activities at disproportionately low rates, but deliberate efforts to
recruit them can help, according to the findings of a two-year study of 14
institutions that was presented here on Tuesday at the annual conference of
Naspa-Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. >>
http://chronicle.com/article/To-Get-More-Men-to-Voluntee/64579/ |
Boys Trail Girls in Reading Across States
March 17, 2010 -- Education Week
A new study on gender differences in academic achievement, offering what
it calls "good news for girls and bad news for boys," finds that,
overall, male students in every state where data were available lag
behind females in reading, based on an analysis of recent state test
results. At the same time, in mathematics, a subject in which girls have
historically trailed, the percentages of both genders scoring
"proficient" or higher were roughly the same, with boys edging out girls
slightly in some states and girls posting somewhat stronger scores in
others.
>> http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/03/17/27gender.h29.html
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What the Morehouse Man Wears
October 19, 2009 -- Inside Higher Ed
Since he was named as
president of Morehouse College in 2007, Robert M. Franklin has
stressed the importance of defining education broadly, well beyond courses. He
has been talking about the social and ethical obligations of those who
are studying at the elite historically black college. Of late he has been
calling for students to have "five wells" -- to be "well read,
well spoken, well traveled, well dressed and well balanced." >> http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/19/morehouse |
What Men Need
March 31, 2010 -- Inside Higher Ed
Patrick White was vice
president and dean of the faculty at Saint Mary's College in Indiana, a women's
college, before he became president of Wabash College, one of the four
remaining four-year colleges in the United States that educate only men. >> http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/31/men |
The Boys Have Fallen Behind
March 27, 2010 -- The New York Times
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On The Bookshelf
A selection of recently published
books about boys and school
Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That's Leaving Them Behind
by Richard Whitmire
Whi le Whitmire spends some
time describing the gender gap in schools, he also attempts to explain some of
its causes. He believes part of the issue results from the realization that the
world has become an increasingly verbal place and boys in particular have not
responded to the higher expectations placed upon them in school. Among
Whitmire's recommendations, are to redouble efforts in elementary school to
encourage and support an earlier affinity for reading, provide more support for
literacy interventions in middle and high school, and make high school, in
particular, more relevant.
>>
http://www.amacombooks.org/book.cfm?isbn=9780814415344 |
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