"Boys can make the grade, if they're not bored"

Parent Cafe
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<p>The only thing about education is that the “one size fits all” approach that was originally invented to train future factory workers is no longer a useful paradigm.</p>

<p>It’s interesting that post-secondary education, which is paid for all or in part by the consumers of the educational service, is full of creative alternatives and options for all sorts of students, while most pre-college kids in this country are forced into a government-mandated system without real choice. When the provider of goods or services has no economic relationship with the consumer of those services, the provider ends up trying to please individuals or organizations other than the customer. So, why does choice work so well for college, but is anathema to the dominant primary and secondary educational systems, and why are public school systems largely forced to spend their time pleasing the state and the teacher’s unions instead of the parents of the kids in the schools?</p>

<p>I would argue that the US collegiate “system” is at least one of the two or three best in the world, while the primary and secondary is no better than average (at best) among industrialized nations. Colleges are all about choice, primary and secondary public education is all about norms and standardization. </p>

<p>(Don’t even start me on the bizarre obsession with standardized subject-matter testing in the US. Just don’t.)</p>

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<p>I think it’s important, having seen a lot of these “boy” threads, that people identify whether they have boys only or boys and girls when they post. Having had one girl, and one boy, I find that some of it is the school’s fault and some of it is a problem with males in America and their role models. If my boy child is bored, what gives him the right to have disdain for the system? My girl child was bored, she just spent her time tutoring her classmates because her social skills were more advanced at the same age.</p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong. My girl child’s desire to participate in and sustain a system may, if my experience proves me right, cause her to make more sacrifices in life than does my boy. It’s not always a great trait. But the boys, IMO, can benefit from some understanding of bowing your head to a collective, to collaboration, to sacrificing some of our holy American spirit to the betterment of the group.</p>

<p>And don’t get me wrong. I absolutely worship my boy child and find him to be a complete delight. I am looking at this from the perspective of what is good for our society.</p>

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<p>this year, i’ve become aware of “differential education.” on a recent barnes and noble visit, i noticed numerous books on the topic. perhaps this method will become more and more widely used in the schools due to nclb and state assessments. </p>

<p>my d benefited greatly this year from “differential” instruction. her teacher embraced the method and I can see how helpful it was to my d.</p>

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<p>I understand what you mean, and civilizing young males is a major social responsibility of parents, but I’m not entirely comfortable with your closing sentence here. I would like to see education include as a goal to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes. I think a good society is an outcome of helping young people become good citizens, not the goal, and has nothing to do with “bowing your head to a collective.” The collective may or may not be making good choices, and there is nothing graven in stone that the majority is always right. I always encourage young people to do what is right, regardless of what others think. What you are getting at in part, which I agree with completely, is that we all have to learn to fit into society to the extent that society is acting in an ethically positive or at worst neutral way. There is no ethical violation involved in being asked to wait in line in the cafeteria, or not talking when a lecture is in process.</p>

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<p>Well, here’s my 2cents from having taught First and Second Grades in a poorly funded public school for a decade (region’s economic industry had collapsed; no tax base in the community; one-thirds each: AA, Latino, Caucasian).</p>

<p>The pedagogy is in place, and the teachers know it either from teachers college (the younger teachers) or in-service training (the Maidenform Mafia, as I liked to think of us). All the teachers were well-versed and enthused about Howard Gardner, Fountas and Pinnell, Guided Reading, Four Blocks, brain theory, you name it. I perceived a dedicated core of teachers (the few slackers came in and out like revolving doors, the work was too hard). Teachers were heartfelt, realistic and intelligent; parents, although too young often (from teen pregancies, etc) loved their kids and in some cases read with them nightly, doing their very best with no resources, to put their own kids in a better position than themselves someday. </p>

<p>Two things helped me implement the progressive methods, including some mentioned by posters above: student-teacher ratio and a teacher’s aide. </p>

<ol>
<li>Ratio: A pilot federal grant that came out of Bill Clinton’s (yes, Bill) White House directly to identified, resource-poor elementary schools. While each district could decide precisely how to use it, it could ONLY be used to reduce student:teacher ratio. That has long been established by research to be a key factor for educational success, trumping building newness, computers, and more.</li>
</ol>

<p>Our particular district used it all to create 3 new teacher positions for our building of 500 (which was only K-2, l0 classes of each). In one swoop, every teacher’s class of 30+ students was reduced and capped at 20. With absences, this meant that we normally taught around 17 or 18 students daily, which nearly equated to area private schools.</p>

<p>From that moment on, it was possible to read students’ individual compositions, have individual conferences, and get to know their personal problems with enough time to chase down social workers for help and follow it through. When Hillary came to our region, just before she announced for the Senate, I was near her in a crowd, and hollered, “Thank Bill for the ratio funding…” She wheeled around, reversed directions in the crowd to hear more feedback. (BTW, she REALLY knows her education policy inside-out, exceptionally well-informed about education issues, knew what was important from what was just trendy, IMHO.) </p>

<ol>
<li>Teacher Aides: My most powerful teaching hour each day was the one hour when a teacher’s aide came into my classroom. This is important because all of the new pedagogies for guided reading, hands-on math, learning style variations, integrating special needs,etc. presume the young children are working in smaller groups, and rarely in whole-class settings. Children that young,however, (ages 5-7, K-2) have many social maturation needs and dependencies on adults for organization. So you can’t just leave them alone or in small groups at a center with assignments to do. By Third Grade they get better at this, by the way, even late second grade. When my training said to “circulate” I did, but wherever my attention wasn’t, that’s where the kids were offtask or falling apart. Some evenings, I planned the day so well that it was fail-proof and all the cut-out and hands-on materials were there seamlessly, but those evenings ended up taking me 4 hours at home, to set up 6 classroom hours. On my best days, I did just that, but sometimes I just couldn’t. </li>
</ol>

<p>But the teaching in the room all became GREAT iwhenever my teachers’ aide walked in. I planned for her presence accordingly, saving the most challenging lesson for her hour. Sometimes she took on the brightest group of readers, freeing me to support the “gray area” or weakest ones, always in small groups; other times, we reversed. Sometimes she circulated to the math centers and made sure kids were on-task and not eating the manipulatives. As she left, she set up materials into 20 little cups so I could put them out in moments and not lose class momentum, so even in her wake, things were better.</p>

<p>If one child was a move-around kid (yes, always male) she could take him right under her wing and circulate WITH him, so he kept learning but could move more and get his ya-yas out, thus was noticeably better for the whole rest of the day. She was another set of eyes in the room, so kids could move about more freely and not hurt themselves or turn over materials, creating more commotions to be cleaned up. The distraction factor was OKAY if there were two adults in the room, but I had to establish too many restrictive protocols when I was the only one there. (remember, the kids are poor, not well rested from the previous night, in general). </p>

<p>My teacher’s aide was GOLD. And she only had an Associates degree (some were just capable high school grads with “some” college, but parental experience generally). They only cost the district $8.50 per hour; they were hired at 35 hours weekly, so no benefits paid. The district depended on the fact that lots of single parents want these jobs for the excellent hours relative to their own children’s schedules.</p>

<p>Unfortunately for me, she served three classrooms daily, and handled lunchroom duties. So I got her only for a precious hour. On occasion, the principal raided our aides for other building tasks (serving food at school functions, holiday parties…) with little or no advance warning to us, wrecking the day’s best lessons. This was actually a teacher contract violation, btw.</p>

<p>In the parent community, most people asked, “You have an aide, don’t you?” because they were popular and part of the town. What nobody knew is that they only served one hour in their child’s classroom. So, if you have an aide in your building, the important question to ask is, “how many hours is s/he in my kid’s classroom” to truly understand whether your child is being well-served.</p>

<p>It’s not that I didn’t try to use all the other pedagogies all the rest of the day. I did. But to me, the other hours were mere approximations compared with when there was another adult in the room. I managed her well, didn’t relegate her to a desk to mark worksheets (I did those at home nightly), and gave her all the praise and motivation in the world.</p>

<p>There were also NO discipline issues to handle during her hour, in a school riddled with discipline issues, and a young VP hired as a newly created job, just to address discipline from her office.</p>

<p>I ended up feeling that the best use of scarce district money would be to hire more aides, rather than administrators. Then each teacher could have more classroom hours with an aide, thus could implement their progressive training more effectively throughout the day.</p>

<p>As for the training, I felt we were over-trained. Every time there was a Professional Development day, another cheerful person from a university appeared before an exhausted faculty with another binder of “great stuff” we should implement. They thought we were intransigent not to be more excited about their new pedagogies, but many of these are created by universities with small groups, not whole classrooms, to manage, so the actual lessons fall apart in the classroom when the student body is too large or the ratio wrong. </p>

<p>I think the Teachers Aides were the best money and enabled the best teaching, but with their modest social status they were overlooked as a “secret weapon” for really using the progressive training given to the teachers.</p>

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<p>Thank you for your excellent post. </p>

<p>I think spending scarce district money on practically anything other than administrators would be a good idea…</p>

<p>Random thoughts:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>I swear that my elementary school had a principal, custodian, secretary, part-time nurse, and the cafeteria ladies. My kids’ public elementary school had an office block of 8-10 rooms, and at least 15 non-teacher employees. My kids’ school is about 50% bigger than mine. Does anyone else remember this from the Good Olde Days in the 60s, or am I guilty of a selective memory? It sure seems like the teacher to non-teacher school employee ratio has gone from 5:1 to 2:1.</p></li>
<li><p>When I was a lad my mother went back to college and then started teaching when I was 12 (scandalizing the other mothers in the neighborhood, and making mom something of a pariah). She immediately recruited parent volunteers to work in her classroom so she could have some relief from the 30+ student load. It was so successful that the program was adopted district-wide to huge acclaim. Not. Some parent complained that, “I pay taxes for a trained teacher to teach my kid, not some other parent.” The principal then bravely banned parents from the classrooms in the whole school. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>My kids went to a private school for five years. I worked as a volunteer math aide in 5th grade for two years, and a volunteer computer aide for a year. The classrooms were full of parent volunteers and a few parent-paid-aides. (Of course, at the private school every family was expected to supply 40 hours of volunteer time a year, or write a big check.) Do most public schools allow parents to volunteer these days, or is it restricted to paid aides?</p>

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<p>

Agree. Agree. Agree. Another way to handle it is what a teacher friend’s district uses, Tandem Teaching, where two teachers combine two classes & work as a teaching unit. Even a non-teacher like me, who knows the difference another adult can make in a brownie troop meeting, fully appreciates this. Why keep piling on the training & curriculum changes when the most obvious problem is overlooked? I also remember the huge difference a tacher’s aide would have on Sunday school classes when I taught those.</p>

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You are very wise!</p>

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<p>Public schools have parent volunteers too, I just came from my s 5th grade class. the teachers don’t have classroom volunteers as much- either public or private- some is that teachers don’t often utilize them well or some parents can’t help. then there is the whole privacy issue- you can’t see how another child is doing…
On the boy and medication issue, I think boys are medicated so much because the school system these days is how it is. The boys don’t learn the same way. I heard the president of the independent schools a few years back. He talked about how we are still teaching the way they did in the 1800’s and the world has changed dramatically. His feeling was that if schools didn’t change, they would be replaced. I can’t say I disagree but as much as private schools have the ability to change sooner because of less bureaucracy, public schools seem to often be at the forefront of change.</p>

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<p>WashDad - of course I don’t mean becoming mindless and slavish followers of the unethical:). I just mean learning to put up with stuff that’s boring sometimes, and learning to sit still sometimes, and learning not to sit in the back of the class making sarcastic comments. And learning that the system can be improved from within on occasion, and that just because someone isn’t going as fast as you like or setting up competitions doesn’t mean it’s all stupid.</p>

<p>Just like girls should be encouraged to put themselves on the line and speak out and stand up if they are reluctant. I was a girl who put herself out there. It certainly wasn’t a pleasant place to be 35 years ago, and still can take a lot of guts. But a certain disdain for society is more institutionalized in the popular culture now, and I wonder if boys get more props from their peers for acting out and opting out than they used to.</p>

<p>And of course, my kids have gone to small private schools, so much of what gets blamed for boy bad behaviour is removed in our case, and although my son does just fine, I still see the difference in his relationship to school, and the system of school, from his sister’s relationship to it. And I can see that while my daughter’s mode has its strengths and weakness, so does his.</p>

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<p>Thank you for your very enlightening post, paying3tuitions.</p>

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<p>Alumother says:

</p>

<p>Sure, many boys can learn that stuff in school - the problem is that for too many that’s about all they are expected to learn.</p>

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<p>My kids went to an alternative private school where the methods that paying3tuitions discussed were the complete philosophy of the school. Classes of 15 kids or so until 7th grade, then up to 20. Up to 3 teachers for the primary grades, and a main teacher and an assistant for all other classes. LOTS of moving around. Class time much less than average. Very little graded work, and none until 5th grade. Camping trips. Woodshop as a class. Huge fields - well, large areas of dirt:) - to play in.</p>

<p>And still, still, it was more often the boys who refused to engage. There were always the “nerdy” boys who were extremely engaged. Then there were the “nerdy” girls, also extremely engaged. Then there were the “highly academic” girls - engaged in class and also in the social system. Then there were the boys. Even the “highly academic” boys were more sarcastic and less enthusiastic than their peer girls. The “non-highly-academic” girls for the most part stayed engaged at the social level. The “non-highly-academic” boys caused more disruption in the classroom, even this kind of classroom, than their peer girls.</p>

<p>I never minded the physical moving around. And this school could accomodate it pretty well. It was the presumed right not to have to buy in to the system, and the apparent lack of enjoyment of helping others that the girls got, that’s what I can’t quite figure out. It bothers me. And I have, as I said, a boy child. Whom I adore. </p>

<p>If I try to get scientific, maybe the boy gene still expects to have to go to war and to spear animals. Maybe we still evolve for that. I don’t know. I certainly don’t want to get rid of boys:).</p>

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<p>Paying3, I enjoyed your post too. We had the same problem in our elem school, aids that were around for far too few hours. In first grade my son went to a third grade classroom for math, it worked great, the second grade teacher expected him to do projects on his own. He just wasn’t capable of it. </p>

<p>WashDad, our kids elementary school has quite a few non-teachers. Principal, VP, magnet coordinator, social worker, part time psychologist, nurse, part time speech therapist, a secretary, a security guard, and at least two or three custodians.</p>

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<p>It’s something so subtle – it’s much more than moving around – and I say this having boys at an all-boys school (and I actually worked in the library there for a year, many years ago - wow, that was an eye-opener).</p>

<p>But any mom, spending time at a successful all-boys school, well, you’d notice something very different too. (Can you tell I’m not a pedagogy expert?) This school is just different in many ways from the traditional, female-dominated education world. </p>

<p>I can’t really speak to the long-term outcome of it, because this particular MS/HS already has a higher than average performing student. But I can’t help but wonder what the results would be if you took the super high-risk males of the population and put them in this type of school.</p>

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<p>weenie, I agree with you about gender specific education. Both of my sons have gone through an all male high school, and it’s just different. I remember very clearly meeting the Director of Admissions, and he talked about how this school was different. His grandfather, father and sons had all attended – it was and is a very traditional school, in many ways. One comment that stuck in my mind was something about taking them in as freshman, working with them, and turning out fine young men as “School X graduates.” They’ve been doing this for a hundred years, and they know what to do – the process works.</p>

<p>It is a school with a sense of history – certain traditions are reserved for seniors. They work toward the day that they can participate in these rituals. I think it’s almost tribal in some ways. Boys seem to need to be part of a group, with a well-defined hierarchy. They are active, and can be challenging to teach. But they respond to challenges, and seem to like to be treated like men, not handled too gently. Freshman are nurtured and seniors are expected to lead. Over the course of four years, they really do grow into young men.</p>

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<p>^ Sjmom, wonderful post. I totally see those things in my sons’ HS (which actually runs 7 - 12 grade) too.</p>

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<p>

I agree. I read a study once that showed that the two characteristics that were statistically gender-specific are aggression and hierarchical status-ranking. I think girls can collaborate without having to know who is boss. I think boys need the hierarchy. That’s why they dis teachers who they think are less able. That’s why they are less inclined to tutor others without urging. That’s why they like competitions, it allows for status-ranking. And I say this without rancor. The study was published in Foreign Affairs.</p>

<p>So. It’s another question altogether as to whether we as the most economically-advantaged country in the world ought to be trying to nudge boys away from hierarchical status-ranking toward cooperation. Perhaps it is not possible. Perhaps it is not a good idea. However, I believe that this is the core of the issue. Boys, you have to make it clear who is boss, either by being a clearly fabulous teacher, or by enforcement of rules. And the more bored they get the more they want to default to the status-ranking behaviour. Hence the way boys’ schools work. Hence my son’s true amazement at the way his sister and her friends talk about their social issues and their feelings. True amazement. And he’s on the gentler side of boys.</p>

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<p>The private school my sons used to go to had coed classes in K-6, single-gender classes in middle school, and coed again in high school. The students LOVED the single-gender years. So did the parents. I can see a lot to be gained from having single-gender classes within the same school.</p>

<p>I’ve seen this sort of thing happen on Boy Scout campouts. When a mom is present, the tone of the outing changes. And I support mothers being involved in Scouts, but there is no denying that the boys act differently and it just feels better when no women are present. This even happened with the two coolest Assistant Scoutmaster moms in the troop. (“I don’t want moms on outings.” “How about Mrs. X?” “Mrs. X is cool, she doesn’t act like a mom.”) It must be hardwired at some level I don’t understand.</p>

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<p>

Alumother, I understand what you are saying but I really disagree with it. I think it works better to teach kids based on who they are, rather than to try to make them into something else. I see it as something similar to forcing a left-hander to write with his/her right hand. It just makes sense to me to recognize and accept gender differences for what they are, and work to maximize each students’ experience based on that. There will be exceptions. Not all girls are feeling/empath/sharing types (my oldest MSEE sister, for one) and not all boys enjoy competition. But if you look at the general learning styles, I see that these trends hold true. It has nothing to do with better or worse, smart vs not-smart, leader vs follower. It’s just utilizing what works best in order to achieve the best outcome. jmo</p>

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<p>

I think it is possible, depending on whether the cooperation is necessary. If boys see that the greatest effect can be acquired from cooperation, you just will not get better team players than boys. But if there is even a whiff of ‘cooperation for cooperation’s sake’, where roles are not terribly well-defined, and where members must “participate” in some project that can be done by only one person, interested boys will take over, leaving the rest to fall away in disinterest.</p>

<p>Alumother has a very good point about whether boys have the right to disdain the system merely because they are bored. I think they do not have this right. If a teacher, as a representative of the system, is “dissed” by a boy just because the boy is bored, the boy is wrong and needs to understand his error. The way I have found to reach boys is to instill in them a sense of duty. When a boy knows it is his duty to do something, and that to the extent he can dispatch his duty he proves his quality as a man, the boy rises to the challenge and does his duty however boring it is. Somewhere along the line he experiences his own potency and the duty loses its boredom. It helps to have a man who the boy respects assigning the duty. If that man honors the boy for attacking the duty, and continues to do so as the boy develops, the boy will continue his pursuit of the duty without losing focus.</p>

<p>I do not think any of this is formulaic, mind you. There are no guarantees. But I have several boys at various stages of development, from age three to eighteen. I have noticed when I apply the things mentioned above, also adding a bit of muscle to the job for the youngest boys, they apply themselves vigorously to whatever duty I set before them.</p>

<p>Life is filled with boredom. Work, fatherhood, marriage are sometimes nothing but boredom. The sooner a boy learns that boredom gives him no right to “check out”, the better and more effective he will be at making his life a good life.</p>