by: Sister Dominic
Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails; that’s what little boys are made of. Why is it that this nursery rhyme from the late 19th century doesn’t ascribe to boys “sugar & spice and all things nice?” Are boys forever slated to be associated with slimy toads and mischief?
Where did this “BOYS” initiative originate?
Since SVDP School brought Dr. Michael Gurian to present to parents and to offer a teacher workshop, we’ve been looking at boys a little differently. The topic is timely for education.
The ever expanding area of brain research has been immensely impactful and beneficial in education. Current research, drawn largely from brain scans during periods of boys’ and girls’ mental and physical activity and inactivity, allows us to understand the differences between boys’ and girls’ brains as they develop biologically and psycho-emotionally, and this directly impacts how one thinks about teaching. While we admittedly are spending significant effort to learn about development specific to boys’ brains and how that differs from girls, we believe that we are serving 100% of our population – both boys and girls. The benefit to our boys is clear; but our girls also benefit from the enriched pedagogy and content that provide more exposures to those lessons that tend toward boy-brain strength, giving their own girl brains additional opportunities to make more connections. This is a win-win.
Also, at SVDP, though not unique to this school, the teachers and I have sometimes been challenged with answering what our approach to boys is: is it different from our approach to teaching and forming girls, ie do we really understand the needs of boys? When our good-hearted boys are impulsive or wiggly, are we able to discern when this is an acceptable boy behavior and when it is a call for greater self-mastery? Are boys’ identities being unjustly stunted when they too often hear the message that they need to better manage their behaviors? We are also sometimes challenged at SVDP on behalf of the boys who are brainy, or artistic, but not so much athletic. Not all boys take to throwing and catching a ball equally, and if we want to foster the true God-given identity for each child, then we need to ensure there is a place in the mainstream at SVDP for all of our boys. Does a boy, whose predominant gifts are off the field, have to wait until he gets to a bigger school, with a more diverse student population, until he can find his identity within the mainstream, and not on the social margins? Are we serving all of our boys to the best of our abilities and in conformity with current research? These are important questions to ask, and it takes time to explore answers and develop responses that can be integrated into a school program. There is much work to do here; the conversation has only just begun.
Finally, we believe that this is an important topic because we cannot deny that we are a vastly predominant female faculty. Although many/most of our teachers have raised boys, have brothers, are married, and otherwise have good life experience in association with boys and men, the fact remains that an intentional study on the academic and social-emotional needs of boys at various developmental stages, is an obvious choice.
What have teachers learned and what are they doing differently?
So far our teachers have had several opportunities to explore the research and consider its application. The workshop on September 27th was “the best professional development we’ve had,” testified several of our teachers. Spending time with Dr. Gurian, listening to his presentation, analyzing the research, drawing conclusions and applying it to our classrooms, has been fruitful. For example, Dr. Gurian proposes that “boy aggression” has a nurturing and maturing quality to it, and should not be equated with violence. When adults too quickly intervene in interactive physical play, out of anticipation for escalating violence, we are often imposing well-meaning, but mistaken, adult rules against the natural process of aggression-nurturance among boys. Boys, he says, will seek out pain such as in games or competitions, in order to push themselves or others through it, thereby building confidence and esteem as well as stamina and grit. On the contrary, girls are wired with significantly more mirror neurons, and when they see pain, they experience it in themselves through the mirror neurons, and will work to eradicate the pain, and to comfort the one she sees who is in pain. A predominantly female faculty supervising recess would be inclined to intervene to be sure everyone is playing nicely. However, since we have had these focused discussions, our watchfulness at recess, and our reduced unnecessary intervention, has been one of the quickest things to change across all grade levels. We are better equipped to distinguish rough play from meanness, exclusion, and bullying, and the benefits of the one and the detriment of the others.
In the classroom, we have enriched our pedagogy to better conform with what we have learned from Dr. Gurian. We learned that girls have vast amounts of white brain matter compared with boys, and this white matter works like a superhighway for her to make constant connections of concepts, words, and emotions. Everything in her brain connects, and all parts of the brain are connected to her verbal center, so processing and expressing verbally is where she shines. Even when a girl is “zoned out” her brain is lit up with activity on the brain scans. Most schools, SVDP included, often interpret high verbal processing skills with intelligence and success. (Incidentally, both boys and girls at SVDP score high on verbal skills on the STAR test, in part because the majority of our pedagogy is verbal-based). The boy brain, however, has much more gray matter than white matter, which makes for distinct areas of concentrated activity and focus. When a boy is “zoned out” he is really zoned out. Dr. Gurian showed scans of boys at rest, 10 minutes after a lecture began, and the only areas that were lit up were for managing breathing and digestion. While we found this humorous, we were duly horrified by its impact on learning. He gave each of the teachers a workbook of tested strategies to ensure that they know how to activate boys’ brains effectively before and during instruction. Implementing these strategies is part of the ongoing professional development for our teachers this year.
Related to strengthening pedagogy to conform with the latest brain research, our teachers have attended courses for professional development offered by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in past years, and more teachers will attend the class Mission Cognition, in January and February. Good brain-research brings out the nerd in all of us educators, and we have been implementing new practices in an ongoing way, based on current research. For example, the Mission Cognition class at DMNS suggests the strategy of well-timed brain breaks within the lesson to enable the student to adequately process a new concept. Repeating the information at key intervals within the week promotes movement of concepts and information from the short term memory to the long term memory.
Following, the one-day workshop with Dr. Gurian, the teachers and I have been reading the book Saving Our Sons, discussing the research and the application to teaching at individual grade levels. We will spend the second semester discussing the text as a whole faculty, and working toward school-wide norms and expectations relevant to teaching and formation.
Answering the question: What’s next? Are there other changes or discussions at hand?
Some questions that we would like to continue to explore as a community are looking at curriculum, pedagogy, and scheduling.
- As we noted, most schools are set up for the higher verbal processors to achieve the greatest success and to benefit most from verbal-based instruction. Notably, boys tend to achieve greater success when working from the area of the brain that is strong in spatial-mechanical thinking. Are there areas of curriculum that SVDP can expand that would emphasize the spatial-mechanical brain to better develop for both boys and girls?
- We noted that boys’ and girls’ brains are wired differently, especially in relation to verbal centers and emotional processing. Is there substantial brain-based research to indicate real benefit to gender-differentiated lessons in some content areas, and at some grade levels?
Join us beginning Wednesday, January 16th from 9:00am-10:15am as Mary Cohen facilitates a book discussion with parents on the same book, Saving Our Sons. Books are available for purchase for $20 in the school front office. The book on girls, using much of the same research but applied to raising and educating girls, The Minds of Girls, is also available for purchase in the school front office.
Dr. Michael Gurian writes a regular blog, for those who are interested in staying abreast of the topic. Please note the disclaimer that Dr. Gurian does not profess to embrace faith-based principles, and his opinion departs from Catholic moral teaching in some areas. However, I have found his research, which is unrelated to these opinions, to be honest.
