Relationships Play Primary Role in Boys' Learning: Positive Relationships Should Come First in Efforts to Improve Boys' Learning and Engagement with School. Teachers Can Make the Difference

We begin our discussion with three poignant and illustrative anecdotes: Around a conference table with boys enrolled in an independent school in Toronto (a version of a private school in the U.S.), we are discussing when and how they respond positively to a teacher. Three of the boys, unalike physically or in their mannerisms, begin talking animatedly about their economics teacher who, one of them claims, ignited boys speak of this man with something like reverence. They describe the atmosphere in his classroom as somehow charged with importance. It's a one of them says, where you wouldn't think of acting teacher's presence, they explain, is not strict or commanding. elevated seriousness of his class seems to stem from the teacher's own seriousness about his subject. boys speak of his passion and the care he takes in responding to what they say and their written There is just something about one of the boys says. You would be ashamed not to do your work, your best work. Across the city, we are talking to a similar group of boys enrolled in a public school. discussion has turned to teachers the boys felt they could not respond to. One boy's face hardened noticeably when he described a hurtful encounter with a history teacher. boy, who described himself as frequently in trouble, had been sent out of class for a dress code violation: He was wearing a colored tee shirt under his code-required dress shirt. Since his outer shirt was in code and he felt the undershirt didn't really show, he was angry at being called out. As he stormed out into the hall, the teacher followed him and continued to berate him, concluding with You are such a punk. And, we asked, how did that make you feel? boy said with conviction, hate him. But, we persisted, you are still in the class, you have to work for him, right? boy said, not doing anything in that class. He can flunk me. They can kick me out. I'm not doing anything. In the course of a daylong workshop with students and teachers at a school outside of London in the U.K., a 17-year old boy recounted a French class in which he underperformed, didn't care for his teacher, and knew his teacher didn't care for boy reported disengaging from the class, and handing in partially prepared, sloppy work, which his teacher duly took in and awarded the failing marks it merited. By year's end, what had begun as wariness on the part of boy and teacher had devolved into mutual resentment and dislike. In the course of exchanges between the boy telling the story and the roomful of teachers who heard it, one teacher asked the boy, with some feeling, whether he didn't feel a responsibility to do what he could to repair the relationship. boy paused to reflect. Then said, suppose so. I can see that I was not easy to teach or to deal with -- but I was 13. When boys are not alright Amid growing concerns around the world about the prospects and performance of boys and men, a new, more dire thesis is emerging: We may have arrived at an end of men. Proponents ask whether postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? (Rosin, 2010). Greatly abetting if not outright causing this troubling downturn in male fortunes is their experience of school. With the American male dropout rate at or above 25% in many urban schools, underperformance in all disciplines and grade levels, and the consequent gap between male and female enrollment in colleges and graduate schools, demographers forecast a grim future for American males (Mortenson, 2011). In one cultural historian's bleak assessment, The evidence is overwhelming that boys of all ages are having trouble in schools. They are underachieving academically, acting out behaviorally, and disengaging psychologically (Kimmel, 2008, p. 71). Yet however troubling such claims may be about today's male students generally, those failures to engage in school and to achieve are neither universal nor normative. …

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