It's a Boy Thing

In this discussion, Bags, Chris and a Emma Stilwell, the Christ's College librarian examine the reported declining reading habits of adolescent boys and explore strategies we've employed successfully to reverse this trend. We highlight that while students value approachable teachers who connect with them, many struggle with sustained focus due to the omnipresence of digital distractions and AI. We...

Change is an inherent feature of our education system, but it has to be said that the changes have been coming thick and fast in recent years. Our Curriculum was undergoing what is euphemistically described as a 'refresh' over the last few years, only for us to find that it's now in the bin, to be replaced by a new 'revision'. Similarly our national assessment system, NCEA, which is in the middle...

Bags and Chris, in a moment of unexpected synchronicity, both have a class that is uncannily silent. We ask a question: crickets. They're doing good work, they're great young men - but as a group: diabolical. We explore the possible precursors for this and we look at what action we can take to get the boys talking.

In the third week of the school year, Chris and Gena explored the new year as a fresh start, including Chris' newly 'upgraded' classroom (complete with LEDs and a lava lamp). The conversation shifted to celebrating Gena's outstanding achievement of three English scholarships at Otago Boys, including one outstanding scholarship. We discussed the importance of maintaining high expectations, establis...

As a coda to last week's episode about the harm AI is doing to boys' learning in English classes, today Bags and Chris offer some discrete and specific examples of what actually happens in their English classrooms.

We may be in the minority, but Bags and Chris are in full accord on this one: AI is going to do until damage to boys' learning in English. Only this week, articles in the Christchurch Press "Number of illiterate uni students ‘at crisis level’" and the Otago Daily Times article "Despair over Literacy Levels demonstrate that the literacy of University students in the towns where we teach is falling...

Bags explores how she creates rich discussion in her English classroom.

Bags and Chris compare notes on how they tend to approach the preparation of students for the Unfamiliar Texts section in the New Zealand English Scholarship examination.

Bags relays an experience she had recently with a student who was struggling to speak in front of the class and then Chris grabs the microphone and talks for too long in order to attempt to explain how Grammar for Writing actually works in the context of a Year 9 classroom.

Around this time of the year, across the Motu, teachers in secondary schools crack out their very best craft skills and upgrade the displays in their classrooms and departments in readiness for the school Open Evening. Bags and Chris talk about this phenomenon (and the many things you find yourself responsible for as a teacher) as well as the Structured Literacy pedagogy that is now mandated in Ne...

9 Years ago, Bagley's daughter Scarlett died, age 7. We take some time in this episode to examine how this deep loss strengthens her work in the classroom. Rarely does anyone gain an insight like this into the privacy of another person's grief. As a listener to this podcast perhaps you'll get a sense of the honesty and inner strength that makes Bags such a successful classroom teacher of English....

23 years ago Chris wrote an entry in his online journal that described his time at Otago Boys' High School. This was subsequently published in a history of Otago Boys' High School that was published for its 150th. We'd been searching around for a text to analyse on the podcast and Bags suggested that Chris read it. So here it is.

Bags and Chris come out of their respective closets for Pride week and we discuss how setting up patterns in the classroom accelerates boys' learning.

This week we start looking inside (and as it happens, outside) the doors of our classrooms with an exploration of the routines we operate in our classes to support safe healthy relationships and to keep the focus on the learning. Today's routines are the macro ones, the procedures we use as students enter and leave the class which can be crucial to setting the tone. What are the routines like in y...

This week we get to hear what advice Bags gave the delegates during her conference presentation and we reflect on how to get the culture right in the teaching of boys. There are some new boys' voices too.

So we succeeded at putting on a conference that focussed our attention on Teaching Boys English, and by all accounts it was a real success. Gena and Chris chat about the messages of the event - including a few reasonably contentious points of view - until we were interrupted by boys arriving for English!

Our last episode attracted some really interesting feedback, so we've used that to cue us into this week's discussion. After setting out our stall last week with apocalyptic statistics about boys' education - we're now embarking on our mission to explore what we do, should do, and will do about it.

A quick interrogation of assessment outcomes for boys in New Zealand education renders some alarming results. Boys achievement is some 30% beneath that of their female counterparts in almost every measure you can come up with. HoDs of English Gena Bagley (Otago Boys' High School in Otepoti Dunedin) and Chris Waugh (Christ's College in Otautahi Christchurch) examine some of these statistics and set...