Boys Don't Try? Rethinking Masculinity in Schools

Author: Matt Pinkett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351163701
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Book Description
There is a significant problem in our schools: too many boys are struggling. The list of things to concern teachers is long. Disappointing academic results, a lack of interest in studying, higher exclusion rates, increasing mental health issues, sexist attitudes, an inability to express emotions.... Traditional ideas about masculinity are having a negative impact, not only on males, but females too. In this ground-breaking book, Matt Pinkett and Mark Roberts argue that schools must rethink their efforts to get boys back on track. Boys Don’t Try? examines the research around key topics such as anxiety and achievement, behaviour and bullying, schoolwork and self-esteem. It encourages the reader to reflect on how they define masculinity and consider what we want for boys in our schools. Offering practical quick wins, as well as long-term strategies to help boys become happier and achieve greater academic success, the book: offers ways to avoid problematic behaviour by boys and tips to help teachers address poor behaviour when it happens highlights key areas of pastoral care that need to be recognised by schools exposes how popular approaches to "engaging" boys are actually misguided and damaging details how issues like disadvantage, relationships, violence, peer pressure, and pornography affect boys’ perceptions of masculinity and how teachers can challenge these. With an easy-to-navigate three-part structure for each chapter, setting out the stories, key research, and practical solutions, this is essential reading for all classroom teachers and school leaders who are keen to ensure male students enjoy the same success as girls.

The Boy Question

Author: Mark Roberts
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100040465X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Book Description
Following on from the huge success of Boys Don’t Try? this essential new book answers nine key questions about how teachers and schools can best tackle boys’ academic underperformance. For decades schools have grappled with the most significant barriers to male academic success: a lack of motivation to succeed, poor attitudes to learning, lower literacy levels and a reluctance to read for pleasure or write at length. In this compelling book, Mark Roberts provides clear answers about how teachers can tackle ‘The Boy Question’. Each chapter answers a frequently asked question about how best to teach boys, outlining the issue and demonstrating what can be done about it. Informed by a wealth of research and the author’s personal experience of successfully teaching boys, this book offers an abundance of practical advice for the busy classroom teacher. It will shine a light on what makes boys tick and how we can design effective curriculums to ensure they can best acquire powerful knowledge. With practical advice and examples to help address anti-social attitudes and stem the cycle of boys’ underachievement, this is essential reading for all teachers and school leaders.

Dude, You’re a Fag

Author: C. J. Pascoe
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520252306
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
Eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school this is an exploration of the dynamics of masculinity among boys.

Deep Secrets

Author: Niobe Way
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674072421
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
ÒBoys are emotionally illiterate and donÕt want intimate friendships.Ó In this empirically grounded challenge to our stereotypes about boys and men, Niobe Way reveals the intense intimacy among teenage boys especially during early and middle adolescence. Boys not only share their deepest secrets and feelings with their closest male friends, they claim that without them they would go Òwacko.Ó Yet as boys become men, they become distrustful, lose these friendships, and feel isolated and alone. Drawing from hundreds of interviews conducted throughout adolescence with black, Latino, white, and Asian American boys, Deep Secrets reveals the ways in which we have been telling ourselves a false story about boys, friendships, and human nature. BoysÕ descriptions of their male friendships sound more like Òsomething out of Love Story than Lord of the Flies.Ó Yet in late adolescence, boys feel they have to Òman upÓ by becoming stoic and independent. Vulnerable emotions and intimate friendships are for girls and gay men. ÒNo homoÓ becomes their mantra. These findings are alarming, given what we know about links between friendships and health, and even longevity. Rather than a Òboy crisis,Ó Way argues that boys are experiencing a Òcrisis of connectionÓ because they live in a culture where human needs and capacities are given a sex (female) and a sexuality (gay), and thus discouraged for those who are neither. Way argues that the solution lies with exposing the inaccuracies of our gender stereotypes and fostering these critical relationships and fundamental human skills.

How to Teach English

Author: Chris Curtis
Publisher: Independent Thinking Press
ISBN: 9781781353127
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Written by Chris Curtis, How to Teach: English: Novels, non-fiction and their artful navigation is jam-packed with enlivening ideas to help teachers make the subject of English more intellectually challenging for students - and to make it fun too Never underestimate your duty and power as a teacher of English. English teachers help students to think and feel. They prompt them to reflect on their actions. They hold a mirror to society and inspire students to see how they can make it better. What other subject does that? This insightful interpretation of what makes excellent secondary school English teaching is the work of a man whose humility fails to hide his brilliance and provides educators with a sophisticated yet simple framework upon which to hook their lessons. Covering poetry, grammar, Shakespeare and how to teach writing, Chris Curtis has furnished every page of this book with exciting ideas that can be put into practice immediately. Each chapter presents a store of practical strategies to help students in key areas - providing apposite examples, teaching sequences and the rationale behind them - and has been accessibly laid out so that teachers can pinpoint the solutions they need without having to spend an age wading through academic theory and pontification. The book explores the wealth of learning opportunities that can be derived from both classic and more contemporary literature and offers expert guidance on how teachers can exploit their own chosen texts to best effect with their students. Furthermore, it is replete with ready-to-use approaches that will help teachers upgrade their lesson planning, enhance their classroom practice and ensure that the content they cover sticks in their students' heads for months and years afterwards. Suitable for all English teachers of students aged 11-18.

Dude, You're a Fag

Author: C. J. Pascoe
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520271483
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
Draws on eighteen months of research in a racially diverse working-class high school to explore the meaning of masculinity and the social practices associated with it, discussing how homophobia is used to enforce gender conformity.

A Better Man

Author: Michael Ian Black
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1643752049
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
"Raw, intimate, and true . . . A Better Man cracked me wide open, and it's a template for the conversation we need to be having with our boys." --Peggy Orenstein, bestselling author of Boys & Sex A poignant look at boyhood, in the form of a heartfelt letter from comedian Michael Ian Black to his teenage son before he leaves for college, and a radical plea for rethinking masculinity and teaching young men to give and receive love. In a world in which the word masculinity now often goes hand in hand with toxic, comedian, actor, and father Michael Ian Black offers up a way forward for boys, men, and anyone who loves them. Part memoir, part advice book, and written as a heartfelt letter to his college-bound son, A Better Man reveals Black's own complicated relationship with his father, explores the damage and rising violence caused by the expectations placed on boys to "man up," and searches for the best way to help young men be part of the solution, not the problem. "If we cannot allow ourselves vulnerability," he writes, "how are we supposed to experience wonder, fear, tenderness?" Honest, funny, and hopeful, Black skillfully navigates the complex gender issues of our time and delivers a poignant answer to an urgent question: How can we be, and raise, better men?

Learning the Hard Way

Author: Edward W. Morris
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813553709
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Book Description
An avalanche of recent newspapers, weekly newsmagazines, scholarly journals, and academic books has helped to spark a heated debate by publishing warnings of a “boy crisis” in which male students at all academic levels have begun falling behind their female peers. In Learning the Hard Way, Edward W. Morris explores and analyzes detailed ethnographic data on this purported gender gap between boys and girls in educational achievement at two low-income high schools—one rural and predominantly white, the other urban and mostly African American. Crucial questions arose from his study of gender at these two schools. Why did boys tend to show less interest in and more defiance toward school? Why did girls significantly outperform boys at both schools? Why did people at the schools still describe boys as especially “smart”? Morris examines these questions and, in the process, illuminates connections of gender to race, class, and place. This book is not simply about the educational troubles of boys, but the troubled and complex experience of gender in school. It reveals how particular race, class, and geographical experiences shape masculinity and femininity in ways that affect academic performance. His findings add a new perspective to the “gender gap” in achievement.

Big Gay Adventures in Education

Author: Daniel Tomlinson-Gray
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780367894221
Category : Gay teachers
Languages : en
Pages : 112

Book Description
Big Gay Adventures in Education is a collection of true stories by 'out' teachers, and students of 'out' teachers, all about their experiences in schools. The book aims to empower LGBT+ teachers to be the role models they needed when they were in school and help all teachers and school leaders to promote LGBT+ visibility and inclusion. The contributors range from trainee teachers to experienced school leaders and leading figures from the community across the LGBT+ spectrum, as well as LGBT+ students whose lives were improved by having an openly LGBT+ teacher. Each story is accompanied by an editor's note reflecting on the contributor's experience and the practical implications for schools and teachers in supporting LGBT+ young people and ensuring they feel safe and included in their school communities. Compiled by the co-founder and director of LGBTed, the inspiring stories in this book are essential reading for LGBT+ teachers and allies. Let's be the role models we needed when we were at school and show our students that they can be successful and happy as an LGBT+ person.

EleMENtary School

Author: Scott Richardson
Publisher: Brill / Sense
ISBN: 9789460919985
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 165

Book Description
Scott Richardson gives us a finely detailed experiential account of how gender and teaching are woven together in public schools. Through his own memories and the narrativized experiences of his research subjects, Richardson demonstrates both the institutional benefits associated with being male and the fragility of masculinity.