It's a Boy Thing

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 off a cliff–and we already know that this is even worse for boys. This conversation explores exactly why AI is such a disaster for the classroom, what we're doing about it, and why we thing it should go the way of "Whole Language" teaching of reading and Modern Learning Environments - to the dustbin.

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 New Zealand primary schools. What have you been asked to do for a school open evening?

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. Shakespeare features too. Of course.

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 your classrooms, or the classrooms you remember - and importantly: what purpose do they serve?

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 out their intentions with this podcast series: to tackle boys' education - specifically in the teaching of secondary English - to face this truth and set about doing something about it!