Boys just want to graduate, too
In some B.C. high schools, educators are helping ease the transition to the ‘real world’
Statistics show boys in Canada lag behind girls in K-12 performance. Nationwide, educators talk about how boys are struggling academically in unsuitable, gender-biased elementary and secondary classrooms, are less likely than girls to attend college or university and are unprepared to compete in a knowledgebased global economy.
But in some B.C. high schools this spring, the mood among male Grade 12 grads is surprisingly optimistic.
Jack Seaberry, 16, a Grade 12 student at Eric Hamber secondary in Vancouver, said what he’s most looking forward to after graduation is “freedom and independence.”
Seaberry, who volunteers as a youth spokesman with School Age Children and Youth, a Vancouver school board program that engages youth to speak to parents about the stress their kids face, doesn’t believe the education system is intentionally biased against boys.
“I wouldn’t want to belittle the challenges that girls face. There’s going to be challenges for girls, and challenges for boys,” he said. However, he does suggest there is a “social bias” that puts boys in an unfair spotlight at school.
“It’s a lot harder for a teacher to see a girl as a bad influence or a troublemaker. Guys are much more easily stereotyped and labelled.”
Seaberry said boys yearn for “a much less serious approach to school, a more joyful, playful approach,” and need more “wiggle room” at school, both literally and figuratively.
Working with SACY has given Seaberry an opportunity to articulate many of the frustrations he feels, not just with a system he is relieved to be leaving, but with the yawning generation gap that separates adults from kids.
Mentorship and opportunities that allow teens to reach out and share their thoughts, feelings and frustrations can make the road to the “real world” a little less bumpy.
Attitude change
On Vancouver’s east side, three young men about to graduate from Windermere secondary are looking forward to being released from a school system that has often felt stifling, and their sense of success and accomplishment is due in no small part to mentors.
At Windermere, Paulveer Aujla, 18, Jerry Rakhra, 18, and Liam Pozzolo, 17 — along with their Grade 11 buddy, Baldeep Sahota, 17 — were known collectively as “the troublemakers.”
When these boys started Grade 12, graduation was the last thing on their minds. And showing up for class was, well, optional.
For this group of friends, the most important year of their school lives would start out just the way they liked it: Skipping class. Why?
“It was a nice day outside,” said Aujla, with an unapologetic grin. “A bunch of us weren’t really interested in being in class. We were all ready not to go to school, about six of us.”
The boys set out to ditch school for a day of fun — no plans, really, just a desire to be anywhere but confined in a stuffy classroom trapped in a too-small desk, listening to a teacher drone on about something — math, maybe, or English — that had little to do with “real life.”
But they had barely breached the doors of the school when they heard someone thudding after them: vice-principal Damian Wilmann.
“We saw Mr. Wilmann and we got kinda scared, so we ran in different directions.”
The boys split like billiard balls, and tried to sneak back to their classes, but the jig was up. “We got called into this room and yelled at,” said Sahota. “All of our lockers got moved in front of the school office so we got to see Mr. Wilmann every day. Multiple times a day.”
“Every day,” affirmed Wilmann.
Wilmann wasn’t out to shame the boys by putting their lockers together, and in his sight. Nor did he want to “suspend them or send them to a different school, the kind of way these kids are typically dealt with,” he said. Rather, he wanted to draw them close.
“Traditionally punitive measures are used on boys in these kinds of cases, like suspensions or transfers to other schools, exile from community. I know those things don’t work,” Wilmann said.
Wilmann knew that these boys had already served suspensions, some had been transferred from school to school, none of it resulting in change. The boys were not likely to graduate unless something did change. Only 72 per cent of Canadian boys graduate from secondary school, compared with 81 per cent of girls.
Many, like Wilmann and Barry MacDonald, author of Boy Smarts: Mentoring Boys for Success at School, believe punitive measures that isolate and shame energetic and rebellious boys of all ages contribute to their lack of engagement in school.
“Eighty per cent of suspensions in public schools are given to boys. Of those, 95 per cent are for non-violent misbehaviour, such as being disrespectful,” Macdonald said.
Although Canada doesn’t keep statistics on suspensions, the United States does, he said. “I suspect they are very much the same.”
Boys’ club
MacDonald spends much of his time counselling boys who are struggling within the system.
“When I was writing my book I wanted to include a chapter asking young men what their positive experiences in school were, to try to focus on what was working. I had to drop the idea because most men reported seeing school as a hoop they had to jump through, but it wasn’t particularly enjoyable for them.”
MacDonald believes girls also struggle, but in different ways. Boys are dealing with aggression that needs to be positively channelled, he said. “Boys are getting seven hits of testosterone a day to their brain in adolescence.”
Boys tend to be less verbal than girls, want to be physically engaged and think in a more visual and spatial way. In Boy Smarts, he writes that boys are exposed to “exaggerated images of masculinity such as sports heroes who are ready to drop their hockey sticks at the slightest provocation and pummel an opponent. … These examples of male behaviour are inconsistent with many community values and boys need help to make sense of the conflicting messages.”
Paulveer Aujla, one of the boys who tried to skip that day, finds the expectations of docility and self-control placed on teenage boys almost laughable. “I’m expected to go to school, sit still for six hours, go home, do hours more homework, then, in my free time, read a book?”
Vice-principal Wilmann didn’t buy into the notion “the troublemakers” were all that bad, destined to drop out or worse. “I had seen for a long while that some boys were just not engaged. The question I asked was how do we keep them engaged and motivated?”
Wilmann saw the misbehaviour as part of a quest for belonging. “Boys who don’t fit in will create their own groups among their peers. In a peer-to-peer network with no significant adult for guidance, things can go sideways very quickly.”
For Wilmann, the challenges boys face are, at least in part, connected to the “changing global environment in which they are growing up.” While much important work has been done to help girls achieve in traditionally male-dominated fields like math and science, there is work to be done for boys.
“Blue-collar jobs you could walk into at the age of 16 — basically leave school and be able to support a family — that’s evaporated. The new economy is much more nuanced, more fluid, more uncertain. That creates more anxiety, tension and lack of understanding about roles. Boys, like any group are looking for roles. How do they fit in? How do they find meaning?”
So Wilmann invited the troublemakers to a meeting. Along with several teachers and a youth and family worker acting as mentors, Wilmann helped set up a boys’ club.
Modelled on a similar successful program at Templeton secondary, the Windermere Boys Club would be a place that troublemakers could not only find mentorship and belonging, but also become leaders.
That leadership would start within the school community.
“We have speakers that come in to talk about their lives, and motivate us, and we go out in the school and invite boys to come,” Aujla said.
To help entice the reluctant, there are a few perks, Pozzolo explained: “We give them (early dismissal from class), we tell them there’s going to be pizza.”
For Jerry Rakhra, the turnaround has been significant.
He described his school career as feeling “like a thousand Mondays. You never want to go. There’s quite a few times I’ve felt like I’ve been on the wrong path. I feel like I’ve made up for it now by doing something good.
“A lot of kids have confidence problems. You’re there at the back of the crowd. You know you have the potential but you just don’t know how,” Rakhra said.
Pozzolo, who went from “not caring” to believing in himself and striving for admission to Capilano University’s competitive Creative Writing program, said, “Before the boys’ club it was really hard to feel like you had any personal connection to teachers or the school.”
All the boys take on roles within the club, and are actively engaged in running fundraisers, seeking out speakers from the community, and networking among the student body and with teachers.
“They learn real-world skills, they learn to manage projects, to be somewhere on time, to communicate with others and each other. We are here to support them, but we don’t do it for them,” Wilmann said.
“Positive peer-to-peer mentorship and a team of significant adults in the building makes the difference.
“When I asked them during the grad/transition interviews with the boys what they were proud of, (the boys’ club) is what came up.”
Life lessons
Seaberry comes from a very different socio-economic background than most boys at Windermere, but he has felt similar frustrations in high school.
“The majority of what puts boys at a disadvantage is the manner of learning that has been embraced in the last 50 years,” Seaberry says. He cites marks based on “class participation, attendance, homework checks, quizzes every couple of days” as problematic for boys — learning as a micromanaged experience.
“I’d prefer it, and I’m sure many boys would agree with me, if there were just one big test at the end of the year and you could just goof off, explore your interests, then study hard for that one exam.”
Although Seaberry has, by any measure, done well in school — he skipped Grades 6 and 10, plays field hockey, skateboards as a hobby and holds down a part-time job — he also describes a feeling of “not being connected” with school.
“It seems like the majority of what it is I do in high school is to please teachers. I don’t work to be proud of what I’ve done, I don’t work to be happy. I work so the teacher will give me a good mark and I can get out of there.”
Seaberry frames his experience in much the way Barry MacDonald’s interview subjects did: “It’s a hoop you’ve got to jump through.”
Seaberry found a sense of purpose by volunteering as a youth spokesman with SACY.
The questions parents ask have helped him refine his own understanding of who he is as he tries to articulate the high school experience for others, especially “those of another generation who do not understand ours.”
Seaberry says he feels pressure to find a life purpose that is “worthwhile and that there is a demand for, and to do well.”
The most important and enduring thing Seaberry will take away from high school has little to do with academics.
“The majority of what high school teaches you is social skills,” he says. “I’m going to forget all the math, the history, the social studies but I’m always going to remember how it is I can make sure someone is happy with me even if I don’t agree with them. It teaches you the basic skills of getting on with people in life. You’ve got to understand there are differing views than your own, accept differing views and learn to work together.”
To parents of grads, Seaberry advises: “I’d say to not put any pressure on your son or daughter whatsoever.”
They have, after all, just come out of the pressure-cooker.
“We can read between the lines and tell when it is we’re disappointing you, when it is we’re doing what you want,” he says. “Even if it doesn’t feel like you’re putting direct pressure on us, there is. Just make sure (your children) know you will always be happy with them, you’ll always love them.”