Lava Lamps and Scholarships
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...
What actually happens in an English classroom?
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. Bags talks about the analysis of the Denis Glover...
AI has no place in a boys' English classroom
We may be in the minority, but Bags and Chris are in full accord on this one: AI is going to do untold 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...
Push Through the Tears
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...
Open Evening
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...
Patterns and Cognitive Overload
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.
Just Do Your Job
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.
The Conference
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...
Manage Your Wriggling
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,...