Bags explores how she creates rich discussion in her English classroom.
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...
Thriving after Loss
8 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...
Appendix 6
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...
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.
Routines and Bagley's Age
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,...
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...
Face the Truth
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'...