Sean Kullman is the Director of the Global Initiative for Boys and Men and Substack author of In His Words. He is …
Sean Kullman is the Director of the Global Initiative for Boys and Men and Substack author of In His Words. He is …
We are honored to announce that San Antonio Academy, an independent boys’ school pre-K through 8, has re-certified as a Gurian Model …
Tim Wright, co-host with Michael Gurian of the Wonder of Parenting podcast, has written a number of nonfiction books as well as …
Anya Willis, Founder of Fitkids.com, has submitted this inspiring and very practical guest blog post on Revitalizing Childhood: Embracing Mindful and Joyful …
The Gurian Institute was introduced to one of the co-founders of the BOND Project, Dr. Daryl Howard, three years ago as the …
Today’s blog post is by Gurian Master Trainer Rob Kodama. After dedicating 28 years to education at Crespi Carmelite High School, a …
Sean Kullman is the Director of the Global Initiative for Boys and Men and Substack author of In His Words. He is also a cogent analyst of all things male. Today we feature his guest blog post on the despair of boys and men, and what should be done about it culture-wide. Sean will be a keynote speaker at our Summer Training Institute in June. To hear Sean speak, to …
We are honored to announce that San Antonio Academy, an independent boys’ school pre-K through 8, has re-certified as a Gurian Model School. Michael Gurian was just there last month meeting with teachers, administration, and parents. He left the school moved by how dynamic the teachers are, and how much the parents and community value the school’s methods and pedagogy. Today’s blog post features the school and some of its …
Tim Wright, co-host with Michael Gurian of the Wonder of Parenting podcast, has written a number of nonfiction books as well as three young adult novels that comprise his Toby Baxter series. Tim will be speaking this June at our Gurian Summer Training Institute. He has provided this week’s blog post. To learn more about the Summer Training Institute and to register individuals, please visit: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2024/. If you can bring …
Anya Willis, Founder of Fitkids.com, has submitted this inspiring and very practical guest blog post on Revitalizing Childhood: Embracing Mindful and Joyful Practices for Young Minds. She writes, “In a world brimming with constant stimuli and demands, it’s vital to ensure that children have the opportunity to rejuvenate and thrive. This article shares engaging and thoughtful activities designed to enrich the lives of children. These practices are not just about …
The Gurian Institute was introduced to one of the co-founders of the BOND Project, Dr. Daryl Howard, three years ago as the Achievement Academic Excellence and Equity for Black Boys Initiative was founded in Maryland. Dr. Howard helped spearhead that Initiative along with Dr. Vermelle Greene, who will be speaking at our Summer Institute in June. An educator and trainer, Dr. Howard is also co-founder of the BOND Project. BOND …
Today’s blog post is by Gurian Master Trainer Rob Kodama. After dedicating 28 years to education at Crespi Carmelite High School, a Gurian Center for Educational Excellence in Encino, California, where Rob was Director of Admissions, Rob has embarked on a new chapter in his career by joining Vidigami, an education technology company. Rob will be a special guest at our Summer Institute in June to discuss how to leverage …
Sean Kullman will be a keynote speaker at our Summer Training Institute in June. We hope you will find his guest blog post as fascinating and powerful as we do. To learn more about the Summer Training Institute and to register individuals, please visit: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2024/. If you can bring groups of five or more, please email us at info@gurianinstitute.com to get that set up. “By virtually every measure, girls are …
Summer is coming up sooner than we think, and that means it is time for our 26th annual Gurian Summer Training Institute! This event will be held on Zoom on June 22 – 23, 2024, with expanded opportunities to watch all the sessions: Pre-Service workshops will be available from June 17 – July 8 and the live weekend sessions will be available through July 8 as well. Please save the …
As you may know from The Minds of Girls (2018) and The Wonder of Girls (2002), Michael Gurian has been concerned for a long time about what girls are absorbing–and the consequences to their bodies and growing selves. In today’s blog post, he focuses on this topic so that we can fix the dangerous situation our daughters are in. Many girls are hitting puberty too early for good health. For …
As our readers know, Michael Gurian and the Gurian Institute have been experimenting with ways to directly reach you, our Gurian readers and friends, via a membership service. Michael’s Substack is now available for subscription. We hope you will join Michael on Substack. It is easy to do, inexpensive, and includes a lot of other goodies. Here’s more from Michael Gurian about his Substack. I am excited to announce that …
Kathy Stevens, our GI Executive Director for ten years, passed away in 2012, but left a huge legacy in GI work. Years after her passing, as you’ll see in this blog post, she inspired her son, Mike Roe, to join his wife, Heather, in writing a children’s book, Gracie’s First Day. The book is for children 3 – 7. It explores, with them, their first day at school, and …
About once a month or so we feature a blog post by Sean Kullman, Director of the Global Initiative for Boys and Men, and Substack author of In His Own Words. Sean’s analysis is always cogent, and data-driven. This week we hope you will enjoy his study of reading scores and what is needed to ensure strong reading ability in children. The Gurian Institute works in this area with schools …
Do you have girls in your life? We all do, don’t we, whether in our families, schools, or communities? Do you have questions about how to help girls thrive? Our Wonder of Parenting podcast takes on rich and deep questions of parenting and education. Today we want to point out some of our popular podcasts on girls’ development. Here are just a few, and how to access them. Our Wonder …
Gary Plep, LCSW and Mark Yoslow, Ph.D. are therapists in Northern California and also very good friends. And I have known Gary and his wife, Sue, since the early 1990s. They were the first people who said, “Mike, you need a website.” Because of them, www.gurianinstitute.com became a reality almost three decades ago. Gary and Mark have published a fascinating book, Walking the Hill. I admit I am biased in …
Dr. Gregg Jantz and The Center, A Place of Hope (www.aplaceofhope.com), have been helping and healing for more than 30 years. Today’s guest post includes relevant and powerful wisdom for this time of year. All of us at the Gurian Institute wish you Happy Holidays! We have been honored to serve you this year and look forward to partnering with you next year. Hi Friends, I hope this holiday season …
This year is almost over and 2024 beginning very soon. You will likely be looking at what to do and use for PD days and hours in 2024. Online courses that can be taken individually or used for group PD formats are helpful not only to planning but to the learning time itself. The Gurian Institute has four PD video courses you can use for all day, half day, or …
Michael Gurian has often been asked whether the new cultural interest in transgender and gender nonconforming brains should indicate an end to the idea that males and females have sex-specific brains. Are “males” and “females” a thing of the past? Should we stop talking about the importance of understanding how boys and girls learn differently because some of our human brains sit more in the middle of the …
Smoking is a deeply rooted habit that has permeated cultures worldwide for centuries. Despite your consciousness of the health risks linked to smoking, it persists as a prevalent issue, particularly for men. Feeling bound by this damaging habit is no uncommon scenario. If you’re grappling with this hefty burden, understand that breaking these ties is more than feasible. Stepping into the sphere of knowledge and tools that aim to facilitate …
Over the course of a year, The Gurian Institute, led by Dr. Michael Gurian, Dr. Glynetta Fletcher, and Eva Dwight, M.Ed., studied Crespi Carmelite High School in Encino, California. This study led to “Why Educate Them the Crespi Way? Independent Analysis of Crespi’s Holistic Approach to Boys.” Crespi’s approach to boys is at the leading edge of holistic education. For that reason, Crespi is a Gurian Institute Center for Educational …
Tim Wright, co-host of our Wonder of Parenting Podcast, has provided today’s guest blog post. His newest young adult novel, “The Adventures of Toby Baxter–Book 2: Riverhome for the Holidays–has just been published. We hope you enjoy this blog post about the book, and please keep Tim’s novels in mind as holiday gifts for middle schoolers…and adults who like to read a fun adventure! Now here’s more from Tim. “Ah, …
The Center, A Place of Hope has been at the leading edge of mental health work for more than 30 years. A psychologist who has written 40 books in the field, Dr. Gregory Jantz is Co-Founder of The Center and our guest blogger today. In his guest post, he covers not only ghosting itself, but some of the science of dealing with rejection. Thank you, Dr. Jantz, for this helpful …
It is with pleasure we welcome Deborah “Dakota” Hoyt into our Gurian Institute infrastructure as our new Managing Director. As our director between 2012 and 2016, Dakota shepherded GI’s growth into ever widening spheres then she retired (or so she thought!), and now is back with us. Her organizational skills are awesome and we are so glad to have her with us again. Please welcome Dakota into your GI-related PD …
Sean Kullman, Director of the Global Initiative of Boys and Men, and author of InHisWords on Substack, is doing some of the finest writing around on issues facing the sexes and genders. We enjoy featuring his work in our Newsletter because of its depth and quality. In this week’s post, Sean mentions our Gurian Institute work. Sean’s post as a whole today includes an issue that is central to the …
What professional development is essential? What PD improves teacher effectiveness and quality, leads to improved grades and test scores among students, and lowers discipline referrals across the board? Is there evidence-based PD out there that links gender issues and racial equity? Are you planning out PD days, as well as long term projects, to help with these issues this year? Gurian Institute professional development has been proven effective for more …
Dr. Glynetta Fletcher (Fletch) has written today’s blog post. With more than twenty years in the Los Angeles Unified School District as teacher, principal, and administrator, she has a wealth of experience meeting the learning needs of all students. With specialties in racial equity, diversity, and cultural sensitivity training as well, she is able to take her base experience into next level training and consulting for our time. To reach …
As some of you know, my wife of 37 years, Gail Reid-Gurian, passed away on August 16 of pancreatic cancer. Her memorial service was held at Temple Beth Shalom in Spokane on September 7. At that service, I read today’s newsletter offering, “Gail’s Final Words.” I hope you will find that this poem captures Gail’s spirit of love and service, which many of you knew first hand in your interactions …
Our own, our family’s, our friends’ mental health is crucial to the survival of us all. The last few years have taken a terrible toll on the mental health of adults and children, both. Stacy J. Bryant, of SpringHive, has provided us with this detailed primer on protecting your mental health. If you or a loved one is having mental health difficulties, you might contact The Center, A Place of …
by SEAN KULLMAN Last month, an 80-year-old man went through his routine as an ice cream vendor, pushing his cart full of frozen goodies through the streets of Oakland until a group stepped out of an SUV and robbed him of $120 at gunpoint. The moment served as a harsh reality being played out in towns and cities across America, an irrefutable tension that pitted one man’s commitment to persevere …
A Note from Michael Gurian: My beloved wife, Gail Reid-Gurian, GI Managing Director, passed away on August 16th. As she fought pancreatic cancer, she kept up GI work to the end, committed to helping schools and families. In her last days, she asked me to make sure I let all of you know how much she appreciated working with you on the business side of the service we provide. …
Academic institutions have been slow to catch up to what we in the grass roots have known for decades: boys are struggling in schools, and have been for about 40 years. While girls struggle with targeted issues, boys struggle across the board. Because our academic environments are one of the reasons they struggle (they generally refuse to provide training in the male and female brain in academic certification, college, or …
Some news I can’t wait to share Why I’m founding the American Institute for Boys and Men RICHARD V REEVES This is a newsletter I’ve been really looking forward to writing: I have a big announcement to make. I hope you will be as excited about the news as I am to share it with you (almost as excited, anyway). Starting tomorrow, July 1st, I will officially begin a new …
As Eva Dwight joins the Board of Positive Discipline, she leaves us as Program Director. She has been an amazing director and we wish her all the best in her new adventure. As of this month, Dr. Glynetta Fletcher takes over as Program Director. Dr. Gurian first met Dr. Fletcher (“Fletch”) five years ago at a Gurian Summer Training Institute where Fletch told him that the Gurian work had confirmed …
In Part I of Boys, A Rescue Plan, Michael Gurian introduced the term feminaphobia to help us look at why it is so hard for our culture to grapple with the desperation of many of our boys and men today. Here in Part II, he explores these issues more deeply. This blog post is an example of what Gurian Community subscribers will receive via Membership/Subscription. Please go to www.michaelgurian.com/membership/ to …
Our 25th Summer Training Institute took place on Zoom this last weekend. With 20 hours of training from keynoters and workshop presenters, and nearly 300 of you attending, it was a great success! We want to express our gratitude to all of you and to every one of the speakers, our organizer, Eva Dwight, our administrative team, and all the schools and individuals participating. One participant captured the event this …
I am starting a new venture and need you to join! As a subscriber in this Gurian Community, you will receive my written work as well as video clips and other material provided multiple times per month directly to you. My plan right now is to publish my work three weeks of the month, then for the fourth week, to meet with you, my subscribers, in a group format via …
Since the late 1990s, the Gurian Institute has been certifying Trainers to provide professional development and consulting in schools, organizations, and communities. You can meet some of our Trainers on https://gurianinstitute.com/trainers/. We would love to have a certified trainer in every school and organization to train faculty, staff, and parents in brain-based teaching and whole child growth. At our Virtual Summer Institute this year (https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2023/), you individually or a cadre …
Dr. Adonica Jones-Parks is a specialist in reaching at risk students, including the most disengaged. In her district in Cincinnati, she has developed leading edge approaches to bringing these students back to education, strategies that are useful for all educators in all settings. Today’s blog post features her and her keynote. Please join us for our event on June 24-25. Because the Summer Training is virtual, the recordings will …
Our Summer Institute is around the corner! GI Program Director Eva Dwight is offering a new workshop at this year’s SI, “Thinking ‘Outside the Box’: A Child-Focused Definition of Success.” Today’s blog post is authored by Eva about this leading edge subject. We hope you’ll join us at the Summer Institute. It will be virtual on June 24-25, so anyone can join from anywhere. To learn more and to register, …
Psychologist and Founder of the renowned Center, a Place of Hope, Dr. Gregory Jantz is one of our keynote speakers at this year’s Summer Training Institute. Author of more than forty books in the fields of psychology, parenting, and education, Dr. Jantz leads a mental health facility that has been rated in the top ten in America for treating depression. Today’s blog features him and his keynote. Please join us …
In these pages you’ve learned about our newest Gurian Center for Excellence at Crespi Carmelite High School in Encino, CA. We are proud to feature three Gurian Certified Trainers from that Center at our Summer Training Institute this year. This blog post features Dr. Alan Swaney, Rob Kodama, and Daniel Parlato and their workshops. To hear them and many others, click this website for registration: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2023/. You can bring groups …
Is it time for the American Psychological Association to look at the neuroscience of teaching and learning? Gurian Institute Data Shows Boys and Girls Learn Differently Model Works Image by Taylor Flowe on Substack For over twenty-five years, the Gurian Institute has been working in schools across the country to help boys and girls learn differently so they can actually learn better. And for the most part, Gurian relies on …
Early Bird Registration for our Summer Training Institute ends May 15! Check out the website for details: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2023/. All the presentations will be available on a password protected site for registrants until July 10. This will allow some schools to use week days for the PD rather than the weekend, if needed. Some prerecorded keynotes and workshops will be available on June 18, which extends the time the Training is …
World renowned activist and author Dr. Warren Farrell is one of our keynote speakers at this year’s Summer Training Institute. Co-author of the bestselling The Boy Crisis, Dr. Farrell has traveled the world to excite communities working on gender issues facing boys, girls, and women and men. Today’s blog features him and his keynote. Please join us for our event on June 24-25. Because the Summer Training is occurring …
Along with our K – 12 track at this summer’s Gurian Training Institute, we are again offering our Early Childhood Track. These dynamic presenters and Gurian Certified Trainers have hands on experience in early childhood classrooms and services. Marion Hill, Program Coordinator at Head Start of Phoenix, and a GI Master Trainer, was the first to suggest we provide this ECE track and we have been honored to do so …
In 2022, the newest Gurian Institute (GI) Center for Educational Excellence was born at Crespi Carmelite High School (Crespi) in Encino, California. Serving the whole Los Angeles area, as well as students from overseas, Crespi embodies generations of educational excellence. It became the Gurian Institute’s first Model School in 2005. It is now a Gurian Institute Center for Educational Excellence. As part of becoming a Center, Crespi asked GI to …
Eva Dwight, ME.d., a former teacher and counselor, is our Gurian Institute Program Director and travels the country providing training for pre-K and K-12 schools and organizations. Dynamic, accessible, always practical in her workshops and trainings, Eva is also a Positive Discipline Certified Trainer who helps educators and families study and manage child development with depth and humor. Eva will provide our Two Part Boys and Girls Learn Differently training …
Our newsletter this week features a question by a parent and coach about digital use and the tween brain. Michael Gurian will be providing a keynote on this very topic at this year’s GI Summer Training Institute in June. Other speakers this year will integrate the topic into their workshops. The Surgeon General has just called for a national effort to protect our children’s brains from significant use of screens, …
This week we feature the work of Dr. Vermelle Greene, one of our Summer Institute Keynote speakers. She is dynamic, practical, leading edge, and unflagging in her work for children. As a Maryland Board of Education member, she helped found the Achieving Academic Equity and Excellence for Black Boys Initiative in Maryland. We hope you’ll join us at the Summer Training Institute, which you can access virtually on June 24-25 …
We are excited to announce the next Helping Boys Thrive Summit in our network. The Kellen Cares Foundation in Spokane, Washington is organizing this summit for April 22, 2023. Michael Gurian and Tim Wright will be keynote speakers, and local teachers and counselors, GI Certified Trainers, will provide breakouts. Today’s blog post features the Spokane Summit. To bring a Summit to your area, check out www.helpingboysthrive.org. To register for the …
Since 1997, the Gurian Institute has been certifying trainers to provide professional development and consulting in schools, organizations, and communities. You can meet some of our trainers on https://gurianinstitute.com/trainers/. We hope every school to have at least one certified trainer to train faculty, staff, and parents in brain-based teaching and whole child growth. Have you considered becoming a Gurian Certified Trainer? Do you know someone at your school or in …
Sean Kullman, Director of the Global Initiative for Boys and Men, has published a powerful series of articles that pertain to child development and education, specifically what is happening with our boys. This week we are featuring Part III of his series, a section of which looks at the work of the Gurian Institute. We hope you’ll join us at our Summer Institute this June to learn more about this …
We are excited to welcome Dr. Michael Gurian to our Summer Institute! He will be doing three keynotes this year, which are featured in today’s newsletter. Michael is one of America’s most dynamic speakers. His presentations have been called “life-changing” and “education-changing.” To learn more about our Summer Institute and to register, click: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2023/. We have been holding Summer Institutes for 25 years, and each one is packed with leading …
Sean Kullman is an educator and social philosopher who leads the Global Initiative for Boys and Men. You can subscribe to his work by emailing him at seank@gibm.us. Here is an important guest blog on learning…and a lot more. Thank you, Sean, for this guest blog: Sarah Mervosh of the New York Times recently discussed the Pandemic Learning Loss and the declines in math and reading scores. She has written several pieces on learning loss since …
This year we are embarking on a series on boys’ development, but we have not forgotten girls! Far from it. GI is working in schools like Buck Lodge Middle School in Adelphi, Maryland to empower girls into successful leadership. Today’s blog post includes a curation of articles and resources you can use to help girls in your world. One of the most empowering things we can all do for girls …
As the new year begins, we are excited to designate Crespi Carmelite High School our newest Gurian Center for Excellence. About the GI partnership with Crespi, school president Dr. Ken Foersch has said, “The Gurian Institute provides us with the science and strategies for maximizing each student’s potential. Our partnership with GI has helped us keep our promise to boys and their families as the best school for boys in …
The new year is already underway and we are filled with hope for the future. We are also battered by headlines of boys and men hurting other people. Michael Gurian’s first essay of this year, “Boys, A Rescue Plan, Part I,” is this week’s blog post. During this year, we will share other essays by Michael and our team, as well as other articles, essays, and guest blogs on …
The State of Washington, where Michael Gurian resides, has begun an effort to create a Commission on Boys and Men. As you’ll see in this guest blog by the National Director of the Global Initiative for Boys and Men, Sean Kullman, this effort occurs in a national and global context in which boys are struggling across the board. Thank you, Sean, for this very detailed analysis. It is our hope …
Nearly daily, we receive emails or calls from teachers, administrators, community members, and others regarding issues facing boys and girls in school and how GI can help. A recent example read this way: “I am a high school teacher and have been for 25 years. I am extremely concerned about our young men. I have been sounding the alarm for the past 5 years. What are the next steps we …
As the new year begins, we have pulled together expert opinions for you that answer the questions we are constantly asked at GI: do “male” and “female” matter anymore? This question of sex does not negate gender explorations. At the same time, male and female do lie at the bedrock of individual and systems analysis. In few places are “boy” and “girl” more important than in schools and districts that …
Our colleague Dr. Gregg Jantz, who is a sponsor of our Wonder of Parenting Podcast and who will be keynoting at our Summer Training Institute next June, just sent this very helpful blog post to his lists. We were glad to receive it, and we want to pass it on to all of you. It is packed with practical information for the holidays. Dr. Jantz is founder of The Center, …
Are your school and staff looking to increase the quality and quantity of practical, evidence-based tools in your toolbox? As 2022 ends, are you planning your 2023 PD schedule? Do you provide PD as all or half day formats, or morning or afternoon short PD? The Gurian Institute has four PD video courses you can use easily for all day, half day, or shorter formats. Today’s blog features these courses. …
We are pleased to announce that our Summer Training Institute 2023 will be held on June 24 – 25, 2023. Over the last three years, we’ve discovered that not only is an online/virtual conference convenient for individuals, but also that schools and organizations can send large groups at a much lower cost than to an in-person event. Having both individuals and groups join in the work is not only inspiring, …
Can you believe it? Our Wonder of Parenting Podcast has hit 2,000,000 downloads! Tim Wright, the host, and Michael Gurian, the guest expert, are thankful to all of you for joining them in this ever expanding modality of learning and community. To see that our podcast is being downloaded 70,000 times per week, is a great honor for us. To learn more about the podcast, as well as all the …
This is Thanksgiving week in the United States, a time to experience gratitude for what has been and what will be. The Gurian Institute thanks you for all your support over the years and we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving wherever you are. From his Story of a Man collection, today’s blog post is Michael Gurian’s “Gratitude.” (I am Jewish and so I use the word, “God,” but if …
Michael Gurian writes, “Wherever I travel to speak and consult this year, whether in person or via Zoom, I am asked about sex, gender, trans, gender non-binary, and connections to the brain and child development. With thousands of young people struggling with gender dysphoria and many more asking gender identity questions, we must grapple with a new situation.” In this blog, Michael provides a number of resources for understanding and …
Do you want to embed GI work into your school, system, or community? We have a new, easy-to-use Trainer and Membership program that allows you to do just that. Based on success data acquired over a multi-decade period (www.gurianinstitute.com/success) GI began certifying trainers in the 1990s, with hundreds of people like you certifying over the decades. Now we are adding a Membership service to the Trainer program, one that we …
We are proud to announce our newest Online Course: The Minds of Our Youngest Boys and Girls, with Michael Gurian. The course provides leading edge neuroscience in the early childhood field, practical strategies across the curriculum, and insights and tools for the whole child’s social-emotional growth. There are three sections of video learning, encompassing 4.5 hours, discussion points and post-tests, and a certificate of completion. While the course can …
For 25 years, the Gurian Institute has been training educators and other professionals to innovate in their communities via trainer and teacher training, online courses, conference keynotes and workshops, educational consulting, and curriculum development. All these programs have, in a sense, built up to our new Train-the Trainer Membership program. Michael Gurian, who will be leading this project, writes, “I believe this program can spread the message and the tools …
We are proud to announce the Emerging Man Virtual Summit on October 24 – 26. Michael Gurian will be one of the speakers. While this is summit is for everyone, it is also specifically geared to adolescent boys and emerging men (men in their twenties and early thirties). It’s founder and producer, Gregory Koufacos, is a therapist specializing in this work, and author of The Primal Method. Here’s much more …
We hope you can join the Emerging Man Virtual Summit in just 10 days. Michael Gurian will be one of the speakers at the summit, and there are many more speakers who have devoted much of their lives to helping shape young people into healthy adults. Gregory Koufacos who founded this Summit is a therapist and author of The Primal Method. He is a passionate advocate for this work. Check …
The Gurian Institute is honored to join with the Boys Initiative to bring you a Helping Boys Thrive Summit this Saturday, October, 8. It is sponsored by GI and the Washingon, D.C. based Boys Initiative and features Dr. Michael Gurian and Marion Hill with workshops by the Boys Initiative’s Advisory Board members, including Dr. Warren Farrell, Dr. Mark Perry, and many others. We hope you will join this powerful event. …
We are proud to announce the newest Gurian Institute (GI) Regional Center for Excellence at Crespi Carmelite High School (Crespi) in Encino, California. Serving the whole Los Angeles area, as well as students from overseas, Crespi embodies generations of educational excellence. It became the Gurian Institute’s first Model School in 2006. It is now a Gurian Institute Center for Excellence! Today’s post is devoted to introducing you to this remarkable …
Over the last year, Michael Gurian has researched and written four essays on how to grow resilient children at home and in school. These essays were published by the Gurian Institute over the last year. We are now collecting all four essays into this blog post so you have them all in one place. Gurian notes, “Resilience is the root of healthy maturity, growth, and social emotional life. It is …
Dr. Jantz is also a prolific writer whose books span nearly every relevant mental health topic. Today we feature his recent blog on emotional abuse. We hope you’ll check out The Center, Gregg’s podcast, and Gregg’s books on amazon or wherever you get your books. Like the Center and his podcast, his books are filled with practical tips and strategies you can use right way. — Michael Gurian Today I …
As Jews gather for Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur services, seeking to better understand holiness and to atone for our sins, we follow thousands of years of tradition and staunch will. I offer this opening prayer for Rosh HaShana services (the beginning of the Jewish New Year and the beginning of the ten days of worship and prayer) in my Story of a Man collection. Our Temple Beth Shalom and …
Today’s blog post features two novels about boys and young men working through trauma toward resilience and love. We recommend these suspense/thrillers for adult readers and for potential group-reads by 8th graders and up in Social Studies, English, Psychology, and other similar classrooms. Here’s more about these two novels. When We Were Wolves is the story of a man who has buried painful childhood memories deep within his psyche. But …
The Gurian Institute is honored to join with the Boys Initiative to bring you a Helping Boys Thrive Summit this October, 2022. It is sponsored by GI and the Washingon, D.C. based Boys Initiative and features Dr. Michael Gurian and Marion Hill on Saturday, October 8, with workshops by the Boys Initiative’s Advisory Board members, including Dr. Warren Farrell, Dr. Mark Perry, and many others. All the video content will …
At the Gurian Institute, we frequently receive questions from parents about how to use the latest research on developing brains to inform their parenting decisions. One particular area of concern is how much screen time to allow children to have. When they’re little, it’s relatively easy to tell them, “Time to turn it off and go find something else to do.” However, as they approach the teen years, you might …
A Canadian documentary team led by Stephen Herman and Evelyn Neuman is coming to Spokane to interview Michael Gurian on the stages of aging. The documentary is in part inspired by Michael’s book The Wonder of Aging. The filming coincides with summer beginning to wane into autumn. In celebration of both the upcoming season and the documentary filming, “The Gift of Age” is Michael’s latest lyrical installment in his Story …
If you’re one of the hundreds of millions of people around the world living with a disability like mental illness, finding relief can be crucial. Your work or your career might sometimes amplify symptoms like stress, sleeplessness, or a lack of focus. You may have found some relief when working from home, but finding tools to reduce stress and encourage relaxation can be very useful, alleviating tension and improving day-to-day …
The National Fatherhood Initiative is the largest program we know of supporting fathers and through fathers, children, wives, partners, and families. Few issues in society today are as important as the father’s role in child development. We are pleased to welcome Christopher Brown, President of the NFI, to our pages today. He has provided this guest blog on Fathering and a new strategies-focused program for supporting fathers and families. …
Tim Wright has written on this blog before, and often about a crucial subject: Rites of Passage and Coming of Age programs. Now Tim has penned his own Coming of Age novel, an absorbing and powerful rite of passage adventure involving young Toby Baxter. This children’s/young adult novel is actually a great read for us adults, too. I gulped it down in two sittings. Today’s blog post features Tim’s new …
I begin this fourth essay in our Resilience series with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words from Self-Reliance. “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place that divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events…we must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny, not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, …
Because of you, our Summer Institute (SI) was, and still is on video, a resounding success, with more than 500 participants! Though the June 25 – 26 weekend is complete, our participants have until July 10 to watch the videos of workshops they missed over the weekend, and re-watch keynotes and workshops that inspired them. A number of schools brought large groups to the SI, and we are grateful. …
This week we feature a guest blog by Sean Kullman, Director of the Global Initiative for Boys and Men, that analyzes the work the Gurian Institute has been doing in schools and communities over the last 25 years. Thank you, Sean, for this analysis! In his blog post, Sean mentions our Summer Institute next week. To learn more and to register, please click: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2022/. Now, here is Sean’s blog post. …
Tim Wright is a bridge builder between secular and faith communities, and a powerful teacher who will speak at our Summer Institute in June. Today’s newsletter features a guest blog from Tim. To learn more about our Summer Institute and to register, please visit the Event page on www.gurianinstitute.com. You can register as an individual on the website or send groups to the event by emailing gail@gurianinstitute.com. From Michael Gurian: …
We hope you will join us for our Summer Institute. The boy crisis–and thus a national safety crisis–will get discussed at this Zoom Training event as we all work together to protect our children–and to understand why they do what they do. Because I have been interviewed a great deal over the last two weeks about the shootings, I have been working to give a realistic picture of what …
For 25 years, the Gurian Institute has been certifying trainers to provide professional development and consulting in schools, organizations, and communities both in the United States and abroad. You can meet some of our trainers on https://gurianinstitute.com/trainers/. In 2018, we announced a major new GI initiative: “A Trainer in Every School!” to equip every school with at least one certified trainer who can train faculty, staff, and parents in brain-based …
Our guest blog this week comes from Eva Dwight, Gurian Institute Program Director. A teacher and counselor, Eva spearheads our Head Start Pilots in Phoenix and travels the country providing training for K-12 schools. She is also a Positive Discipline Certified Trainer. Eva will speak on these topics at the Gurian Summer Training Institute in the last week of June. She also leads our Trainer Certification program, which transpires on …
As Christians celebrate Easter, Muslims fast for Ramadan, and much of the world moves into Spring, Jewish people memorialize the Holocaust on “Yom HaShoah Ve-Hagevurah”, the Day of the Remembrance. HaShoah falls on the 27th of the month of Nisan on the Jewish calendar (April 28), a week after the Passover holiday that celebrates the Jewish exodus from slavery. For this confluence of holidays and season, we are publishing Michael …
Early Bird Registration for our Summer Training Institute has been extended to May 15. Check out the website for details: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2022/. We are proud to host the Institute with co-sponsorship from the Greater Phoenix Urban League, Head Start of Phoenix, and Booker T. Washington Schools. All the presentations will be available on a password protected site for registrants of the SI until July 10. This will allow some schools to …
Michael Gurian here. I am writing about a change to our Summer Institute 2022. It will now take place solely on Zoom. All registrants will also have two weeks to watch and re-watch everything, so even if you can’t make it to the SI on Zoom on either June 25 or June 26, you can view everything through July 10. We have an amazing group of speakers with information …
At our Summer Training Institute in June, we have asked three renowned educators to speak on helping children of color. Marion Hill, Dr. Glynetta Fletcher, and Dr. Daryl Howard each provide a different focus, as you will see in this week’s blog post. To learn more about our Summer Training Institute and to register, please visit: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2022/. All our keynoters come from a systemic change context–hopeful that every school will …
Our Virtual Summer Training Institute is this weekend! Have you registered yet? Please click https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2022/ to learn more and to register. The event is Virtual so there is still time. To bring groups of five or more, email gail@gurianinstitute.com. If you would like to become a Gurian Certified Trainer, let Gail know. This annual event supports you in whatever place and way you work with boys, girls, and all children. …
Our own, our children’s, and our students’ mental health is on our minds. How can it not be? We each see issues all around us. The Surgeon General estimates more than 40% of Americans, including nearly half our children, face mental and emotional health issues right now. We each can use support taking care of ourselves and helping the children in our care to live with heart and soul through …
For the second year in a row, we are offering a new track at our Summer Training Institute – Our Early Childhood Track. These dynamic presenters have hands on experience in early childhood classrooms and services and lead our early childhood Pilots in Phoenix. Marion Hill who is keynoting our SI inspired this early childhood track last year and the track has grown this year with the support of Natalie …
The Gurian Institute is honored to join with community organizers in April to bring you two Helping Boys Thrive Summits. One is an in-person event in Spokane, Washington, April 23, 2022 sponsored by the Kellen Cares Foundation, featuring keynoters Michael Gurian and Tim Wright with workshops by local professionals. The other is a Tele-Summit on April 29 – 30, sponsored by the Washingon, D.C. based The Boys Initiative, featuring keynoters …
A mom in the tech industry wrote me this email: “Everywhere I go in Silicon Valley I see kids and adults less resilient. In my workplace, we are constantly tangled up with issues that are kid stuff in adult clothing—who said what to whom, who likes and doesn’t like whom, who hurt who’s feelings. These folks are 35-year-old children who can’t stand up for themselves, or when they do, they …
Beginning in the late 1980s, Michael Gurian began to build a science-based social philosophy for child development, especially in the spheres of education, parenting, and psychology. This philosophy grounds the Gurian Institute’s work in schools and communities. This week our blog post is a round up of just a few of the recent articles and studies that ground the Gurian philosophy and method. Don’t forget to check out our Summer …
We are heartbroken at the loss of life and freedom in the Ukraine. Both the Ukrainian people and, likely, most of the Russian people have had their interests betrayed by this continuing act of tyranny and war. We pray for the people who are suffering and agree with others that prayers are not enough; we have been donating resources to action funds set up to help the refugees. Please send …
We are delighted to offer you and your teams an array of possibilities for participation in this June’s Summer Training Institute. This is our annual training, networking, and strategy-driven educational event for anyone working with boys and girls. Michael Gurian’s keynotes will add a focus on resilience-building through the lens’ of boys and girls’ developing minds and emotions, especially as they are evolving in and through the Covid era. On …
This week we would like to remind our readers to check out two novels about teen boys, Michael Gurian’s The Stone Boys and Paul Cumbo’s, Wilderness Therapy. Both are not just compelling reads but also generous and at times startling glimpses into the minds of teen boys. You can find both novels wherever you shop for books. We would also like to welcome a guest blog from Paul Cumbo …
To our Wonder of Parenting podcast, a mom wrote two questions that we are asked a great deal. “Are some kids just more resilient than others? I have three children, two girls and one boy. I think I’m doing all the right things to make sure they are resilient but how can I be sure?” A dad wrote about his daughter and son, four and five. “We’ve noticed our daughter …
In celebration of Valentine’s Day, our Story of a Man blog is Michael Gurian’s poem, “What I’ve Learned About Marriage.” It is a mind expanding poem in a number of ways, and benefits from multiple readings. We hope you enjoy it. Don’t forget to register for our Virtual Summer Training Institute in June. Early Bird registration is in full swing. Bring teams with you if you can to this exciting …
Almost every day we get questions about healthy screen time for kids, especially in the pandemic and post-pandemic context. Our children are going to be on screens, especially as they get older, but how much, when, why, and what limits are best? Dr. Meghan Owenz is the author of the book Spoiled Right: Delaying Screens and Giving Children What They Really Need. A professor at Penn State University, Dr. Owenz …
What parent does not have regrets? We all do, and if we give our memories free reign as we lay in bed at night, regret might overwhelm us for long moments before sleep. But what if our mistakes are not as mistaken as we thought, especially if we make them striving to build resilience in our children? In “Both Our Beauty and Our Awkwardness We Bring,” from his Story of …
We are proud to announce that our Summer Training Institute is set for June 25-26, 2022! It will be Virtual over the weekend so that people from around the world can join various sessions via Zoom as they are happening. For more information and to register, click: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2022/. You can register as an individual on the website or bring groups of five or more at a discount. For group registration, …
Multiple times per week I receive a phone call, email, or social media post about children’s mental health. A teacher wrote, “I’m having trouble focusing on learning because of the behavioral issues the kids are bringing to our classrooms after more than a year without proper socialization.” Another: “They haven’t socialized, so they don’t know good boundaries, and I’m seeing a high increase in depression and anxiety.” A mom called …
The Gurian Institute (GI) is proud to be expanding its Head Start Pilot programs in Phoenix, AZ. The two year GI Pilot at Cartwright Early Childhood Center is completing this year (more on its results in a moment) and new Pilots at Arizona State University Early Childhood School, Byron Barry Early Childhood School, and Booker T. Washington Early Childhood School are underway. The Pilots are a collaboration between the Gurian …
Today’s blog post is a guest column from a longtime friend of the Gurian Institute, Paul Cumbo. Paul is a teacher at Canisius High School in Buffalo, N.Y., author of Wilderness Therapy and other books, and Co-Founder of the Camino Institute. “Sure,” Paul writes, “your kids will probably use social media sooner or later, but we should do everything we can to make it later. Meanwhile, parents and educators …
The Maryland State Board of Education has looked at the data–and the hearts and minds of its constituency–and seen a situation that can be improved and, in the long term, is fixable. That problem is the state of black boys in our schools. The state of Maryland is not alone in looking at these issues, and now stands at the cutting edge of solution-oriented action. Our Gurian Institute team is …
To celebrate the publication anniversary of Michael Gurian’s fourth book on Marriage and Relationships, Lessons of Lifelong Intimacy (2015), we are publishing this blog from the author, a must read for anyone in a relationship, and working to help it grow. If you want more of this kind of advice, get the book on amazon.com or at your bookstore. In it, you will find in it a treasure trove of …
The Gurian Institute has been providing and involved with Helping Boys Thrive® Summits for nearly ten years. These exciting one day events are networking and learning opportunities for everyone in a community who is engaged with boys–teachers, parents, non-profit staff, counselors, pastors, and all other stakeholders. People in the communities we serve tell us these Summits become “essential events” as they raise consciousness on boys’ development and present-day struggles, and …
For more than a decade, Michael Gurian has joined with other leaders to call on three different Presidents to create a White House Commission on Boys and Men. In Saving Our Sons and other Gurian publications he has described the political headwinds facing this potential commission. To most people in the world it should be obvious–boys and men need research and resources just like girls and women do–but in politics, …
Michael Gurian’s father, Jack Gurian (1929 – 2021), a Veteran of the Korean War, passed away in July from Covid pneumonia. This Veteran’s day we are honoring him with the publication of Michael’s “A Final Mercy.” We hope this lyrical oratory, which Temple Beth Shalom in Spokane uses for its Yizkor service (the Jewish service honoring those who have sacrificed and passed on) will also help honor all our veterans, …
For more than 20 years, the Gurian Institute has been certifying trainers to provide professional development and consulting in schools, organizations, and communities both in the United States and abroad. You can meet some of our trainers on https://gurianinstitute.com/trainers/. In 2019, we announced a major new GI initiative: “Let’ Have a Trainer in Every School!” This initiative is about equipping every school with at least one certified trainer who can …
I was traveling recently and happened to sit on the airplane next to a “sex-ender.” I did not know that she was this person until after we exchanged small talk. When we got to a point of talking about what we did for a living, I learned that she was a sociology professor at a well-known university. Once she heard what I do for a living, she said, “Oh,” not …
In the area of sex and gender, we are seeing pressure to form a culture of the exception. While all of us are, by nature, male and female (sex), including gender nonconforming children and adults, most of what we talk about in our schools, homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, and organizations is gender. You will likely have noticed the linguistic replacement happening around you. Perhaps you have seen “gender equity” when the …
“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” – Title IX A school principal called me recently about our Gurian Institute team providing Pilot programs in that district. The administration has disaggregated district test score, grades, and discipline data in accordance …
You’ve probably heard about the culture experiment of “gender-neutral babies.” While this experiment involves only a small number of parents worldwide, it garners a lot of press, and from press comes pressure. Some parents now wonder if they are being shameful, oppressive, and abusive by loving their children as female and male. School and district leaders wonder, too: despite that boys are falling behind in education worldwide, “Do ‘boy’ and …
This last weekend, Michael Gurian officiated the wedding of his and Gail’s daughter Davita to Ben Herrington at their climbing gym, Rock Shop, in Richland, WA. Nearly two years ago, he did the same for their daughter Gabrielle and Jack Guen-Murray at their home in Spokane. To celebrate everyone’s search for lifelong love we are publishing Michael’s words for the couples in our Story of a Man blog this week. …
Our friend and one of the sponsors of our Wonder of Parenting Podcast is the psychologist, Dr. Gregory Jantz, author of more than 30 books in psychology and education and co-founder of The Center, A Place of Hope. Dr. Jantz and his team have provided this week’s blog post on a key topic of American life, though many Americans (and world citizens, too) don’t realize how significant the suicide crisis …
If you haven’t looked recently at our Products page, we hope you will click https://gurianinstitute.com/products/ and look at the products we offer. One of those is our 4 plus hour Online Course featuring Michael Gurian. You can get more specifics about this course at https://gurianinstitute.com/products/boys-and-girls-learn-differently-online-course/. The course can be used by whole school teams on Professional Development days. A school superintendent who used it with his staff called it “a …
Our blog this week features a powerful blog from Rachel Ehmke at the Child Mind Institute in New York. Experts at the CMI and elsewhere, including here at the Gurian Institute, caution that our children, influenced by social media, are growing up with more anxiety and less self-esteem. This is showing up a great deal among our teens. Many parents worry about how exposure to technology might affect toddlers developmentally. …
This week’s newsletter is a poem about love that my readers will recognize also for scientific underpinnings. I publish this now in anticipation of the wedding of my daughter, Davita, to her fiance, Ben, next month. The poem is called, “The Dance of Eggs and Stones.” I published it in my book, THE WONDER OF AGING (Atria, 2013). Enjoy! The Dance of Eggs and Stones Every day we …
The Forge School in Benton, Tennessee, is doing great work with boys and we are pleased to embrace the school’s staff and its purpose as inherently boy-friendly. Michael Gurian works with the school as consultant and trainer. He wrote about his initial visit to the school here: https://gurianinstitute.com/a-visit-to-the-forge-school/. If you know of a teen boy of 14 – 17 who is struggling, give the Forge School a look. You …
Michael Gurian was honored to be interviewed on the videocast, Worlds Apart. This is a stimulating and in depth conversation on the state of boyhood not just in the U.S. but internationally.
For more than two decades, the Gurian Institute has been communicating with you the ideas and intentions of a social movement committed to using gender neuroscience and educational psychology as a bedrock for social and systemic change. GI helps children, families, schools, and communities thrive. In books, articles, blogs, studies, and posts, I (Michael Gurian) have done most of the writing that we publish, though I am often joined by …
Our deepest thanks to everyone who attended and helped organize our Summer Training Institute! It took place online June 26-27, 2021 and is still going on, involving more than 300 participants who attended and are still attending via extended-time zoom videos. As the screen shot shows, there is excitement, inspiration, networking, and a love of learning, teaching, and mentoring that pervades this virtual event. On https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2021/, you can see the …
Dr. Michael Gurian, Dr. Glynetta Fletcher, and Marion Hill will provide four powerful and leading edge keynotes for the Summer Training Institute. Dr. Gurian will speak on The Minds of Boys and Girls and Trauma, Poverty, and the Brain. Dr. Fletcher will speak on The Equity Solution and Marion Hill on The Paternal Nurturance Asset. While our virtual event will transpire mainly live via zoom over the June 26 – …
If you haven’t looked recently at our Products page, we hope you will click https://gurianinstitute.com/products/ and look at the products we offer. One of those is our 4 plus hour Online Course featuring Michael Gurian. You can get more specifics about this course at https://gurianinstitute.com/products/boys-and-girls-learn-differently-online-course/. The course can be used by whole school teams on Professional Development days. A school superintendent who used it with his staff called it “a …
Our Summer Training Institute is just around the corner. In our blog today, we are featuring a number of workshops by our Certified and Master Trainers. You will find workshops on working with high school age boys, learning different and anxious students, students of poverty via virtual learning, successful executive function development, and empowering students in single sex classrooms and environments. Please join us for our Summer Institute June 26 …
A special feature of this year’s Summer Training Institute is its early childhood track. While all the keynotes cover boys and girls across the spectrum and age groups, Michael Gurian, Dr. Glynetta Fletcher, and Marion Hill will present in ways that also set up the early childhood tracks in the afternoons. Then Marion and directors, teachers, and coaches from the GI Pilots in Head Start programs and schools in Phoenix, …
For more than 20 years, the Gurian Institute has been certifying trainers to provide professional development and consulting in schools, organizations, and communities both in the United States and abroad. You can meet some of our trainers on https://gurianinstitute.com/trainers/. In 2019, we announced a major new GI initiative: “Let’ Have a Trainer in Every School!” This initiative is about equipping every school with at least one certified trainer who can …
Do you feel like you are living in a culture at war between sex and gender? Is that war paralyzing, or at least confusing, your efforts to develop gender equity in your school or other system? My own answers to both questions are “Yes.” I see a creeping weaponization of the false dichotomy between sex and gender that pits different populations against one another, and results in danger to children. There …
Our blog today is by Eva Dwight, teachers, counselor, and Program Director of the Gurian Institute. Eva will be leading four workshops at our Summer Institute in June. To learn more and to register for the Summer Institute, click: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2021/. Here now follows a blog from Eva on the Boys and Girls Learn Differently Solution. Throughout my 20 years as a junior high counselor, I was continually dismayed to see …
We are proud to announce that our Summer Training Institute is all set for June 26-27, 2021! We hope this is the last time we will need to do either our Winter or Summer Institute via zoom, and yet we have discovered advantages to this format, too. More people from around the world can join, and the keynotes and workshops can be available for your viewing and participation the whole …
With so much schooling online this past year, our homes have naturally adjusted to our children spending five to eight or more hours a day in front of screens. We can say this was (is) a necessity because of Covid 19, and that’s fair. But that much screen time is bad for children’s brains. There are things we can do to mitigate potential damage, and this blog will look at …
In the wake of more mass shootings this last few weeks, as our hearts are broken, we are again asking “Why?” The most popular answer over the last few decades has been some form of “since it’s almost always a boy or man who is violent, it must be that masculine norms train them to be violent.” The term “toxic masculinity” houses this idea. Similarly, when we see that boys …
As you plan your summer and back-to-school professional development days, we hope you will look at utilizing Gurian Institute brain-based professional development. GI has trained tens of thousands of educators and professionals in more than 5,000 schools over the last quarter century. Our areas of focus are academic and social emotional success in educational systems and school cultures. Our GI training uses neuroscience linked to hundreds of practical strategies for …
There is a secret in American life (and indeed, a secret existing throughout the Developed World) that few people want to talk about–that there are few primary markers of physical, cognitive, educational, neurological, emotional, psychological, and employment health in which females in the aggregate are doing worse than males in the aggregate. More than a decade ago, a number of us in the gender field founded a non-partisan …
We are proud to announce that Michael Gurian will provide two powerful and leading edge keynotes for the Summer Training Institute, one on Protecting the Emotional Lives of Boys and Girls and the other on Poverty, Trauma, and Learning. While our virtual event will transpire mainly live via zoom over the June 26 – 27, 2021 weekend, the keynotes and the whole Summer Institute will be available to registrants through …
We are proud to announce that Dr. Glynetta Fletcher and Marion Hill will provide two powerful and leading edge keynotes for the Summer Training Institute. Dr. Fletcher will speak on The Equity Solution and Marion Hill on The Paternal Nurturance Asset. While our virtual event will transpire mainly live via zoom over the June 26 – 27, 2021 weekend, everything will be available to registrants through July 3, 2021. This …
The Center, A Place of Hope, has been a sponsor of our Wonder of Parenting podcast for more than two years. Dr. Gregory Jantz has been a friend of the Gurian Institute for more than a decade, partnering with us to bring Helping Boys Thrive Summits to the Seattle area. He and Michael Gurian also wrote a book together in 2012, Raising Boys by Design. Michael was honored to write …
We are proud to announce that our Summer Training Institute is all set for June 26-27, 2021! We hope this is the last time we will need to do either our Winter or Summer Institute via zoom, and yet we have discovered advantages to this format, too. More people from around the world can join, and the keynotes and workshops can be available for your viewing and participation the whole …
What is “reality”? It is lived phenomena empirically processed by the brain’s intimate embrace of lived experience. What is “shared reality”? It is the collective embrace of empirical experience and data through the lens of common sense. In Parts I and II of this blog, I used neurobiology and citizen science to help you look at how media/social media bombard and often traumatize adult and children’s brains. If you have …
As an expert in child development, I have been vocal for years about my concerns regarding the role of media and social media in adult’s and children’s lives—especially the potentially detrimental effects on all our brains. Please go to www.gurianinstitute.com to read Part I of the series. Part III will be published soon. Because Part II continues where Part I left off, I hope you will read Part I before …
Six seemingly disparate elements stimulate this analysis: the assault on Congress at the beginning of January and its connection to election results and an election-fraud movement; the murder of George Floyd last year and the concomitant defund the police movement; the pandemic responses nationwide over the last year that have resulted in school shutdowns; media and social media coverage of gender and sex issues; the Queen’s Gambit series about a …
Girls and women are entering STEM fields in large numbers. As a father of two grown daughters, I feel both happiness and relief when I see this sea change. Especially in the S (Science) part of the STEM/STEAM acronym, females have caught up to and are, in some schools, surpassing male participation. For instance, there are now more women entering med school than men, and women are engaging in biology-centered …
We are so proud of our speakers and participants in our Winter Institute. Thank you all! Through crazy times and after a crazy year, the Zoom event went smoothly and the more than 200 participants gained knowledge and strategies with which to help their students and children press forward in 2021. Our speakers covered the minds of boys and girls, leading edge science on trauma-response, working with children of color, …
The Gurian Institute’s podcast just hit 1,000,000 downloads! We are so proud of our listeners for supporting us. If you haven’t heard it, the podcast is called The Wonder of Parenting: A Brain Science Approach to Parenting. It is specifically for parents, teachers, and others raising children from birth to college age. Tim Wright hosts the podcast and Michael Gurian answers questions from listeners and provides parenting advice. You can …
The terms “masculinity” and “toxic masculinity” are used quite a bit in our culture. Last year a wing of the American Psychological Association produced “Guidelines for Practice with Boys and Men,” equating masculinity with mainly negative characteristics, and guiding therapists to try to remove masculinity from male clients as the best way to make men whole. Michael Gurian and others in the boy’s development field were asked to respond to …
My Visit to the Forge School – a Place of Hope, Adventure, and Growth As I drove up to the Forge School in early November, I saw green meadows out of which mountains rose in a fall setting. On my windshield, sun blazed out of blue space between clouds. Around me were shocks of autumn colors on the trees. Pulling up to the gold and brown school building, stepping out …
If you haven’t looked recently at our Products page, we hope you will click https://gurianinstitute.com/products/ and look at the products we offer. One of those is our 4 plus hour Online Course featuring Michael Gurian. You can get more specifics about this course at https://gurianinstitute.com/products/boys-and-girls-learn-differently-online-course/. The course can be used by whole school teams on Professional Development days. A school superintendent who used it with his staff called it “a …
For more than 20 years, the Gurian Institute has been certifying trainers to provide professional development and consulting in schools, organizations, and communities both in the United States and abroad. You can meet some of our trainers on https://gurianinstitute.com/trainers/. Last year, we announced a major new “Trainer in Every School!” initiative, which is about equipping every school with at least one certified trainer in house who can train faculty, staff, …
People are signing up from around the world and throughout the country for our Winter Training Institute! We hope you will join them. This even will take place as a Tele-Summit on Saturday and Sunday, January 23-24, 2021 with the recorded sessions available for registrants until January 30. For those people who would like to become Gurian Certified Trainers, there will be an additional training session on Monday morning, January …
To publish this blog this week may seem counter-intuitive as Covid cases rise around the country and the world, but please bear with me. I believe, even if you disagree with what I argue here, there is no harm in looking at our present situation through this social-science-based lens, especially as our Covid Response isolates and negatively impacts so many children. “The life of the average American child today …
Are you looking for a hands-on, easy-to-use, and exciting professional development experience that fits your budget? Do you work with boys and girls as an educator, counselor, parent, or agency? Have you noticed issues boys and girls were each facing before Covid and now in the Covid era? Do you want immediate practical strategies and solutions at your fingertips, no matter your profession? If your answer to any of these …
Our friend and one of the sponsors of our Wonder of Parenting Podcast is the psychologist, Dr. Gregory Jantz. He is author of more than 30 books in psychology and education and co-founder of The Center, A Place of Hope. Dr. Jantz and his team have provided this week’s blog post on a key topic of American life, though many Americans (and world citizens, too) don’t realize how significant the …
At our Winter Training Institute, educators and innovators Marion Hill, Josh Nordean, Shirleen Lombard, Joseph Moody, and Amy Coe will provide powerful workshops on crucial topics for educating and raising boys and girls. Have you registered yet for our Winter Tele-Summit? To learn more and to register, please click: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-winter-institute-2021/. In these difficult times, doesn’t it feel supportive and inspiring to come to a place of stability and cohesion in …
The Gurian Institute is proud to be a consulting partner with the new The Forge School (Forge), a leading edge residential treatment center for boys from 14-17 in Benton, Tennessee. Its 55 acres border rivers and wetlands, making it a perfect location. Forge is a new school but its parent organization, the Calo Division of Embark, is a premier agency in the residential treatment space, and Forge brings that experience …
In my blog a few weeks ago and in The Minds of Girls I (Michael Gurian) have focused on science-based theory and practice that have proven to close gender gaps. A researcher and father of daughters, I am arguing that to fully help girls and women, we must push beyond the idea that corporate sexism and “gender stereotypes” are the primary reasons tech and certain STEM fields don’t employ …
The Gurian Institute is excited to welcome Joseph Moody, a powerful educator and dynamic speaker, to our Winter Training Institute! The event will take place as a Tele-Summit on Saturday and Sunday, January 23-24, 2021 with the recorded sessions available for registrants until January 30. For those people who would like to become Gurian Certified Trainers, there will be an additional training session on Monday morning, January 25. This is, …
Early bird registration for our Winter Training Institute ends on December 18! The WI will take place as a Tele-Summit on Saturday and Sunday, January 23-24, 2021 with the recorded sessions available for registrants until January 30, so you do not have to attend on January 23-24 to get the training and workshops. For those people who would like to become Gurian Certified Trainers, there will be an additional training …
Join people from around the country and around the world to learn and inspire one another to make systemic change in our communities on behalf of boys. Past participants in these events have agreed that what we do for boys will also help girls and adults. We are all in this together! The Helping Boys Thrive Summits have occurred in cities all over the country in the last seven …
Six months ago, who knew that teachers and parents together would need to devise a “Covid Classroom”? We lived a different life, then. Now, the new classrooms comprise a great deal of what we are talking about as we navigate the 2020 – 2021 school year. Some schools have closed for good; some are re-opening in person; some are open for online schooling only; some are using hybrids. Some …
Our Helping Boys Thrive Tele-Summit is just around the corner. We hope you can join us. If your school or community can sign up 5 or more, there is a group discount. As you’ll see on the website, cost for this summit is quite low because of the generous donations of our sponsors. Check out www.helpingboysthrive.org to look over the tele-summit and to register. You can join us on the …
For many parents and educators, it is difficult to stay positive about online schooling. While some kids and adults take to it, its disadvantages are also overwhelming. As one school principal told us last week, “Given the issues we face with Covid spread, online schooling is simply the lesser of two evils.” Our inbox has been flooded with similar emails from school personnel and parents. In most of those communications, …
This video aired before the Covid outbreak and new BLM protests, and yet it feels, in some ways, even more relevant now. As our culture works to understand the violence that is perpetrated on our youth, we are challenged to understand bullying, trauma, and violence in their own right, and also within the confines of sexual harassment and sexual assault. As our culture understands sexual harassment and assault on …
There is a hidden factor in human safety and equity that often goes unnoticed, especially in the lives of children. As our nation surges with interest, debate, and new programs aimed at helping people of all races feel safer, whether you are male or female determines much of what will happen to you in life. This is especially true in the education sector. The Gurian Institute as a network provides …
For nearly a decade, the Gurian Institute and St. John’s Jesuit Academy and High School (SJJ) in Toledo, OH have forged a partnership in learning. Eight years ago, the Academy became a Gurian Model School. We are excited to report that the Academy has re-certified as a Model School this year, 2020, having fulfilled the designation obligations. SJJ is a premier school for boys not just in Ohio, but …
The Gurian Institute is excited to announce our Winter Training Institute! It will take place as a Tele-Summit on Saturday and Sunday, January 23-24, 2021 with the recorded sessions available for registrants until January 30. For those people who would like to become Gurian Certified Trainers, there will be an additional training session on Monday morning, January 25. This is, thus, a seven day event for a very low price. …
In spring (2020), I called for in-person school to reopen after the initial quarantine, citing significant academic slide without in person schooling, as well as increases in mental and emotional issues among children and families, and noting little or no tangible gain for children, families or even our elderly by closing in-person schools (https://gurianinstitute.com/should-schools-and-families-lock-down-again-due-to-covid/). Over the last few months, you have likely seen published research and media stories detailing the …
The Gurian Institute (GI) is proud to welcome our newest Gurian Model School to the family! The Greater Phoenix Urban League Head Start Cartwright Early Childhood Center (The Cartwright School) serves primarily minority boys and girls in early education. Located in the heart of Phoenix, AZ, and a part of the Cartwright School District, Cartwright is supported by the City of Phoenix Human Services Department and the Greater Phoenix Urban …
The San Antonio Academy is a pre-K – 8 school serving boys and their families in San Antonio, TX. The Gurian Institute has been honored to work with the school over the last six years. The school became a Gurian Model School three years ago and has now fulfilled the requirements for re-certification as a Model School. More about the school and its successes follows in this blog post. …
Our Summer Virtual Training Institute took place live this last weekend with recordings available through through Friday. Because all the sessions were recorded and are archived, you can still sign up for the training here: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2020/ . There are only two days left! If you would like to register five or more people, your school will get a group discount. Please email gail@gurianinstitute.com for a discount. Like the live participants, …
With the coronavirus pandemic continuing, many parents who work from home are still struggling to find that healthy balance between work and family life. For parents whose children will continue online learning, the balancing act becomes even more arduous. However, you don’t have to suffer through it all. Below, find helpful strategies for staying on top of everything with your mental health intact. Find Routines That Work for Everyone Without …
This blog by Michael Gurian was first published immediately after the death of George Floyd. A number of people have written that they missed it the first time, asking that we republish it. We are doing so here. Thank you for everything you are personally doing to solve these pressing social issues. “What is one life worth?” We have heard this question asked in relation to locking down our nation …
Our Summer Virtual Training Institute starts this Saturday. We hope you’ll register now to experience three ground-breaking keynotes, a dozen user-friendly workshops, and your questions answered throughout the summit. To learn more about the Summer Institute 2020 Tele-Summit and to register, please click https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2020/. If you register groups of five or more, there is a discount, with information about that on the website, as well. If you want to become …
We appreciate your business and your belief in our Professional Development. In the face of lost school time, postponed PD days, budget issues, and general uncertainty during the Covid crisis, the Gurian Institute has adapted its programming to meet your needs. All our programs generally fit with federal, state, municipal and other funding sources. Here is a menu of four dynamic options. 1. Virtual professional development 2. Online courses …
The title metaphor of Michael Gurian’s new book, The Stone Boys, represents boys who must become as hard as stone to survive. Traumatized boys and men are especially prone to becoming hardened for many reasons, some neuro-biological and some psycho-sociological. Traumatized girls and women can become hardened, too, but after trauma, they often engage and disengage with life and learning in somewhat different ways than boys. Dr. Glynetta “Fletch” …
You may have recently seen media stories showing the significant majority of Covid deaths and severe illness are male (e.g. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/studies-find-men-more-prone-covid-19-death). This is true not just among men but also boys (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/16/uk-lockdown-causing-serious-mental-illness-in-first-time-patients, https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/boys-severe-coronavirus-symptoms/). In our own Gurian Institute educational network, we are hearing how much more trouble boys are having than girls, on average, with academic motivation and achievement during Covid distance learning. In a previous essay (May 6, 2020, …
For more than 20 years, the Gurian Institute has been certifying trainers to provide professional development and consulting in schools, organizations, and communities both in the United States and abroad. You can meet some of our trainers on https://gurianinstitute.com/trainers/. Last year, we announced a major new GI initiative: “Let’ Have a Trainer in Every School!” This initiative is about equipping every school with at least one certified trainer who can …
Tim Wright organizes a number of our Gurian Institute Helping Boys Thrive Summits and presents workshops worldwide on gender issues. He will provide a workshop at our Virtual Summer Training Institute (June 27 – July 1) titled Dynamic Rites of Passage for Boys and Girls: How to Develop and Use Strategies, Models, and Successful Programs in Your School or Community. Tim focuses on the boy part of this equation in …
No matter what happens with COVID-19 protocols, our Summer Training Institute will be held virtually and online. It will happen on June 27-28 first, then every paid registrant will also get access to all the recorded keynotes and workshops through July 1. We hope you’ll join us for this powerful multi-day event. It will be easy to access via your device. Group discounts are available by contacting gail@gurianinstitute.com. Eva Dwight, …
My father, Dr. Jay P. Gurian, a retired American Studies professor and Cultural officer for the State Department, just turned 91. Locked into an assisted living facility under the shadow of Covid, suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD) and two other lung conditions, he is one of the people most vulnerable to Covid related illness and death. As our country shut its economy down early in March, he said, …
“What is one life worth?” We have heard this question asked in relation to locking down our nation and world to save our vulnerable elders during the Covid-19 crisis. In the wake of George Floyd’s death and so many others like it, mustn’t the same question, “What is one life worth?” be asked with as much voice and heart for boys and men of color? What is their value to …
Some of you have written and called about rumors that school may not start this Fall, at least not in some brick-and-mortar locations, but instead may transpire online, as it did this spring. Others have written that Summer and Back-to-School PD will need to transpire online and virtually, as well. If this happens in your school or district, please let us know. We provide PD via Zoom, webinar, and other …
“We are at each other’s throats,” a client told me via tele-coaching this week. “We’re together all the time, he lost his job, we have three kids trying to do schoolwork, and I have to cloister in the bedroom to work from home. We are in constant conflict.” Another client via telephone downplayed his conflicts with his partner, (I will use “partner” to mean spouse or mate in any …
We are in the midst of the COVID-19 lock down, spending a lot of time together, and discovering new ways of bonding and learning. At the same time, many of us are eating a lot of junk food because it provides easy take-out or delivery options. We and our kids eat that junk food together, and it lasts around the house for snacks. The family bonding is wonderful, but …
We have two important announcements today. First, our Gurian Summer Training Institute will happen! It is going to be an online event over the weekend of June 27-28, with each session also available online to paid participants for a set period of time after the weekend. While we will miss seeing you in Carlsbad, CA this year, we are excited by the ability to reach you where you are. Please …
I (Michael Gurian) happen to be Jewish, so I am going to borrow words from the Pirke Avot (an ancient Hebrew text on Ethics) to begin this blog post: “The world rests on three things: Torah (study), Avodah (prayer/spiritual growth), and Gemilut Chasadim (acts of loving kindness.)” Whatever your religion–even if you are an atheist–this saying might still give sustenance, especially if rewritten this way: “In a crisis, these three …
We are in the midst of a COVID crisis that is affecting nearly everyone’s lives. Many schools are shutting their brick-and-mortar doors for the time being, and moving students online. In-person and on-site professional development is grinding to a stand still in many districts for fear of people gathering together in one room. Large and small conferences are also shuttered across the country. Our hearts go out to everyone affected …
In this special edition of our normal newsletter, I want to share some thoughts about how to talk with kids about the COVID crisis, manage your plethora of new family time while schools are closed, and stay sane during what will be hard times for all of us. Tim Wright and I did a podcast on this subject just two days ago which you can access on www.wonderofparenting.com by subscribing …
Here’s some shocking data for you. Or maybe, if you work in a school, not so shocking. Across the United States, *boys receive two-thirds of the D’s and F’s in our schools but less than 40% of the A’s *boys are twice as likely as girls to be labeled “emotionally disturbed” and twice as likely to be diagnosed with a behavioral or learning disorder *boys are four times as likely …
The Gurian Institute has launched a podcast in collaboration with our friend and colleague, Tim Wright. The podcast is called The Wonder of Parenting: A Brain Science Approach to Parenting. It is specifically for parents, teachers, and others raising children from birth to college age. Michael Gurian answers questions from listeners and provides parenting advice. You can find our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. We just hit the milestone …
Today, we are re-posting an edited version of a post that Michael Gurian wrote for our Gurian Institute Newsletter and Psychology Today more than a year ago. It is about the crises faced by our boys and young men. Over the last year and a half, we have received multiple requests that we post this blog again, and especially as Michael Gurian was just in the Los Angeles Unified School …
Our Summer Training Institute is set for the weekend of June 12-14, 2020 at beautiful Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, California. Army and Navy Academy (www.armyandnavyacademy.org) is a Gurian Model School and sits right on the beach. We are honored that the school has hosted us now for six years, and we thank everyone there for their wonderful job supporting visitors and guests. To learn more about the Summer …
The title of this blog could get put this other way: “Because I said, ‘Stop crying’ to my son when I was raising him, did I ruin his life?” I have been asked questions like this for more than thirty years, including recently, when I was serving on a conference panel to discuss fatherhood. At this conference, I heard another panel member tell the audience that a boy’s future health …
Just a few weeks ago in a video blog, I discussed how robust the research on male/female brain difference is these days. In fact, after four decades of brain scans showing male and female brains, it seems unnecessary to have to keep saying this, but every few years a social trend develops in which a few people decide to argue very loudly that female and male are small things. …
If you haven’t looked recently at our Products page, we hope you will click https://gurianinstitute.com/products/ and look at the products we offer. One of those is our 4 plus hour Online Course featuring Michael Gurian. You can get more specifics about this course at https://gurianinstitute.com/products/boys-and-girls-learn-differently-online-course/. The course can be used by whole school teams on Professional Development days. A school superintendent who used it with his staff called it “a …
Our Summer Training Institute is set for the weekend of June 12-14, 2020 at beautiful Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, California. Army and Navy Academy (www.armyandnavyacademy.org) is a Gurian Model School and sits right on the beach. We are honored that the school has hosted us now for six years, and we thank everyone there for their wonderful job supporting visitors and guests. To learn more about the Summer …
Our deepest thanks to everyone who attended and helped organize our Winter Training Institute! It took place this last weekend at the Lovett Middle School in Atlanta, GA, a Gurian Model School. As these photos will show, there was excitement, inspiration, team work, networking, and a love of learning that pervaded the whole event. On https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-winter-institute-2020/, you can see the keynotes, workshops, and other sessions that made up the …
For more than 20 years, the Gurian Institute has been certifying trainers to provide professional development and consulting in schools, organizations, and communities both in the United States and abroad. You can meet some of our trainers on https://gurianinstitute.com/trainers/. Earlier this year, we announced a major new GI initiative: “A Trainer in Every School.” The program’s goal is to equip every school with at least one certified trainer who can …
Almost daily, I receive an email or other correspondence asking about the influences of nature, nurture, and culture on Girls/STEM training and Women/STEM gaps in the workplace. In The Minds of Girls, I go into this important subject in depth. At our Winter Training Institute in Atlanta in January, I and our team will explore this topic in strategic depth (for more information and to register, click here: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-winter-institute-2020/). In …
In Phoenix at the end of October and in Toledo on Veterans Day, we were honored to join community stakeholders in two very powerful Helping Boys Thrive Summits. Hundreds of people came out for the events, and Michael Gurian, Tim Wright, and local trainers and leaders provided keynotes and workshops. Everyone came together to learn more about boys, the boy crisis, and especially, what we can all do to …
At our Winter Institute, January 25-26, 2020, at the Lovett School, Stacia McFadden, Director of Academic Technology, will provide a workshop on tech use in school and at home. To learn more about our Winter Institute, please go to www.gurianinstitute.com. This blog sent out by Stacia to parents and community members provides a short list of guidance on this very important subject. In her workshop, Stacia will provide more depth. …
The Gurian Winter Training Institute (WI) will be held this weekend on the beautiful campus of the Lovett School, in Atlanta, GA. To learn more and to register, please click: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-winter-institute-2020/. We hope to see you there! This multi-day Training Institute is a great place for you not only to learn more about boys, girls, and the gender spectrum, but also to become a Gurian Certified Trainer. We hope to …
Our Winter Training Institute is set for January 24-26, 2020 at The Lovett School, in Atlanta, Georgia. Early Bird registration ends November 30! The school is a comfortable and beautiful facility for learning, networking, and changing paradigms. Its rooms and grounds are perfect for practicing new teaching and counseling strategies and renewing our shared belief in the power of education. To learn more about the Winter Training and to …
Thank you for your responses to The Stone Boys. It is my (Michael Gurian’s) first young adult novel (suitable for teens 13 and older), a story somewhat from my own boyhood, fictionalized and expanded. Some of you have sent in questions requesting more information on how this book happened. Before talking more about that, I want to extend a special offer to schools: if you do a school wide read …
From Director Eva Dwight: Early on in my work as a junior high counselor, I noticed that boys were predominantly the students I saw for either academic failure or discipline problems. I knew we weren’t meeting their learning needs, and we needed to be doing something different in classrooms, but I didn’t know WHAT, and I didn’t know WHY. Then I discovered Dr. Michael Gurian’s book Boys and Girls …
The Gurian Winter Training Institute (WI) is just around the corner. It will be held on the beautiful campus of the Lovett School, in Atlanta, GA. To learn more and to register, please click: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-winter-institute-2020/. We hope to see you there! If you can do it, please feel free to bring teams to the WI. A number of schools from around the country are doing this, and it can …
We are very proud of our partnership with Dr. Gregory Jantz, Founder of The Center, A Place of Hope, as well as our partnership with the Center itself, located in Edmonds, WA, a suburb of Seattle. Dr. Jantz and his wife, Lafon, founded the Center more than 30 years ago to be a premier facility for mental health treatment. The Center delivers. If you go to www.aplaceofhope.com, you’ll see testimonials …
National speaker and renowned educator Troy Kemp will be our Sunday keynoter at our Winter Institute. Troy is executive director of the National Center for the Development of Boys and the Director of Admissions at the Ron Clark Academy. About Troy’s talks and teaching, Michael Gurian has said, “Troy Kemp is one of the most dynamic speakers I have ever heard. His practical steps for helping all students, and especially …
We will be holding our Winter Training Institute in the Southeast again! For the last two years we’ve received phone calls, emails, and personal requests from many of you that we provide a Winter Training Institute like the one we provided in Tampa, Florida for four years, and like our Summer Institute in June in California. Thank you for requesting it, and thank you to The Lovett School, in Atlanta, …
From Michael Gurian: If I am known at all, it is probably for The Wonder of Boys, The Wonder of Girls, or another nonfiction work in the fields of education or psychology. If you have read any of this work in applied neuroscience and psychology—or even my less known novels and poetry–you will know of my hopefulness about human nature, but also my vigilance against its dark side. I started …
We hope you enjoy this blog by Eva Dwight, Gurian Winter Training Institute Coordinator, classroom teacher and school counselor for more than 20 years, and one of the featured speakers at the Gurian Winter Training Institute, January 25-26, 2020 at Lovett School in Atlanta, Georgia. Her workshop on taking classroom management to the next level with the brain in mind will be very powerful. Here’s more from Eva. The toughest …
Before we get into this week’s blog, the Gurian Institute wants to announce that the Early Bird registration deadline for our Winter Training Institute at The Lovett School in Atlanta, GA has been extended to December 6, 2019. Because December 1, the previous deadline, fell at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend, we have had potential attendees request an early bird deadline extension. Thank you for asking, and we are …
The title of this blog post is determinedly incendiary, implying that we parents, teachers, and citizens might not have the power to do something elemental: protect our children. Do we have the power? Do we collectively and individually assert the power to change what is happening with our girls? I ask because people come up to me at conferences or write in emails some version of: “I want to curtail …
Buy now! on Amazon (Michael Gurian) convincingly illustrates…the peculiar pain and potential loneliness of being a boy in America today. —Time Magazine The Gurian Institute is proud to announce the publication of The Stone Boys by Michael Gurian, New York Times bestselling author of The Wonder of Boys. We hope you will use it in your classrooms and homes as a way of engaging both boys and girls in …
This month, mass shootings took dozens of lives in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas. Last month, months before, last year, and for more than two decades, American mass shootings–perpetrated by, mainly, young to middle life males–have shocked us. Everyone has a theory as to why these go on. Politicians weigh in constantly, giving different viewpoints. Mental health professionals like myself have weighed in, especially since the late 1990s when …
Our colleague, Dr. Jed Diamond, wrote a powerful blog post recently that begins: “It’s good we recognize that not all humans are either XX or XY, but we shouldn’t forget that the exceptions are few. According to the World Health Organization, humans are born with 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs. The X and Y chromosomes determine a person’s sex. Most women are 46XX and most men are 46XY. “Research suggests …
Early bird registration is open for our January 2020 Winter Training Institute! We will all be together at Lovett Middle School, a Gurian Model School, in Atlanta, Georgia for learning, networking and lots of fun, too. A fully tech-modern facility, Lovett also has beautiful grounds on which to relax and process, and it is only about a half hour away from the Atlanta airport. Our deep thanks to Principal Debbie …
Our Winter Training Institute will be held at Lovett Middle School on January 24-26, 2020, with the extra Monday morning session for Trainer Certification on January 27, 2020. Lovett Middle School, a Gurian Model School, provides not only a lovely setting for the conference, but also an institutional passion for educating children successfully–both in academics and social-emotional growth. We hope you’ll join us in Atlanta for this powerful weekend. Eva …
Gaming is popular, but do we use it to teach maturity? If not, why not? Should boys just be gaming without adult input? To me, videogames are not just games but potential maturation tools because they already deal with themes of character development and manhood at their core. Every videogame—even ones that we might find despicable, like Grand Theft Auto—can become assets in a boy’s moral development, but we MUST discuss the games …
We are very proud of our partnership with Dr. Gregory Jantz, Founder of The Center, A Place of Hope, as well as our partnership with the Center itself, located in Edmonds, WA, a suburb of Seattle. Dr. Jantz and his wife, Lafon, founded the Center more than 30 years ago to be a premier facility for mental health treatment. The Center delivers. If you go to www.aplaceofhope.com, you’ll see testimonials …
Just under a decade ago, I met Fr. William Watson, the founder of the Sacred Story Institute in Seattle, WA. When we met to discuss our mutual work, we realized that we had actually known one another, at least in passing, decades before when we were both at Gonzaga University in Spokane, he as a professor and administrator, and me as an instructor. We also realized our mutual commitment to …
We are proud to announce that we will be holding a Winter Training Institute in the Southeast again. YOU made this happen! For the last two years we’ve received phone calls, emails, and personal requests from many of you that we provide a Winter Training Institute like the one we provided in Tampa, Florida for four years, and like our Summer Institute in June in California. Thank you for …
We want to welcome San Antonio Academy, which is re-certifying this year as a Gurian Model School. Please check the school out: https://www.sa-academy.org/. Michael Gurian has had the honor of providing training and keynotes to parents at SAA, and our GI team members have done the same, always finding the school’s path to child development an inspiring and powerful one. From the school’s focus on social emotional development to its …
We are excited to announce that Cherokee Creek Boys School is re-certifying as a Gurian Model School! Michael Gurian and our Trainers have traveled to the school (which is nestled beautifully in the woods in South Carolina) to train the teams there and speak with parents and staff in Family Seminar days either at the school or at Clemson University. CCBS has inculcated Gurian Theory and Strategies into their …
Abigail Wald, Gurian Certified Trainer and founder of motherflippingawesome.com, provided a powerful workshop at our Summer Training Institute, June 22 -23, at Army and Navy Academy, in Carlsbad, CA last weekend. For this workshop, she also wrote a powerful blog post we are publishing here. She began her blog post with lyrics from the musical, Dear Evan Hansen, about a young man with social anxiety having to navigate the socially …
It was a joy to be with more than 160 people at Army and Navy Academy, in Carlsbad, California, for our Summer Training Institute. A heartfelt thanks to everyone at the Academy for their organizational prowess, including Ethan Segovia, Amy Coe, General Art Barthell, and so many more. Huge thanks also to our staff, speakers, and trainers for sharing so much brain-based research, practical strategies, and deeply inspirational energy. …
As we anticipate our Summer Training Institute in Carlsbad, CA in a couple weeks, we want to welcome Chattanooga Preparatory to our Model School family! We actually met key people in the Chattanooga Prep Model School program at our Summer Institute four years ago. To learn more about our Summer Institute this year (June 22-23, at Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, CA), please check out this website: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2019/. We …
At our Summer Training Institute, Dr. Glynetta Deshon Fletcher, Hicxell Rodriguez Wester, Joseph Moody, and Amy Coe, all Gurian Institute Trainers and dynamic teachers and speakers, will focus on key issues connected to diverse challenges in children’s and student’s lives. Our event at Army and Navy Academy, a Gurian Institute Model School, in Carlsbad, CA (June 22-24), includes an extra Monday session for trainer candidates who wish to become certified. …
We are proud to welcome Master Trainer Rob Kodama to this year’s Summer Institute, which will be held at Army and Navy Academy, a Gurian Model School, in Carlsbad, CA, June 21-23. To learn more about this professional development opportunity and to register, click: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2019/. Rob will provide two workshop sessions on Strategies for Teaching Boys and Girls based on his work over the last fifteen years training educators, …
Tim Wright and Michael Gurian have worked together for 12 years on Rites of Passage programs, Helping Kids Thrive and Helping Boys Thrive initiatives, and the Wonder of Parenting Podcast. Tim will present a workshop this year’s Summer Institute on social trends affecting boys and young men today. Tim is one of America’s most dynamic presenters. A pastor by trade, he works in both secular and faith communities. In …
For more than 20 years, the Gurian Institute has been certifying trainers to provide professional development and consulting in schools, organizations, and communities both in the United States and abroad. You can meet some of our trainers on https://gurianinstitute.com/trainers/. With the Gurian Summer Training Institute fast approaching (June 22-23, at Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, CA), we wanted to remind you of our “Trainer in Every School” initiative. We …
Gurian Certified Trainer and Hand in Hand Parenting Trainer Abigail Wald will provide a workshop on best digital practices at our Summer Training Institute, June 22 -23, at Army and Navy Academy, in Carlsbad, CA. We hope you’ll join her at the event and here is her blog on this crucial topic. Tweens. The word alone conjures up a muddy mental soup of awkward haircuts, rapidly changing bodies, budding …
As you plan your summer and back-to-school professional development days, we hope you will look at utilizing Gurian Institute brain-based professional development. GI has trained tens of thousands of educators and professionals in more than 5,000 schools over the last quarter century. Our areas of focus are academic and social emotional success in educational systems and school cultures. Our GI training uses neuroscience linked to hundreds of practical strategies for …
We hope you enjoy this blog by Eva Dwight, Gurian Summer Training Institute Coordinator, classroom teacher and school counselor for more than 20 years, and one of the featured speakers at the Gurian Summer Training Institute, June 22-23. Her workshop on taking classroom management to the next level with the brain in mind will be very powerful. Here’s more from Eva. The toughest class I ever taught had 30 …
The Gurian Institute is proud to welcome Villa Duchesne and Oak Hill School (VDOH) to our family of Gurian Institute Model Schools! Located in St. Louis, MO, VDOH is an independent, Catholic school in the Sacred Heart tradition. To visit the school online, please click: http://www.vdoh.org. Michael Gurian visited the school and reported, “Catholic education has a long tradition of excellence, and Oak Hill carries that mantle powerfully. Walking …
The Gurian Institute is proud to welcome Burlingame Intermediate School (BIS) to our family of Gurian Institute Model Schools! BIS is a public middle school located in Burlingame, California, in the heart of high tech country. To visit the school online, please click: https://bi-bsd-ca.schoolloop.com/. Michael Gurian visited the school and reported, “There is no doubt, BIS provides leading edge education to its students and families. I am so proud to …
Many boys and men do like therapy, of course, but many leave therapy–or never come–and that is not good. If you look around you, you’ll see that only 1 in 9 new mental health counselors are male. Around 1 in 5 new social workers are men. Graduate schools throughout the medical and therapeutic profession are predominantly filled with women, which is great for women but shows a potentially dangerous male …
Our Summer Training Institute is all set for June 21-23 at Army and Navy Academy, in Carlsbad, California, just north of San Diego. Early Bird registration ends April 15! Because the Academy is nestled right on the beach, the Summer Training Institute is a great event not just for learning but for relaxation and personal renewal. To learn more about the Summer Training and to register, click: https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2019/. You …
We, our students, and our children are stressed out! You’ve heard about it and read about it nearly every day in the media and you’ve likely felt it in your own life. Some of this stress is “good stress,” good for self-challenge, emotional maturity, and performance success. Good stress is a balancing act inside our bodies and brains. Some stress is dangerous. This stress comes from many assaults—digital, nutritional, interpersonal, …
“Gender Indifference” is a term I use to talk about the call by some people, most of them not primary scientists in the field, to deny male/female brain difference. These folks travel the country speaking about gender neuroscience without showing brain scans of males and females across the gender spectrum doing the same task. They avoid showing these scans because to show them would mean their case falls apart. …
For seventeen years, we have come together at the Gurian Summer Training Institute (SI). Each year is an amazing experience of learning and strategy. At https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2019/ you’ll see participant analysis of last year’s SI. Spending a weekend together blending neuro-science with evidence- and research-based practical strategies becomes a source of systemic growth in schools and organizations, and personal growth in relationships with students and children. To fully understand academic and …
Eva Dwight, M.Ed., one of our featured speakers at this year’s Gurian Summer Training Institute, wrote this informative and practical blog featuring a key subject in children’s lives. We hope you find her wisdom useful. To learn more about our event or to register, please visit https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2019/ . From Eva: As a junior high counselor for 20 years, I frequently rolled my eyes at the ridiculousness of what we adults casually term …
The Gurian Institute and the National Center for the Development of Boys have begun their third year of partnership. We want to celebrate that milestone by calling your attention to the powerful work of this organization. The Center is a research and resource non-profit organization that helps educators, counselors, parents, and others who work with boys to understand more deeply the ways in which boys develop, learn, and grow, as …
If you have not yet utilized the work of our friend and colleague, Tim Wright, we hope you will. Tim and his staff, and Michael Gurian and our GI staff, have partnered for the last ten years in three primary ways, all of which were inspired by Tim’s request of Michael that what the Gurian Institute was doing in the secular world might be added, also, to faith-communities. Together we …
Gail and I have two daughters, Gabrielle and Davita. They are 28 and 25 now, but when we were raising them, few things worried us more than their digital health. The digital world they—and we—lived in was a barrage, overwhelming—before we knew it, our children were spending many hours a day staring into screens. As we worked to help our daughters take control of their digital health, they would say, …
For more than 20 years, the Gurian Institute has been certifying trainers to provide professional development and consulting in schools, organizations, and communities both in the United States and abroad. You can meet some of our trainers on https://gurianinstitute.com/trainers/. As our certification program has grown, we’ve been looking for inexpensive ways to make it available to more schools. Because of our new Online Certification options–which allow potential trainers to be …
Something has happened to our academic culture–the culture that teaches educators how to teach, therapists how to counsel, and parents how to parent–and it is both very satisfying and somewhat frightening. Satisfying is that our academic culture is waking up to the fact that boys and men in America need our love and support. Child advocates like myself who are parents of daughters have been saying for years, “We can’t …
It is January and that means early bird registration is open for our 2019 Summer Training Institute! We have even more speakers this year, and we will all be together at Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, CA (ANA) for learning, networking and lots of fun, too. ANA is located on the beach, and hotel accommodations are right near the water so, if you want to mix vacation with work, …
The new year is here, and we are all starting to live out our resolutions! This is such a great time to be alive, to be forward thinking, and to focus our personal energy toward the good. To that end: I hope you will consider adding a resolution to your list about avoiding environmental neurotoxins this and every year. Part of my inspiration for saying this comes from the joy …
In my blog a few weeks ago and in The Minds of Girls I have tried to focus on science-based theory and practice that have proven to close gender gaps. I am arguing that to fully help our daughters, we must push beyond the idea that corporate sexism and “gender stereotypes” are the primary reasons tech and certain STEM fields don’t employ as many women as men. If we do …
On October 10, I spoke at the Dawson School in Boulder, Colorado, and a reporter was kind enough to write a story about the lecture and professional development. This week’s blog post features her article, a cogent grass roots example of brain-based thinking that is being supported in a community. We live in a time when, as we’ve noted before in this blog, a part of our culture wants to …
If you haven’t looked recently at our Products page, we hope you will click https://gurianinstitute.com/products/ and look at the products we offer. One of those is our 4 plus hour Online Course featuring Michael Gurian. You can get more specifics about this course at https://gurianinstitute.com/products/boys-and-girls-learn-differently-online-course/. The course can be used by whole school teams on Professional Development days. A school superintendent who used it with his staff called it “a …
This has been an amazing year at the Gurian Institute and YOU are the reason why. Each of you has in some way used or heard about our services in your part of the world, and we deeply appreciate you. Please feel free, always, to reach out to us on www.gurianinstitute.com. Let us know how we can serve you better. Next year, we will launch new books and podcasts, …
I want to join my colleague, Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D., whose blog I am featuring in a moment, in warning parents and schools against extreme positions in the transgender debate, especially regarding young children. The new Pediatrics recommendations can be found here: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/142/4/e20182162. A subcommittee of the American Association of Pediatrics is recommending that if a child says s/he is transgender, no matter their age, they should be treated as …
The holidays are coming, and I’m hoping you will give the gift of reading to both young adults and adults in your family. If you are looking for nonfiction, I hope you’ll look at giving Saving Our Sons (2017) and The Minds of Girls (2018) and any of the other Gurian Institute titles that fit your family’s and school’s needs. If you or someone you know is a fiction reader, …
If you know someone who loves young adult novels, I hope you will recommend to them that they read the newest young adult novel by Printz Honor Winner, Terry Trueman. This action-packed and enlightening book just received a very positive review from School Library Journal. It’s a really good read. The relationship between the boy—the protagonist in the novel—and both his father and mentor are quite touching. If you are …
As you plan for Professional Development in 2019, we at GI hope you will utilize brain-based training during the new year. Please contact gail@gurianinstitute.com to start this conversation. Michael Gurian can come to your community to provide professional development; our certified and master trainers can come; and/or your team can learn Online. We have Pilots and one-year programs that also support systemic transformation in schools and communities. In our schools …
I mentioned a few weeks ago how proud I was of the publication of The Blind Woman and Other Stories. Many of you have written to me that you like the stories and I’m very appreciative. I also just learned that the publisher, Latah Books, will be submitting the stories for three different award competitions. Please permit me one more plug of the book! I promise you that it is …
A school leader wrote recently: “Michael, we know boys and girls learn differently, and by teaching to the minds of boys and girls, we have closed achievement gaps and improved student safety and behavior. This theory and the strategies work so well, we became a Gurian Model School–this has helped us to nurture the widest diversity of students. “But there is an idea circulating in our community, …
This week we are proud to feature guest blogs by two of our Certified Trainers, Eva Dwight and Abigail Wald. To learn more about Eva and Abigail, please visit our Trainer page on www.gurianinstitute.com. We are so proud of our trainers for these publications in national venues. In her blog, Eva discusses the emotional lives of girls directly, providing science and story for the beauty and the challenges inherent in …
This month, the Gurian Institute is launching its new podcast in collaboration with our friend and colleague, Tim Wright. Tim and I have been providing podcasts through patreon.com and we will continue to provide members only podcasts, video clips, blogs, and tools through that service. To join the Gurian Community on Patreon, please go to https://www.patreon.com/user?u=7827875; from there, you’ll see the membership site and we would love to have …
What’s a gender expert doing writing a book of short stories?! It’s a reasonable question, since people often think of nonfiction and fiction as separate endeavors. And they are. But if you’re curious to read one answer and one blending of two genres, The Blind Woman and Other Stories will, I hope, touch your heart. I initially wrote these stories between 1987 and 2000; I’ve revised them on airplanes and …
“Our genomes are 99.9% identical from one person to the next as long as the two individuals being compared are two men or two women. But if we compare a woman and a man, the genetic differences are 15 times greater than the genetic differences for two males or two females.” –David C. Page, M.D., Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Everywhere we look, the two sexes …
Just last week, someone posted on Twitter the illusion that female and male brains are the same. Why talk about girls and boys, these folks ask, their brains are the same anyway. Nothing could be farther from the truth. While there is huge overlap between female and male brains, and while there are more than 3.5 billion + ways to be “girl/female” and 3.5 billion + ways to be “boy/male” …
As the new school year is set to begin, we at GI hope you will look at utilizing brain-based training during the school year. We live in a time of cultural upheaval in which superficial answers to profound questions often abound. Three sex- and gender-specific myths have emerged in the last few years in ways that are harmful to educator success and student growth. Myth 1: Male/female brain difference …
Thank you all so much for your warm reception to Saving Our Sons over the last year. We are working together to create a social revolution on behalf of boys; all the while, we are each gaining strength, courage, and practical strategies to raise and educate boys close by, in our homes, schools, and neighborhoods. Our revolution is a revolution from the ground up. In thirty years of working with …
Gail and I have two daughters, Gabrielle and Davita. They are 28 and 25 now, but when we were raising them, few things worried us more than their digital health. The digital world they—and we—lived in was a barrage, overwhelming—before we knew it, our children were spending many hours a day staring into screens. As we worked to help our daughters take control of their digital health, they would …
From the opening reception to the final session, the Gurian Summer Training Institute soared. We thank you all, whether you attended this year or not, and special thanks to those who came, participated, debated, learned, grew, and took the work home with them to empower and grow their communities. To all our speakers—Keynote, Troy Kemp; Featured Speaker, Susan Jentzsch; Strategies Trainer, Katey McPherson; Dr. Glynetta Deshon Fletcher, Dr. Lisa …
Pornography is a natural attractant to most pubescent and adolescent boys. By early adolescence, most boys have begun to masturbate. Because male sexual function is often directly linked, in the brain, to visual stimulation, the male brain creates visual loops between the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis (the hormonal and reproductive structure of male development) and the visual cortex—the gray matter areas of the male brain that look at not only attractive potential …
Since its inception in 1910, the Army and Navy Academy’s curriculum has combined rigorous college-preparatory classes with a leadership training program. As the only military boarding school for boys on the West Coast, the Academy in Carlsbad, California ensures that the Cadet experience focuses on responsibility, citizenship, and character development. Army and Navy Academy educates tomorrow’s leaders through small class sizes for young men in grades 7-12. The Academy …
In Santa Fe, Texas, there has been another school shooting. A 17-year-old boy opened fire on classmates and teachers, killing 10 and injuring 10 more. He carefully planned out his crime and journaled it in his cellphone and computer. His Facebook and Instagram accounts, taken down immediately upon the shooting, showed visits to sites like “sickguns” and gunspictures.” In Phoenix, Arizona, a young girl committed suicide after being bullied …
Spring is coming, and it is time to plan intensive days of learning – at the beach! Our Gurian Summer Training Institute will be held at one of our Model Schools, the Army and Navy Academy, which is located right on the beach in Carlsbad, CA. Thank you, Army and Navy Academy! There will be plenty of down time in the evenings for you to enjoy the water and …
Last week, on February 14, 2018, a teenage gunman slaughtered children and adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a suburb northwest of Ft. Lauderdale. He killed twelve people inside the school walls, three outside, and two died on the way to the hospital. To ensure his kills, the gunman used the fire alarm as a weapon—forcing children and teachers out of the school so he could …
This week we are proud to feature a blog post by Susan Jentzsch, the Director of our Summer Institute and author of the Teen Leadership Forum. After spending 20 years at Qualcomm, Susan branched into teen support, with a special interest in gender intelligence and the gender lens. She is a true innovator in more than one field and she will be presenting three workshops at this year’s Training …
The Gurian Summer Training Institute begins this Friday evening with a warm welcome reception then Saturday morning with training and networking. There is still time to register on www.gurianinstitute.com or at the door. The two-day Training Institute will be held at one of our Model Schools, the Army and Navy Academy, which is located right on the beach in Carlsbad, CA, at 2605 Carlsbad Blvd. Thank you, Army and Navy …
A hallmark of our training and research are our success strategies. When I first began studying classrooms, I looked immediately for natural innovations that teachers were using to reach, teach, and manage boys and girls most effectively. As a research team developed around my original theory, the group of us at the University of Missouri spread our research further. Over the years, this effort expanded to homes, communities, …
A girl is obsessed with social media, a boy with video games. An adolescent girl defines herself with selfies and visual sexualization. A boy sexualizes his brain with porn use. When I delineate “girls” and “boys” in my lectures, some people say, “But shouldn’t you say, ‘kids,’ or just ‘teens’? Girls look at porn, boys take selfies; girls like video games, boys like social media.” “There’s no doubt about …
Dr. Glynetta DeShon (“Fletch”) Fletcher, Assistant Principal of Edwin Markham Middle School in Los Angeles Unified School District, has devoted her life to working in urban public schools with at-risk students. She has taught English Language Arts at the high school level, study skills for incoming college freshmen, and ELA secondary methods for urban educators. As a teacher in an urban high school, she focused on African American males …
Tim Wright is a bridge builder between secular and faith communities, and a powerful speaker and teacher. It will be a joy to have him speak at our 2018 Summer Institute. Tim and I have worked on Rites of Passage programs for both boys/families and girls/families–in both secular and faith-based communities. I am Jewish but operate mainly as a secular thinker, and Tim, a Lutheran Pastor, works mainly in the …
Dr. Lisa Basista is one of those people who dynamically leads others with excitement and power and yet carries a sense of peace in her, a quiet reflectiveness that allows adolescents and adults around her to grow and learn. Dr. Basista and I first met four years ago and ever since then I’ve been planning ways to have her speak at our Summer Institute. She is a true student …
Carolyn Ragatz, one of our certified trainers, wrote me an email that fleshes out the question for this week. “I just read your latest blog on screen time–so important to get that word out and I posted on my fb & twitter pages. I have another related question: we are noticing an increase in students with anxiety. Now, most of this coming to us, according to parents, without any official …
The Depressed American Boy: Diagnosing and Treating Male-Type Depression Tracy, 18, called his parents to say he was not doing well in college. “I can’t take it,” he said, “I have to get out.” After insisting he keep trying, his parents did finally relent: they sent him a ticket to come home and he did. Three days later, in his bedroom, he hung himself. “We missed the signals,” his …
Jeremy fidgets and clicks his teeth in such a way that he drives his teacher crazy; Latrice is taking notes but not really understanding them; Angie is thinking about five other things; Donnell is angry about what’s happening at home; Alana is terrified she will fail the test, Jamal and Billy already have, Emma is a bully and has been bullied, Zeke, Amy, and six others are on medication for …
January 2018 marks the beginning of our third year working with Central Catholic High School in San Antonio, Texas as a Center for Excellence in Educating Boys. Central Catholic, a school for boys in the Marianist tradition, located in San Antonio, Texas, is more than 150 years old. It is institutionally committed to raising boys into empathic and successful men of service. In the last decade, GI has been honored …
Troy Kemp is an internationally recognized keynote speaker, and our Sunday keynoter at the Summer Institute this June. His dynamic approach to teaching and mentoring boys has led him to his position as Executive Director of the National Center for the Development of Boys (www.understandingboys.org). Previously, he spent 25 years in the classroom, on the field (Troy is an eight-time state champion and three-time coach of the year recipient …
The most recent available data, vetted by the American Academy of Pediatrics, shows children between 2 and 12 spend 4.5 hours per day in front of screens (using their phones, looking into I devices and Pads, watching movies, playing videogames). In U.S. homes with children under 9, 98% have mobile devices. In the majority of these homes parents and other adults hand children their Smart Phones to play on or …
Early Bird Registration for the Gurian Summer Institute ends April 30! We are only hosting one Gurian Summer Training Institute for 2018. The 2-day Training Session will be held on June 23rd and 24th. A Certification of Trainers session will be offered on Monday, June 25th, 8:00am. Certificates for 12 Professional Development Hours will be provided to you at the end of the Event. In case you aren’t familiar with The Gurian Institute: GI provides services and products …
Tucker Carlson debuted a new series, “Men in America,” on his Fox News program to run all through March with the words, “American men are in crisis.” Mr. Carlson noted: “This is a crisis, yet our leaders pretend it’s not happening, but ignoring the decline of men does not help anyone. Men and women need each other. One cannot exist without the other. That is elemental biology, but it’s also …
We just ended our Helping Boys Thrive Summit in Phoenix. Next week we will be in Littleton, Colorado, near the school where young lives were lost twenty years ago to a school shooter. The Gurian Institute and its partners have been proud to collaborate on Helping Boys Thrive Summits with local organizers. Some of the Summits are run by secular agencies/organizations, and those summits are secular in nature. Every year, …
“Our genomes are 99.9% identical from one person to the next as long as the two individuals being compared are two men or two women. But if we compare a woman and a man, the genetic differences are 15 times greater than the genetic differences for two males or two females.” –David C. Page, M.D., Professor of Biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology I live in Washington state and our …
Dr. Michael Gurian has studied and served children for thirty years. In The Wonder of Girls (2002), he presented a science-based approach to raising healthy and successful daughters. In The Minds of Girls, he pioneers new and intuitive approaches to health and wellness in all three important areas of girls’ development: nature, nurture, and culture. As many girls struggle with digital and social complexities in our families and in our communities, this book is timely, …
We begin this year with a sense of profound thanks for all of you who have brought the Gurian Institute into your schools, homes, and communities for twenty years. We have trained tens of thousands of professionals and reached more than one million parents and community members. Our energy and passion for this work is fed by your energy and passion. You drive us, and I want to begin 2018 …
A Blog Post by Michael Gurian Today’s date is 12/7/17. What I write here will attach to today’s date yet, I believe, also be universal, not time-sensitive. The scandals are growing. Our children –whether in school or at home—likely notice the furor. Especially if they are now adolescents or emerging adults, the issue of appropriate sexual conduct and boundaries is crucial to their survival. Today: Warren Moon, the renowned quarterback …
Certified Trainer Rosemarie Engman and her class at Sacred Heart School in Bellevue, Washington are making video clips of Gurian strategies they use in their classrooms and buildings. They created instructional clips for “Walk and Talk” and “Hallway Work” last year.. Now she and her colleagues have created a “Brain Breaks” strategy clip. We hope you’ll check the clips out here. Please join Rosemarie and her school by sending us …
he mental health of our children is becoming increasingly fragile. Wherever we look, we see immense loneliness and confusion in teen communities. In the Phoenix area in the last month, for instance, there have been 9 suicides of children from ages 13 to 18. Nationwide, there are approximately 22 suicides per day, many of them teens. Many other teens do not turn death on themselves but on others as rates …
Last week, Dr. Jim Weber and I visited classrooms at Central Catholic High School in San Antonio, Texas. Central Catholic, a school for boys in the Marianist tradition, is more than 150 years old and deeply committed to raising boys into men of service. In the last decade, GI has been honored to partner with the school as CC became a Gurian Institute Model School six years ago and Center …
Dear Friends and Colleagues, We are fully entering the digital age(!) and proud to offer a Membership subscription service to educators, parents, mentors, and others who work with boys and girls. All of us at GI believe we are at a time when brain science can help us revolutionize how we teach, raise, and mentor our children. I love speaking in your communities, schools, and conferences, and I love our email …
Ever misplace your phone, forget someone’s name, or struggle to find the right words? Of course, you have. It happens to all of us. But if you find it happening more and more it may predict trouble, especially if your memory is worse than it was 10 years ago. People who complain about memory loss have an 80% chance it will get worse unless they do something about it! That’s …
As I was writing Saving Our Sons (February 2017) and just recently, as I am completing The Minds of Girls (January 2018), I’ve been receiving more and more emails about a topic I bring up wherever I travel: environmental neurotoxins. These neurotoxins affect children’s physical and mental health at cellular levels but we can’t see them—they are hidden neuro-stressors and can be very dangerous. At a speaking engagement in the Midwest I shared a …
Is Children’s Mental Health a School Issue or a Parent Issue? We’ve been alerting our readers to issues in suicide prevention this last few weeks, and I want to follow up with a plea for community partnership on the issue of children’s mental health. The newest national estimate for mental health medication-use among children sits between 1 in 4 and 1 in 5. It is likely, though, that more children …
As we honor the passing of the 16th anniversary of one of the deadliest days in the history of the United States of America, we remember the helpers. Those who gave and sacrificed their lives, their time, and their families to aid in the rescue and recovery of others. We are eternally grateful. In tandem, we honor this week of suicide prevention week as we connect the work of The …
It doesn’t matter where I am working–from Houston to Nashville, San Antonio to Bel-Air, Bloomfield Hills to Chandler–everyone is wondering the same things. “How do I get my kids off their devices?” “Why would she say something like that online?” “Why is she posting 34 duck faced selfies?” “Why does he act so poorly after playing his video games?” Twelve years ago, when smartphones rolled out, I set out to …
Michael Gurian’s new book, The Minds of Girls: A New Path for Raising Healthy, Resilient, And Successful Women, is now published! We hope you will get it for your family and school. Find it at brick and mortar stores and online at amazon.com and other vendors. We are very proud to be the first to announce the book’s publication! “The Minds of Girls is a very important book. In …
A blog by Michael Gurian, August 16, 2017 On the day Google software engineer James Damore was fired for writing a Memo about Google’s diversity programs that went viral, my daughter Davita, 24, shot me a quick text: “Dad, I can’t believe they fired the guy. That was the wrong move.” We met the next day and talked at length. The conversation was a wonderful blend of perspectives from a young millennial woman and a baby boomer man. Our …
A revolution may be underway on behalf of boys, not just in the U.S. but also abroad. Our own Katey McPherson just returned from Singapore, where she presented and taught at the Maris Stella K-12 school for boys. Not just in the U.S., but throughout the world, issues facing our sons are beginning to be recognized. An example: the latest educational research known as the PISA study (Programme for International …
Gurian Institute Executive Director Katey McPherson talks with Heather Chauvin about screen time in the summer. As we move through summer, technology and healthy boundaries are on every parent’s mind as we try to balance free play and tech use. Listen in on some tips and strategies to save your sanity and connection with your children. Katey McPherson — How To Set Boundaries With Technology {“type”:”audio”,”tracklist”:true,”tracknumbers”:true,”images”:true,”artists”:true,”tracks”:[{“src”:”https:\/\/gurianinstitute.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/katey_mcpherson_-_how_to_set_boundaries_with_technology_327706124_soundcloud.mp3″,”type”:”audio\/mpeg”,”title”:”Katey McPherson — How To …
My daughter, Davita, 24, is an avid and accomplished rock climber. She and her boyfriend, Ben, go on two to three month climbing trips around the country every year. They “send” their routes and “redpoint” their projects and otherwise master boulders and cliff-faces as much as a human being can. Davita’s calling—and her older sister, Gabrielle’s interest in climbing a few years earlier in the family chronology–has recently spilled over …
Answer: They are both games and potential maturation tools because they already deal with themes of character development and manhood. Every video game–even ones that we might find despicable, like Grand Theft Auto–can become assets in a boy’s moral development, especially if we discuss the games with the boys. Here’s a quote from General George Patton that dads who play war games with sons can use to mentor their sons. “Despite the …
Answer: Both coed and single gender schools can be great schools. Communities should have free choice. In a new era of school choice developing in local communities and new priorities at the federal level, it is important to understand the science of boys’ and girls’ learning. In my thirty years in this field, I have consistently argued that we should no longer pit one kind of schooling against another. Coed …
4 girls. 2 at once! How did I get so lucky? As a sister to 5, with no brothers, you would think I would have this girl thing down. In many ways after 20+ years at the secondary level, I do. But it is different when it is one of your own. They told me that would happen. As girls meander the abyss of what we call “tween” and “teenhood”, …
According to Smart Insights (www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing), Facebook is still the most widely used social networking app globally. Instant messenger apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are tied for second place. Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat are a little further down the chart, ranked as 7th, 9th, and 11th, respectively. These numbers indicate the number of people worldwide who are using the listed apps. See the chart below for more details. \ Another …
Ask Dr. Gurian: Is it always wrong to tell a child, “Stop crying!” Or to put this another way: Because I said this to my son when I was raising him, did I ruin his life? Answer: “Stop crying” can be used too harshly and too often, but many times, this parenting strategy builds resilience, strength, and social adaptation. When I was serving on a conference panel to discuss fatherhood …
Question: For love to last, what are the negative habits to change as soon as possible? Answer: You’ve probably met couples in which one or both partners interrupt the other person in public. You might even be that couple! Sevda and Tarik were friends of Gail’s (my wife of 30 years) and mine during our early years of marriage. At parties or social gatherings, Sevda, a university professor, insisted that Tarik, a physician, was an …
“Lessons of Lifelong Intimacy explores the hidden depths of marriage and relationships. Gurian utilizes cutting edge neuroscience to help couples experience happy and balanced love. This is an important and powerful book.” –Daniel G. Amen, MD, author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, and coauthor of The Daniel Plan We are pleased to announce the paperback publication of Dr. Gurian’s powerful new book on marriage and relationships, Lessons of Lifelong Intimacy: Building a Stronger Marriage Without Losing …
Chances are, if you teach or have tweens or teenagers, you have heard the buzz about the new NetFlix series, “13 Reasons Why” produced by Selena Gomez. This new series offers an explicit view of what life of tweens and teens is like in 2017. The series has been heralded by these teens as “epic” and “so real,” which means we adults in their lives need to dial in. The …
Q: Should we have more debates in our classrooms? A: Yes! As a boy raised by Jewish parents, I spent a lot of my own boyhood debating—debating my parents, debating other kids in Sunday school, debating teachers in their classrooms (sometimes somewhat too obnoxiously!), and debating my siblings. My mother called me “the fastest mouth in the west.” Generally, she meant this both as a compliment and a complaint. I …
Dr. Gurian and The Gurian Institute have been on the move this year to places near and far. Trainings in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, California, and New Jersey…and it is only March! In each of these locales, the take away feedback is always the same….How do we get more of this?.. and How come I didn’t learn this in my teacher training? Or that it did not …
Ask Dr. Gurian by Michael Gurian, www.gurianinstitute.com Q: Is there really a “He” or “She” anymore? A: Yes. But when we hear the question, we must ask: ‘What are you referring to by He or She? TIME recently published a cover story, “Beyond He or She,” that was short on actual brain science. It was summarized by the editors of Time this way. “TIME interviewed dozens of people around the …
All of my life I have been surrounded by girls. Growing up with 4 sisters was quite a chaotic scene, although there were some pretty great moments of calm as well.As a mother of 4 girls, I am often asked if this is a nightmare. I get the gasps and the stares, the rolling of the eyes and the “Oh you’re in so much trouble in a few years”. …
“The Other Side Of The Report Card”-what a novel concept! As I listened to Dr. Michele Borba’s 1 :30 minute promo clip for an upcoming conference, I marveled at the thought of what I had longed to put into words all of these years. After 22 years in education, we still miss the mark in places. Why? Because, in some places, our “lens” is off. Recently, in our Gurian trainings, …
The Gurian Institute has been very busy this week as we wrapped up our 3rd Gurian Winter Institute on the shores of Tampa Bay and St. Pete Beach, Florida. What a wonderful weekend of learning and courageous conversations! A diverse group of educators from our Gurian Model Schools as well as new participants to our platform enjoyed keynote speaker, Dr. Michael Gurian, as well as an array of our Gurian …
Blog post by Michael Gurian In thirty years of working with children, I have never been more worried than I am right now for our sons. Some boys are doing very well but millions are disappearing into violence, imprisonment, social withdrawal, listlessness, virtual worlds, and real life self-destruction. If we don’t end this national pattern, our boys and young men will become increasingly destructive, both to others and themselves because …
This week was a wonderful week of planning, executing, and pulling together many groups from around the globe as I pulled together the Gurian Winter Institute in Florida. I liken it to a wedding…plan, plan, plan, and then poof! it is over. While it was not as permanent as a wedding in the sense of vows taken, it was in a sense the same as educators from around the world …
There are many things that fascinate me. Human behavior is one of them. The brain, how we protect ourselves from danger, how we sometimes don’t listen to our gut, and instead rely on the past or our own lens, to make decisions. Recently I saw the movie “Fences”. I really enjoyed it, some did not. I enjoyed it not because it was Denzel Washington, although he was the driving force …
How is your son doing? How are YOU doing? If he is struggling or withdrawn, complaining about school, acting out, bored, or volatile – isn’t it time to address his hatred/dislike/disdain of school? Mark January 24th/25th on your calendar. This never-been-done-before FREE WEBINAR brings together two boy-experts – Janet Allison of Boys Alive!, a Gurian Master Trainer and Educator AND Jennifer Fink of Building Boys.net, mom of 4 boys and nationally acclaimed writer. Janet and Jen …
It is with great excitement that Katey, our GI team, and I announce our partnership with the National Center for The Development of Boys. What began as a passionate conversation of thought leaders regarding public purpose has become a new institution housed at the McCallie School for Boys in Chattanooga, Tennessee. School Administrators Lee Burns, Kenny Sholl, Thomas Hayes, and Troy Kemp, as well as their allies throughout the country, …
In a world full of digital devices and human interface that is starting to be limited, movement is essential. For the past 10 months I have been traveling with the Gurian team training schools, agencies, parents, and communities on how to incorporate more movement into the lives of our children and young adults. It has been a fascinating journey to be on the “other side” of the desk so to …
Many use the term but it is often confused with just being responsible online. If it is just responsible and ethical use online, then how do we cultivate digital leadership where students are using digital means to help and assist their community at large? I was privy to many wonderful conversations this past weekend at a digital citizenship conference at Microsoft Headquarters in Los Angeles, California. As I listened …
As I think about the last 10 years in schools and the movement of helping kids through conflict, I recall what works and what does not. Here are some of my observations. 1. If you think back as to how you were taught to take care of a bully….well, times have changed. The bullying is ongoing, it is frequent, and can be carried forward online at all hours and times …
I was speaking at a conference recently on girls’ development. I had been asked to talk about what will make girls most successful in the future. Because the conference organizers knew that I have done a great deal of gender work in corporations, they asked me to talk about “girls and maturity,” and “how girls can succeed in the future as leaders.” During my lecture I told a story about …
Julia Lythcott-Haims is the author of ” How To Raise An Adult:Break Free of the Over Parenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid For Success”. When her book came out I scooped up a copy as soon as I could. As an educator, the title in itself makes you jump for joy. After spending the last 12 of my 20 years in education in an administrative role at the elementary and …
Last night as I watched Michael Phelps and his relay team bring home his last gold, it was awesome to see the energy and camaraderie of the team, and the joking of the younger swimmers try to con him to stay on for 4 more years. His medal count is unmatched. His status, unheralded. As I watched, it got me thinking about what got these athletes here and how “normal” …
“What rights of privacy should my teen have, and what rights are not his or her rights at all? “What are the apps that predators most likely use?” There is so much for parents, administrators, and teachers to manage with social media–its’ platform, the effects, and the daily battle of knowing what is and is not appropriate. From both the parent’s and administrator’s viewpoint and experience, I can say most …
Commas. Periods. Semicolons. I never know when to use them. I love to write, so that makes, it, hard, to know, when, to, use, them. I had never thought punctuation had another meaning. It was simply a way to express yourself. It puts pizazz in something! It ends a sentence. It makes lists: It makes you question things? Until Easter. We ventured to a new church for Easter. Not because …
In thirty years of working with children, I have never been more worried than I am right now for our sons. As a father of daughters, I feel very grateful for the thousands of programs nationwide that focus on girls’ development, including our own Gurian Institute offerings. My two daughters, now adults, have access to multiple options for women, and multiple programs for women’s health. This a wonderful thing and …
Enchantment. What does that word mean to you? Do you even remember the last time you were “enchanted?” It has been awhile for me…or so I thought. Last week I was lucky enough to spend the day with two of my favorite authors, Rob Bell and Elizabeth Gilbert, at a writer’s workshop in Hollywood that I had zero expectations for. I just knew I wanted to hear what they had …
We are honored and excited to be debuting the “Screenagers” movie as part of our 15th Annual Gurian Summer Institute. This moving documentary is sure to propel your thoughts and ideas on how families manage and supervise the many devices and technological gadgets that continue to come on to the market. Over 16 devices exist that are specifically marketed to millions of teens and tweens all over the world. Delaney …
Gurian Model School Army Navy Academy to host Gurian Summer Institute this June! Join us on the shores of the Pacific as we explore the gender lens perspective at our 13th annual Summer Institute. Geared for educators, parents, and mental health professionals, this institute provides powerful keynote speakers and strategies-focused break out sessions. Learn the latest research in gender differences related to education and human behavior. Leave with proven success …
A year ago, Marcus Wheeler won the State Division I Cross Country title in 15:36, a race he had not even qualified for the previous three years. A year ago he attended prom, was looking forward to graduation, and the next step in his future at Central Arizona College as a scholar and elite runner on an athletic scholarship. This same week last year, Marcus took his life, at school, …
Dr. Michael Gurian recieved an honorary doctor of letters in recognition of his contributions to gender neuroscience and efforts to improve education for children in disadvantaged communities this past weekend. His connections to Gonzaga began as a student, evolved as a faculty member and continued through the nonprofit Gurian Foundation he co-founded. Gurian, as a social philosopher and consultant over the past 25 years, has traveled extensively to colleges, schools, and conferences to bring …
Teaching and learning have always been embedded in my DNA. From a young age sitting in my mom’s high school French classroom, watching my Dad in the courtroom, and my step-mother lift families through social work in the depths of Detroit Public Schools, there wasn’t much conversation about a career path. It just was sort of an understood in my mind. I would teach. As my teaching career unfolded, I …
Part 1: Social Media Apps As the technology changes, so must our efforts to protect our students and children. Social media apps can often turn a whole grade level at a school upside down, to say nothing of how it can devastate a family. We have recently learned the power of technology in my hometown, Phoenix, Arizona, in which a 14-year-old girl was prey via social media apps. Thankfully, the …
It is often said that “Boys should be boys”…..what does this exactly mean? Many boys go to school and flourish. They weave in and out of their social groups and do just fine. Some, however, struggle academically and socially, and never quite fit in that “man box” that culture and society ask of them. In this thought provoking interview, Rosalind Wiseman, author of ” Queen Bees and Wannabes” and “Masterminds …
An open letter to all parents and teachers regarding the subject of “aggression nurturance”. We all know that boys and girls are definitively wired differently. They tend to tasks differently, play differently, and learn differently. In the last decade there has been a push to label lists of things “bullying” and “too rough” when these things are innately how boys play and explore their relationships with each other. We do a …
Our keynote and breakout sessions provide parents and professionals with best practices for working with students, clients, children, and one another. The practices and strategies can be utilized immediately in the home, school, or clinical setting to improve relationships, focus on skills, and shed new light on the inner worlds of boys and girls, and women and men. NEW OFFERING: TRAINING FOR MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS Lisa Bravo will focus on effective …
Let’s face it; I’m stupid. You know it, I know it, and my parents know it!” These words were spoken in anguish and anger to me by Chad, a 12-year-old student in my office. He reflected a profound problem that I could no longer ignore as a school principal. I had seen too many boys who did not succeed in school. I knew he was not stupid, and his parents …
Boys & Girls decide if school is for them very early: The Gurian Institute knows how crucial early childhood education is – and that understanding gender differences is a key component to providing a gender-friendly learning environment. The book Wired to Move: Facts and Strategies for Nurturing Boys in an Early Childhood Setting chronicles the difference research and discovery of early childhood educators and how they made a difference in young boys’ …
There has been much focus in the media recently about helping Boys of Color. The Gurian Institute has been working on the evolving and significant needs of boys of color for over 16 years. We have worked in districts with highly diverse populations among them: Tampa, Atlanta, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Denver, Anchorage, and Newark. See more about GI’s Boys of Color Interventions HERE. Our success and anecdotal data show improved grades, …
By mistaking unchecked behavior for undeveloped behavior, we allow unacceptable behavior in boys and men to be seen as just another part of “being a guy.” Years ago I knew a mother who had eight kids, the last six of whom were boys. The brothers were energetic, scrappy kids who were polite and rather likable when outside of the home. But inside? Well, let’s just say they fed off each …
My Brother’s Keeper – An Essential Alliance By Michael Gurian, Founder, the Gurian Institute, and author of THE WONDER OF BOYS President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative has the capacity to do great things for our sons. Over the last three decades, we have seen the gradual decline of important markers for all of our boys — mental health and behavioral wellness, academic performance (noticed both in low grades and low standardized …
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