Institute Testimonials

I left wanting more! The Gurian Team was awesome and so insightful. As teachers we always know there is boy and girl “energy” but this helps to understand where all that comes from!

“We are a credit recovery program district (largest in Ohio with 1500+ students) with three traditional school models included and several specialized programs that target specific needs of students, including single gender and gender-based.  At the center of all of these programs is helping credit and academic deficit students find a path to graduation.  We have found the Gurian Institute’s work extremely helpful in our mission.”

–Dr. Adonica Park-Jones, Dean of Curriculum and Instruction, Dohn Community High School

Gurian Summer Institute

“Wow, I LOVED this conference! Understanding the brains of males and females can positively change classrooms and communities.”

“Excellent. Powerful. Practical strategies and new systems thinking I can use in my classroom and home tomorrow.”

“What a powerful and informative weekend. I am energized to take the training back to my school and community.”

“Very pleased with organization and participatory elements of this. Good balance of practical and conceptual.”

“Awesome! Loved the instructors and how they kept us involved. Very beneficial information.”

“Fantastic and very informative!”

“Very relevant to what our kids are living today in real and digital worlds.”

“So many good strategies that we can use to accommodate lesson planning and in the classrooms.”

“Excellent! All administrators, teachers, and leaders need this training.”

“The information on trauma in male and female brains was powerful and useful.”

“Outstanding, engaging speakers with very practical suggestions!”

“I have been an educator for 32 years. This is among the very best professional development experiences of my career.”

More Testimonials

“This truly was one of the best conferences that I have been to and I encourage teachers, administrators, and counselors to all jump aboard.  Out of our 25 students that failed first semester Algebra 1, only 5 were girls. I am in the middle of reading Saving our Sons right now as I am determined to get to the bottom of this!”

—Shawna Thue, Freshmen Counselor, Phoenix, AZ

“This is essential work.  It changes the way we parent boys especially toward a deep respect for who they are.  Building from there, it explodes a lot of our misconceptions about boys and males.  This is needed in every school.

–Abigail Ward, Hand to Hand Real Time Parenting

“What you, Michael, and the overall Gurian Institute, and your team are doing is absolutely wonderful for the students, teachers, parents, and the community. Please keep doing the great things you all are doing. Communities need this, now more than ever, whether they admit that they do or not. The only way for things to get better is for all of us to do our part. Thank YOU for going above and beyond your part.

—Michelle Shreeve, Author of Parental Death: The Ultimate Teen Guide

You rock Michael!  We are grateful that you are part of our tribe and offering such support for our team and the families we serve.  I love sharing about our affiliation with your work when I’m speaking with potential families. Just yesterday I was speaking with a mother in Nashville for the first time. She has 3 boys and came across your work years ago and it’s helped to guide her as a parent. She’s hoping that CCBS is the right place for their son… and that she’ll meet you at a seminar someday soon.  Thank you again for your enthusiasm and support for our sweet little school in South Carolina!

—Shaler Cooper, Director of Admissions, Cherokee Creek Therapuetic  Boys School

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for all this amazing research you are doing.  Like you, I’m deeply passionate about getting to the root of the challenge, and making sure boys and girls thrive. There is a big problem with curricula in schools, especially for boys.  The cat is out of the bag, finally, on this.

–The LiftUpKids Team

​“I have had an absolutely great time sharing this information with my high school students. They have done surveys about relationships and expectations that yielded some really great results…right in line with male/female brain details…very relevant, very compelling for them!”

— Patricia St. Germain, Colorado

​I am a member of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County NC Board of Education.  I just completed your book THE MINDS OF BOYS, and have found it very interesting and applicable to what we are facing in our district.  I have asked our Superintendent to purchase your book for every board member and member of his senior leadership team.  I hope that in reading the book, our school leaders will feel as I do that we need to implement many of the strategies you recommend.  Thanks for writing such a good book and inspiring me to push this issue to the forefront in our district.

— Buddy Collins, Esq.
Winston-Salem Board of Education

“School counselors in the Guilford County and the Alamance-Burlington County School districts, along with members from the WISE Guys Program, were recently trained by Michael Gurian and the training was outstanding. School counselors were educated on the THE MINDS OF BOYS, which examined gender differences, brain development and its effects on academic achievement and personal/social development. The session enhanced the ability of school counselors to integrate academics into their counseling curriculum and provided research-based strategies for males regarding academic achievement and personal/social competency. Participants described Mr. Gurian’s professional development as superb, outstanding, eye opening, an excellent blend of research and applications, reignited my passion for counseling and extremely relevant.”
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School counselor Kelly Ashley stated, “This was the BEST workshop I’ve had in my entire 25 years as a counselor. It was science-based, data driven and applicable for my very next session with students”. Fredricca Stokes, Supervisor of High School Counseling, added “This work was needed and critical to addressing the needs of students and their path to life after high school”.

— Dr. Karen Meadows, Guilford County School, Supervisor of K-8 Counseling

“If we desire a more compassionate and less violent country we need to wake up and realize that something in our culture is breaking down our boys and men. They no longer feel useful.  This is a problem.  Michael Gurian’s work is the most relevant psychological research of our time.  He should have a seat at our Nation’s Roundtable in this era as we become more aware than ever of male bad behavior in the workplace.  And, as we grapple to understand the historical cultural norms which have driven and enabled it, he can provide a new vision and expectation which serves the evolution of both genders. I’m deeply grateful for his work and I predict that he will become one of the greatest social and cultural influencers of our time.”

—Robbie Long, Teacher and Mother

“When Sacred Heart School started their journey into Single Gender Education in a co-educational building, we needed a foundational resource that would apply to both an all Girls class and an all Boys class. Michael Gurian’s book “Successful Single-Sex Classes” was the perfect place for us to start. Once we learned about brain research in relation to how boys and girls learn differently, we really started to see a change in pedagogy with our teachers. They just could not un-know what they learned and treated their students in the same manner.

We invited Michael to come and help us grow in our knowledge and skills in year 3 of the program. He was so open to creating the most appropriate workshop to meet our teachers needs that we felt like he was more a member of the staff by the time the session was done. He toured each classroom and spent time with each individual teacher, offering suggestions and providing great positive support to them. The teachers felt very comfortable talking with Michael about any and all Single Gender issues they were experiencing. After the individual sessions, Michael came and spoke to questions that we, as a staff, had created and sent to him earlier. The discussions that followed were very valuable and the teachers wished we could have spent more time with him.

Michael then presented to a group of teachers, administrators, parents, trustees and senior administrators. His presentation “How Boys and Girls Learn Differently’ was highly engaging, very entertaining and incredibly informative. He was able to get members of our school community, at all levels, to see something new in their students, their child and even their spouse. The response to his presentation was very positive and the group would have listened to him for many more hours.

Michael Gurian, his books and his personal relationship with us, has helped us create an unique school environment by providing us with factual information that we could rely on and visiting us in person to provide critical, positive feedback on what was happening at our school. We hope this relationship will continue into the future.”
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— Leanne Timko, Principal Sacred Heart School (K – 8) Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Contact the Gurian Institute at info@gurianinstitute.com for information on how a professional development plan can be designed to meet the needs of your organization and the families you serve.