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 as girls to be suspended or expelled from early childhood and K-12 learning environments

 *boys are behind girls in most developmental, behavioral, academic, and social markers in all industrialized countries.

That data comes from Dr. Michael Gurian’s research on gender brain differences and how they impact boys’ and girls’ learning needs, social interaction patterns, and emotional processing.

SPECIAL NOTE:  THIS BLOG POST CONNECTS WITH OUR SUMMER INSTITUTE AT ARMY AND NAVY ACADEMY ON JUNE 12-14, 2020.  We fully expect that event to take place and encourage you to learn more and register on www.gurianinstitute.com. 

When I first read his book Boys and Girls Learn Differently, I was one year from retirement after 32 years in education, the last 20 of which I’d worked as a junior high counselor.

I wasn’t surprised by those numbers because I’d consistently found that the students I spent a lot of time working with—the ones who were failing classes and getting in trouble–were primarily boys. I was successful in using a variety of interventions to help many of them turn things around, but these interventions were always employed on the “reactive end” of things. I knew there must be more that we, as a school, could have been doing on the “proactive end,” but I didn’t know what it was.

Turns out, according to Dr. Gurian’s research, so many boys are failing in school because our traditional classrooms and teacher training programs are geared more toward the female brain’s learning style. Which isn’t terribly surprising, given that teaching is a largely female profession. And since we haven’t been educated in gender brain differences as they relate to learning, we don’t know that we should be using different strategies to reach and teach the boy brain.

The good news is, we can make changes so that we not only engage boys more in the learning process and increase their success from preschool up through high school, but we also end up being more effective in how we teach girls!

At the Gurian Summer Institute this June, I’ll be facilitating two breakout sessions in which we’ll learn how to apply brain science to our work in the classroom, practicing Boys and Girls Learn Differently strategies that can:

• improve teacher effectiveness
• achievement gaps closed, especially in literacy, math, and science
• gender gaps closed across the curriculum
• significantly decreased discipline referrals
• significantly improved student behavior – as teachers deploy the GI Strategies, students change the way they operate in the classroom.

For example, if you’re a teacher, you’ve doubtless noticed boys (and sometimes, girls) drifting off, rocking in their chairs, tapping their pencils on the desk and engaging in other behaviors that signal to you that they’re tuning out. It’s easy to get annoyed by these behaviors or even  assume that the student has some sort of attention deficit issue.  However, if you study the brain science, you’ll learn that the male brain goes to a full rest state more often than the female brain, which means that there’s less blood and oxygen flow to the male brain’s thinking areas. Often, boys’ annoying behaviors are a signal that they need some activity to wake up their brain so it can pay attention again.

Dr. Gurian’s guideline is to expect kids to sit quietly and focus one minute for every year of age. So, for instance, we should incorporate some form of movement about every six minutes for a 6-year-old, or every 12-15 minutes for a 12-year-old. This doesn’t have to be big, gross-motor movement; a stand-up/pair-share with a nearby student, a high-five to your seat partner, or even Velcro taped to a desk for the student to stroke can help brains remain more alert. Opportunities for gross motor movement can look like whole-class brain breaks or content-related games that allow kids to move around the room and really get their blood pumping.

These and other strategies we will practice in my breakout sessions are all tied to the brain research and are easy to adapt to your own classroom content or other boy-friendly environment (counseling office?  at home helping your son with homework?), regardless of the subject or grade level that you teach!

I’d like to encourage you to look at your own school’s performance data. If you’re seeing a pattern of underperformance for your boys, the Gurian Summer Institute is a great place to start learning how to reverse that negative trajectory.

Come join us for a full weekend of learning, networking, teaching, and even some laughter! You’ll leave inspired to share this crucial information with your fellow educators, and you’ll have new tools to help you better meet the needs of all your students!  For more on what the Gurian Institute does and on the Summer Institute, please click www.gurianinstitute.com.

Thank you.

–Eva Dwight, Gurian Institute Training Director