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 League Head Start program.  This ECE school has seven classrooms, one boy-only, one girl-only, and five coeducational, and has fulfilled the designation of Gurian Model School.

Head Start Program Coordinator Marion Hill, the first administrator to ask for the Model School Pilot, recently told Michael Gurian: “From the beginning, I have seen our work with GI in the context of helping minority children and families under the Equity and Excellence project of the National Urban League.  The success of the first year of our Cartwright pilot with GI has been stunning.  We are honored to become a Model School.”

The Pilot began with this Rationale, Method, and Guiding Questions.

Rationale for the Pilot:  Research and anecdotal evidence show areas of concern in early childhood environments, especially surrounding the failure rate of boys in general and boys of color specifically, including the pre-school to prison pipeline.

The Gurian Institute (GI) Method:  Via its original 2-year pilot in six school districts facilitated by Michael Gurian and faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Education (1998-2000), the Gurian Method was proven successful in minimizing areas of concern and decreasing failure rates.  GI has since co-facilitated pilots and programs throughout the world, including this year at Cartwright.

Guiding Questions:  The method and pilot works one day and classroom at a time to answer these questions:

*How do female and male brains differ naturally and chromosomally?

*Based on those differences, how do we best nurture the nature of boys, girls, and every child?

*To support that nurturing, how do we change our micro-cultures to provide success for every child?

*How do issues of equity, race, and gender affect teaching, family, and parent outcomes in the context of the preceding three questions?

The Cartwright Model School Pilot

During the summer of 2019, along with normal PD in the school districts, all Cartwright teachers, staff, social workers, case managers, and teachers aides attended a two day Boys and Girls Learn Differently Training with GI Executive Director Dr. Michael Gurian and Gurian Master Trainer Dr. Glynetta Fletcher.  This training provided foundational learning in male/female brain difference, nurturing patterns, aggression and physicality levels, and responses to trauma and cultural differences, including racial and cultural sensitivity.  During this training, staff were provided with multiple strategies and tools to employ during the school year.

During the year, Gurian Institute Master Trainer Eva Dwight provided on-site consulting, observation/feedback, instructional support, and technical assistance.  Eva was joined by GPUL/Head Start staff Marion Hill, Natalie Alvarez, Marlene Ordaz, and Shandeen Gomez who work on site already and are certified Gurian Trainers.  This team, joined by Gurian and Fletcher remotely, provided day-to-day support as needed, including development and deployment of dozens of implementation and action strategies for trauma-response, literacy improvement, STEM improvement, behavior management, sex-specific bonding and attachment, and much more.

As the year progressed (interrupted towards the end by COVID protocols), teachers and staff kept journals of interactions, strategy implementation, pros and cons, what worked and what didn’t, how things worked, how parents’ and children’s interactions shifted, and what organically emerged from the work in the classrooms.  As it had been in the University of Missouri pilot (captured in the book Boys and Girls Learn Differently) and confirmed in more recent GI programs, these teacher journals were important for the implementation and assessment of school development.

Here are some journal entries that illustrate the process and pilot results.

“In the past, we’ve been taught to put the children in pairs with partners. This was not working well with boys.  After learning more about boys this year, we decided to just have the boys walk in a line marching to the song ‘The Ants Go Marching In.’ The boys really enjoy this new routine. They are well-disciplined when doing this routine.”

“A new strategy we used to help with literacy was, during lunch time, the teacher reads the book of the day to the kids.  The children focused better on hearing and listening to the story during lunch, especially boys who had trouble earlier.  Now some of these children verbally recall more parts of the story. This worked better than trying to read to them on the mat with children spread out and distracted by objects around them.”

“When we did our insect unit, we wanted the girls to be more engaged in how insects grow, change and reproduce so, when we went outside, we provided our kids with magnifying glasses, and they were looking around for insects in the playground.  We saw that they enjoyed looking for insects.  We are doing this along with other engagement for girls outdoors, for instance, by doing bilateral movement– rock climbing wall, hanging rings; balancing pods, beams; imaginative play; sensory/tactile – pea gravel, sand with buckets, digging material, insect exploration; large motor – hula hoops, balls; free play and competition when possible.”

“We did ‘Opposite Day’ in which the girls were asked to stay in the block area as the boys stayed in the art area to create cards for their mothers. The girls were presented with images of castles and were also given props to add to their castles.  From the 9 girls who came to class, only 3 had trouble building a castle, while the rest built, destroyed and then built again.”

“We started implementing the ‘ask’ instead of ‘tell’ strategy that the GI team leader taught us. We have started asking the children what they should be doing instead of telling them. In doing this, we have noticed that the children know what they should be doing, and they are able to tell us.  By asking them, they feel like they are in control and have the say-so of what they should be doing.  Also, they remind their friends of what they should be doing when they notice that they are not following the rules. This practice is now a part of our routine.”

Evaluation of the Classroom, School, and Pilot

Evaluation of the strategies and implementation occurred anecdotally through journals and statistically through already used Head Start evaluators and structures.  These include CLASS and e-Deca.  On site evaluators are already employed in the school system, providing evaluation on site at various intervals, and specifically at the end of 3 three month intervals (fall, winter, spring).  At Cartwright, evaluation showed significant improvement in most behavioral and academic areas statistically, with anecdotal support for the success provided by teacher journals, parent feedback, and case manager assessment.

Two major components of both Head Start goals and the Pilot itself–literacy and behavior management–showed significant improvement.  Math showed improvement, as well, and decrease in gender stereotyping also grew as the pilot went on.  This latter point is a crucial one in the contemporary educational landscape.  For decades, Gurian Institute research from school districts across the country has shown a decrease not increase in gender stereotyping when sex-differences are accounted for in pedagogy.  Cartwright’s pilot confirmed this finding.  Boys developed more hands-on empathic social skills and reading improvement, and girls developed more use of early childhood engineering interests and object-structure based play.

Among the many people to thank for the work at Cartwright is Marion Hill, Head Start Director in Phoenix.  Marion Hill and Michael Gurian met a number of years ago at a Head Start conference in Phoenix, realizing immediately their shared goals in gender and racial equity.  Over the last number of years, Marion has headed and supported programs like M.A.N.C.A.V.E. for fathers of young children in black and Latino communities, as well as promoting and supporting Cartwright and other local schools’ innovative programming.

You can learn more about Marion Hill on the Trainer page of www.gurianinstitute.com.  On that page, too, are biographies of Dr. Fletcher, Eva Dwight, and Marlene Ordaz and Shandeen Gomez all of whom support this program and school vigorously.  Shandeen Gomez provides evaluation support that gives the pilot transparency and detail.  Natalie Alvarez, COO of Greater Phoenix Urban League, provides the administrative support the pilot needs to flourish.  Marlene directs programming and Dr. Fletcher and Eva Dwight provide training, instructional coaching, and cultural support.

We are grateful to all of the Pilot staff as well as the Governing Board of the Greater Phoenix Urban League, and all the teachers and coaches, too many to name.  Even with the COVID-19 interruption to school and services, the Pilot is a success by all measures, and Cartwright is providing innovation to children and parents.   To learn more about the Cartwright School Pilot as well as our Model School program, please visit the GI Model Schools page on www.gurianinstitute.com.