For six weeks, football players endured summer conditioning, and a part of that conditioning regimen was intellectual.
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I never meant to become an educator of boys. I did not have any brothers growing up, and when I was a student, I truly did not care how the guys with whom I shared a classroom learned – they were just there and we, girls and boys alike, were all in it together. Nevertheless, over 10 years into teaching at the high school and college levels, I have found myself primarily an educator of guys (although, yes, there are a few girls in my classes each semester). Some of it has to do with the courses I like to teach – Science and Technology in American Culture, Dystopian Literature, Food and Identity, etc. – and some of it may have to do with the fact that my first full-time teaching gig out of college was at an all-boys Jesuit high school in Jersey City, NJ. I was 22 years old, fresh out of Oberlin College, and I was the second female ever hired in the 130-year history of the school’s English department.
There is a gulf between high school and college; and it is into this gulf between compulsory, state-mandated education and the pursuit of higher learning into which the guys descend – often never to be seen in a classroom again.
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I attended high school and college in a time when the concern was about girls in the classroom – whether or not educators were doing enough to get the girls in the class to speak up, to participate in group projects, to engage deeply with math, science, and writing. I attended high school and college at the tail end of an era in which the vast majority of the teachers in a given department were men (humanities included). Somewhere in the time between going off to college and first course at Ohio State University these scenarios flipped. When I first started as a student at Oberlin College (the first college in the U.S. to admit women in 1837) in the late 1990s, the campus was 55% male and 45% female; today those percentages have reversed and the campus is 45% male and 55% female. Female teachers dominate the classrooms at the primary and secondary education levels, with 76% of educators being female. However, at the college-level, among the tenured faculty ranks men remain dominant. There is a gulf between high school and college; and it is into this gulf between compulsory, state-mandated education and the pursuit of higher learning into which the guys descend – often never to be seen in a classroom again.
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They came to the athletic boardroom sweaty and muddy, but they also came with books in hand, chapters read, and essays drafted.
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Perhaps it is because I think academia is a magical place of learning, thought, growth, and opportunity combined with the fact I realize I am responsible for educating young men that I feel a particular onus has been placed upon me to reach the guys in school that we as educators have stopped reaching. Yes, guys may dominate my classes, but that does not mean that I am always reaching them. No, I have not completely restructured my courses. I am decidedly not teaching Pride and Prejudice through the lens of Skyrim, but I have worked to develop a program that has enabled me to change where I teach. And just by changing location of the class, the entire context in which guys engage with reading and writing has shifted to something they seem to care about. This summer, with the support of the administration and the athletic director of the private high school where I currently teach, I moved my classroom from the academic building into the athletic pavilion. For six weeks, football players endured summer conditioning, and a part of that conditioning regimen was intellectual. They moved circuit-style from stretching to sprints to lifting to writing to agility to literature. They came to the athletic boardroom sweaty and muddy, but they also came with books in hand, chapters read, and essays drafted. They came more willing to engage with the texts because they came as a team and because working in this space somehow gave them permission to connect literature to sport. They were able to make their summer reading their own – to construct it’s meaning differently than if we had been in a traditional classroom in some academic building. This was summer. The guys weren’t required to be there for football workouts or English instruction, and yet, they still came.
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Somehow locating their classroom near their field, making learning literature happen alongside blocks and tackles, has changed their level of participation and engagement.
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At the end of the summer the guys had the opportunity to write an essay on a second, optional summer reading book. Successful completion of the assignment would be rewarded with dinner and a group showing of a newly released football movie. The coach anticipated that about 15 of the players would complete the assignment. I was a bit more optimistic. My optimism, however, did not prepare me for the 53 essays that were submitted. I was completely blown away by the guys’ participation and their level of engagement with the reading. Of the 53 essays I received, four were from players who have recently committed to playing football for D1 college teams. Their coach is concerned with getting them ready for the rigors of college play, while I am concerned with making sure that they and their teammates who might not get recruited can prove themselves in the classroom. Somehow locating their classroom near their field, making learning literature happen alongside blocks and tackles, has changed their level of participation and engagement. Perhaps the gulf of guys’ participation in education is not between high school and college but between the 7:50am to 2:50pm school day and everything else that comes after. Perhaps it is in bridging that gulf that we can keep guys in the classroom and on campuses.
–Image credit: Noodles and Beef/flickr