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The first school I worked at in my early twenties was a non-profit for boys that had been removed from their public schools, primarily for their behavior and also for academic need, and placed into the adventure education/behavior modification program where I worked. I was an environmental science undergrad and was back in school for a Master’s in Special Education in Behavioral & Emotional disorders after I fell in love with this complex and challenging population.
“Difficult” is a word some would use for this population. When I’d tell people what I did, for years, the response was, “Oh bless you, that is extremely difficult work.” But I loved it.
I absolutely loved the mystery and challenge of how to access the heart and soul of a pissed off teenage male. Call me crazy. Analyze my own father wounds. Don’t worry, I’ve done all that and then some. Teenage boys, in my fifteen years of working in alternative education, were my favorite. I stuck with adolescents throughout my career and the last school I worked in, I helped create. It was a residential therapeutic school for adolescent males with Autism diagnoses. Interestingly, I was the female staff on an all-male team and the one person who was advocating that we directly address healthy masculinity.
So often, by the time I met boys in middle and high school, these were jaded. They had accumulated diagnoses. Often times, I believe, the diagnoses come from the effects of living conditions and circumstances. Many didn’t have fathers around. Some had seen abuse or worse. Most young men in these specialized schools had never been taught authentic relating skills. They were pissed, and they had a right to be.
When I was a middle school principal, boys were disproportionately sent to me for discipline. Again, the boys without fathers in the home, the boys that needed to move their bodies and learn hands-on, and the boys who were literally too bright for what was being offered – they were the ones misbehaving or checking out.
We often see more of an effort to suppress such young men and discipline them than to mentor them. Schools really need mentorship programs for adolescent males.
When I built a large greenhouse with my first school (the boys built it with the staff – they took pride in that), and taught science out of it (hands-on and life skill-based), I discovered the inherent therapeutic nature of experiential education. One of my students, David, had seen a shooting, and his father was dead. His uncle incarcerated. He didn’t respect his mother. He didn’t get close to anyone. He lived in the middle of the city and this child had never farmed a day in his life before my class. But in my class, he got to get close to a non-human living thing – and he took pride in the things he was growing. He wouldn’t ask, “Can I take care of the greenhouse today?” He’d say defensively, “Since I know no one else is going to make sure it gets done, I’ll do it.” Vegetables were alive, but they were much safer to care for than humans.
I have a picture of this child with a wide smile on his face while sticking his tongue into the blasting garden hose. David, in that space, had a purpose. This is essential for young men.
Most schools don’t understand how to raise young men of outstanding character, with an active conversation about masculinity. I was fortunate to see and contribute toward a few.
Students like David and those few and far between breakthrough moments of true connection, of seeing them thriving in their sense of purpose, and seeing them stand tall, kept me engaged in education for fifteen years.
When I left, it was because I wanted to work more directly with the heart and soul, to investigate how to improve our collective relatedness between masculine and feminine, and because I just didn’t care enough about the academics to be in true integrity as a school principal anymore.
Recently, I went through an unexpected breakup and I’d believed that this man was my counterpart in life and also in this soulful heart and soul mission to deeply investigate femininity and masculinity. I actually had a bit of time after it ended when I didn’t want to care about healing men or masculinity anymore. After years of resiliency and resolve to love & forgive men in spite of experiences that could have jaded me (and sometimes did), I thought, well, this is the man that might finally have broken my resolve to care. If it sounds dramatic, I’m sorry. I hit some kind of rock bottom. I’m still climbing my way back out.
It was like I wanted so badly to see and believe in the aspects of masculinity I knew possible but so rarely have experienced in my life, and I finally reached the end of my hope. Or rather, I thought, this isn’t my work to care anymore. It hurts too damn bad.
A friend was sitting with me in my sadness and he said, “You know, I’m going to tell you a story. Maybe you’ll get something from it.” And without knowing my previous career roots, he told me a story about helping to raise male adolescents, with a myriad of diagnoses, in a program in his early twenties. He talked about the rare and worthy spark of heart recognition in the young boys in moments of true connection. He talked about how that kept him going.
I heard the message. Loud and clear.
It reminded me that if I could sit with boys like David, with other boys who had physically assaulted me as their female teacher in displaced anger, with boys that projected all of their mother wounds onto me, and I could love them unconditionally, in hope for that occasional spark, I can do the same now. And I can remain hopeful for more than a spark, too. I can believe that we can all come to this space of the heart, that mine not harden, and that we continue to recognize the true light, the true beauty, in each man, woman, and human.
I will continue to look for it and to do my part.
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Photo courtest Unsplash.