...teachers "get it" about boys' learning styles. While welcome this important discussion, what worries me is the implication there is an easy answer to all of this, as if there were one right way to teach the great range of boys (or girls). Nothing is that simple, especially not in teaching, which is a demanding and complex skill.

As a boy advocate and school consultant, I am always on the look-out for good teaching. That's one reason I love visiting summer camps, because I invariably pick up something about the essence of the teaching process when I spend time with counselors, some of whom are veterans, but the great majority of whom are young, untrained, and novice instructors--but sometimes superb teachers nonetheless. Last summer, at a boys' camp in Vermont, I had an unusual opportunity to watch two counselor/teachers work with ten-year-old boys. One was a professional, a woman who teaches kindergarten in the winter and is waterfront director for the camp in the summer. The other was a young man, an amateur, a twenty-two-year-old college student. Their teaching styles could not have been more different.

What was particularly sweet about this encounter was that I got to see the two counselors run activities simultaneously, on either side of me, as I sat in a beach chair on a waterfront dock. On the outer side: swim lessons; on the inner, shallow side of the dock a chaotic form of "water polo." It was like watching a two-ringed circus in the water, with very different acts in each ring. In order to see both, all I had to do was turn my head from one to the other and back again, and try to keep my laptop dry with all that splashing going on all around me.

The boys, all from the youngest group at this sleep-over camp--eight- to ten-year-olds--had chosen these activities at "morning circle" from a diverse menu of activities: soccer, baseball, wood shop, a skit-writing activity for the camp show, and others too numerous to recall. Every boy was given the chance to choose the activity he wanted after a brief,...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



Looking for additional articles?
Search our database of over 3 million articles.

Looking for more in-depth information on this industry?
Search our complete database of Industry & Market reports by text, subject, publication name or publication date.

About Goliath
Whether you're looking for sales prospects, competitive information, company analysis or best practices in managing your organization, Goliath can help you meet your business needs.

Our extensive business information databases empower business professionals with both the breadth and depth of credible, authoritative information they need to support their business goals. Whether it be strategic planning, sales prospecting, company research or defining management best practices - Goliath is your leading source for accurate information.