Sticking With The Boys

How one Catholic middle school in Brooklyn is addressing the high attrition rate of boys in the school.

It’s a brilliantly sunny Wednesday at Brooklyn Jesuit Prep, a co-ed Jesuit middle school in Crown Heights, and all of the ten students in detention are boys.  The clicking sound of mechanical pencils and the clatter of pens tapping on desks drown out the cheers of their fellow classmates blowing off steam at recess in the neighboring church parking lot. Today’s troublemakers are copying the phrase “Respect means treating others as I want to be treated” ten times into their notebooks—a scene reminiscent of Bart Simpson writing his transgressions on the chalkboard at the beginning of each episode of The Simpsons.

Brian Chap, 29, who is well over six-feet tall, towers over a couple of youngsters who are still bickering about who pushed who in line on the way to class. The new principal has a tall order ahead of him: addressing the high attrition rate of boys at the school.

“When I looked over the attrition rates of both boys and girls—those who started in the fifth grade compared to those who graduated—in some cases over 50% of the boys did not graduate,” said Rev. John J. Podsiadlo, S.J, President of New York Nativity, which runs Brooklyn Jesuit Prep and two other middle schools: Nativity Mission Center on the Lower East Side and St. Ignatius School in Hunts Point in the Bronx.  Originally there were 25 students in the Class of 2011—12 girls and 13 boys—but only five of the boys graduated, according to data provided by the school.   Similarly, this year’s graduating class started with 23 students—10 girls and 13 boys—but now there are only six boys left.  While some withdrew because their families moved out of the neighborhood, most of them were dismissed because of repeated behavior or academic problems, like failing classes, according to Chap and the school’s counselor, Laura O’Brien.

Rapscallions like Bart Simpson are at every school, of course, not just at Brooklyn Jesuit Prep.  Nationwide, boys are expelled at three times the rate of girls, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.  They are also twice as likely to be suspended from school. Peg Tyre, author of The Trouble with Boys, points to the nationwide literacy gap as proof that boys are lagging perilously behind girls: girls in public and nonpublic schools boast higher average reading scores than boys at all grade levels, according to the Nation’s Report Card, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).  More women than men are graduating from high school, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.  And women are twice as likely as men to earn bachelor’s degrees by age 23, according to a report published by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics in February.

If anything, Brooklyn Jesuit Prep is part of the solution.  The goal of Nativity schools is to “break the cycle of poverty” and close the racial achievement gap among low-income students in New York City by offering an accelerated middle school program that prepares them for top high schools and post-secondary schools.  Brooklyn Jesuit Prep is virtually free to its 85 students in grades 5 to 8; parents pay $75 a month, thanks to private donations. Nativity schools’ success rests on its model of longer school days, with mandatory after-school activities and optional study halls.  In addition, all students are required to attend a Summer Leadership Program at Fairfield University, which combines academic classes with recreational activities. New York Nativity boasts that its eighth graders score higher on New York State exams than their peers.

So why are some Brooklyn Jesuit Prep boys still struggling to make the grade?

One reason: “Our days are from 7:15 in the morning to 4:30 pm at least, so the days are a lot longer,” says O’Brien, who also works in admissions.

The longer school day can be a strain on many of the boys who start Brooklyn Jesuit Prep three to four grade levels behind, she explains.  A significant change in workload from elementary school to middle school can make it difficult for students without a solid academic background or firm grasp of reading to keep up, according to Nancy Lesko, former middle school teacher and professor at Teachers College at Columbia University.

“Girls may be somewhat more likely to be passively tuning out, whereas boys may be somewhat more likely to act out, and I think it’s that acting out that gets them in trouble and leads to disciplinary suspensions,” Lesko says.  “The acting out is talking out of turn, moving around in your seat, not being physically contained or being able to concentrate and stay with something for a while.”

And the more teachers correct them, the more likely they are to snap.

“We create a behavior dynamic where boys, by virtue of the fact that they move around a little bit more than girls, are often seen as behavior problems,” Tyre says, “and so we shower them with negative attention in those early years, and I think the downstream effect of that negative attention and that lack of skill in literacy creates a kind of perfect storm by middle school and boys begin to disengage. The demand for a rigid code of behavior creates a lot of negative attention for boys, and I think they get sick of it.”

Some feel pressured to be the man at home as well, not just at school.

“Most of the boys who got kicked out were raised by their mom alone,” says Irene Locario, 51, who is starting her fourth year as a teacher at Brooklyn Jesuit Prep. “Your mom can tell you to be successful, but when you hear it from your dad, there’s something powerful about that for them. We don’t have a lot of male teachers in this school.  Most of the teachers are motivated females, but the boys need to see more of their kind, more male teachers of color.”

Chap and other teachers claim that, in the past, the school may have been too hard on the boys and didn’t give them enough of a chance before dismissing them.  With seven years of experience at all-boys schools under his belt—six years at St. Ignatius Loyola Academy in downtown Baltimore and one year as principal at the all-boys Nativity Mission Center—Chap hopes to promote a better understanding of how boys behave.

“My hope coming in is that we can recognize that these behaviors are boys being boys,” he said.  “It’s not boys completely rebelling against us. We can’t just say, ‘We can’t handle this student,’ because we can. We have that capability.  But it takes time.”

His plan for retaining boys draws heavily upon the theories of Michael Gurian, an author of Boys and Girls Learn Differently and The Minds of Boys, who stresses that girls and boys need to be taught in single-sex classes because their minds work differently.  Girls, for instance, can sit still and concentrate on a lecture for longer, while boys are naturally more restless and need more space to learn and to do more hands-on activities.  By separating the sexes, Gurian argues teachers can teach boys and girls in the ways that work best for them.  And for middle school boys going through the topsy-turvy hormonal changes of puberty, single-sex classes provide a safe environment for them to express themselves and work on their academic weaknesses without the pressure or distraction of trying to impress their classmates of the opposite sex.

Yet an article in the September 23rd issue of Science magazine, “The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling,” argues that there is no scientific evidence that children benefit from single-sex classes more than co-ed classes.  After reviewing data from large-scale studies, the authors determined that stories championing the successes of single-sex education are just that—anecdotes without any science to back them up.  In fact, they argue that separating boys and girls just teaches children that the sexes are different rather than empowering them, promoting gender stereotypes and sexism.

“Whenever you segregate people you create more in-group liking and more out-group hostility,” says Diane Halpern, the Trustee Professor of Psychology and Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College and director of membership for the American Council of CoEducational Schooling.

Chap still believes that single-sex classes enable his school to build self-confidence among boys—especially among the ones who are struggling—and help them “develop as people without measuring themselves against someone else.”

He adds, with a smirk, “I spent most of eighth grade trying to get the girls’ attention.”

To accommodate boys’ shorter attention spans, Chap encourages teachers to divvy up each 45-minute class period into three 15-minute blocks so that the students can move around and recalibrate. Chap likes to play a quick game of “Simon Says” in his eighth-grade algebra class to help the boys focus on their listening skills. At the beginning of class, Locario makes her sixth graders move their elbows to their opposite knees 30 times to get them thinking.  Breaks could also be as simple as letting them take a ten-second stretch, walk around the room swinging their arms from left to right, or move the desks into a different position. To give the boys more time to move around in the outdoors, Chap has implemented a sports period on Tuesday afternoons, when they go to Mount Prospect Park to play soccer and flag football and run cross country.

Tyre also believes in motivating boys on the field, but she stresses the importance of motivating them to succeed in the classroom, especially those who come from underprivileged backgrounds.

“If a school is in a low-income area and serving black and Latino kids, it should try to create a positive identity around academic achievement,” says Tyre, “like, ‘It’s cool to be in school,’ as opposed to, ‘It’s cool to have your pants hanging down and to have your hat backwards and to be a screw-up.’”

That is why Locario starts every class with an inspirational pledge. The boys stand in a straight line and recite, “I am somebody. I am capable. I am loveable. I am teachable, therefore I can learn.  I am going to use my time wisely because it is precious. I am bright. I am somebody.”  Then they read the quote of the day, “Enthusiasm ignites greatness,” off the whiteboard and explain what it means to them.

“Who they become depends on them,” Locario says. “If you don’t affirm to them that they’re responsible, they’ll look to outside forces, like the detention center in the real world . . . or the gang leaders and drug dealers.”

Lesko sums up the secret to getting through the trials and tribulations of middle school: “Being successful in middle school and beyond is really sticking with it, right?” A poster in Chap’s office embodies this patience and commitment: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”  Brooklyn Jesuit Prep is sticking with the boys, one detention, sports period, and inspirational quote at a time.