Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Mostly Outside, Rarely Inside

This chapter covered a lot of material, and gave further insight into the boys' varying psyches.  The researchers initially found a clear disconnect in the boys' interpretation of the research project, in that the boys were not counting all of the extracurricular reading that they were engaging in because they didn't think casual fun reading counted.  In and of itself, this is very telling, and seems to make clear the mental divide the boys carry in themselves when factoring in schoolwork versus "real life".  Competence, control, and challenge was an inter chapter heading which highlighted certain factors which influenced student participation in reading exercises.  One thing that was pointed out was the line between competence and perfectionism.  In general students like to feel a certain level of competence when engaging with an activity, as it gives them a sense of control over the given subject.  Students who tended towards perfectionism were more reluctant to engage in activities that they didn't feel competent enough.

As stated in other chapters, choice is mentioned again as an important aspect of flow.  When students encounter a range of options and are allowed to choose the one that best suits their interest, the more engaged they are likely to become.  Relatedly, one of the students who had attended both public and private schools said that private school felt much less "like a prison" because of the larger degree of freedom and choice given to the students.  This is frustrating because these sorts of practices should be available to any student regardless of familial income.  Teaching practice is teaching practice -- it's makes me wonder if in today's technological age if teachers in any walk will be able to incorporate cutting edge practices more easily, or if state standards will still hamper public school flexibility.

One factor that had a notable impact on students was how close they felt with their teachers.  Teachers who had more personal contact with the students led to more students being engaged with the material.  The personal connection led them to be more willing to try at a subject with less regard for their competence.  In many ways, the what the authors found through their interviews was sometimes worrisome: the disconnect between students and teachers; the way lessons steered more towards pushing through information and less with students expressing their opinions.  Reflecting on my own experience, I remember having ample opportunities to have open discussion in class, and to be able to apply my own reasoning/interpretations to text, so reading these students' experiences makes me wonder about high school at large.

The students also had an aversion to what they called, "busywork" -- work that had to ultimate value or usefulness to it, rather it just functioned to keep students busy.  This is understandable: work for work's sake is unpleasant at any age or station, but it also makes me wonder how accurate their interpretation of busywork is.  Does that mean "work that we find unpleasant/boring"? Because in that case, there could be no pleasing all the students; there would always be some sort of busywork.  However, it could at least inform teachers that students are aware when lazy lesson planning is taking place and general tasks are being given for the sake of it.

Anyway, this chapter covered a wide array of topics, many of them mentioned in prior chapters, but I ultimately found certain aspects to be illuminating.  Still, I'm a little concerned of the overall arc of the book: while there is a lot of discussion, I'm having trouble in sensing what I, as a teacher, am supposed to do with the data.  It's clear that many things don't work and that students do and don't like a variety of things, but how is my practice supposed to be informed?  I guess I wish that the next step was taken by giving teaching practices, or methods to incorporate these findings into regular class usage.  Anyway, there are only two more chapters of the book, hopefully they will incorporate more practical uses for these types of findings.

Chloe's Chapter 6

While in many ways, I felt like this ending chapter was too vague, there were some good take-away points.  I especially liked the reminder to use more visuals when students are making meaning.  They mention that using "music, video, visual arts, and electronic technologies...would build on the interconnections among various forms of literacy" (p. 186) and that it would give the boys a chance to demonstrate their strengths.  I would like to expand this (as do the authors) and say that this would be a great tool for many students, both boys and girls.  Some students do well with the more traditional forms of meaning making, such as comprehension tests, and/or summaries, but many students are left out when the focus is only on the traditional. I would like to keep this in mind for my own teaching.

Their point on making the class centered around a critical question seemed very useful as well.  I agree that this gets students to feel motivated to solve an issue.  I'm still not sure that I agree with the model they used in chapter 3, where the teacher asked the students to make a video surrounding a sports issue, because I feel like that is too narrow, and it leaves out others who may not have as much an interest in sports.  However, there could be a wider question that is pertinent to all students and school centered.  I'm thinking maybe a driving question such as, what makes a good reader? What is literacy? etc.  These are questions related to reading and writing, so they are relevant to all who are in the class and they get them to think metacognitively about themselves. I also like how it allows students a lot of freedom within it.  Students can choose topics as complex or simple as they like (within reason). 

One section that I would like to question is the one where Smith and Wilhelm discuss that shorter texts are intrinsically motivating to students.  I see their point that perhaps there need to be some shorter newspaper articles, or magazine articles included, but I don't think that teachers should then exclude longer texts.  I was thinking that perhaps it is the teacher's role to attempt to build student stamina.  Perhaps this could start though SSR, where students choose texts that are interesting to them, but by the end of the class, I think it would be fine to have a whole-class novel.  Realistically, they will need to learn how to read longer texts for university and college. Many of the boys want to go to university and college, so it is our job to get them ready for it. So, perhaps it is a matter of including more scaffolding and variety into the classroom.

In the end, I feel like this was a lovely read, but I don't think this is only for boys.  The teaching practices that the authors discuss would make any English class more motivating. I was happy to see what techniques they saw teachers use in the classroom, and I can see myself using some of the techniques, such as front loading materials, connecting it to home lives, trying to get to know my students more as individuals, etc.

Chloe's Chapter 5

Phew…this chapter really relieved a lot of the tension I was feeling with the authors’ ambiguous statements, and not much concrete advice for teachers.  I see now that they are not simply recommending that teachers change their texts.  I guess for the last four chapters that’s exactly what I feared.  I feared this because each student has a different interest, and so changing texts seemed like it wouldn’t solve any problems. 

 In this chapter, they mention that teachers need to enhance student interest in texts by front-loading and this is an idea that I can really get behind. This is similar to what I do in the listening and speaking class I teach.  I do this for exactly the same reason.  The listenings are based on random topics that not all students find compelling.  By showing them how these ideas connect to their lives, they are more willing to complete the listening and the post-listening activities.

In many ways this idea of creating connections reminds me of McCormick.  She mentions that teachers should help students relate to texts that come from a different historical time period by showing them how the past and present relate and are not so different.  She talks about it as historically situating the students.  This seems like an idea that Smith and Wilhelm would like, and could use.

One point of note that I want to discuss is about engaging students through proper instruction.  As they are discussing the students who enjoyed “My Sister’s Marriage,” they discuss the notion of how to engage more students. They say that “even more could be engaged with appropriate instruction – instruction that attends to the conditions of flow experience and that provides assistance in ways of reading that Vygotskian educators would endorse” (p.175).  I agree with teaching students through flow and engaging as many students as possible, but I wonder if haing done more instruction for this story would have disengaged more students.  In earlier chapters, Smith and Wilhelm make the point that the boys see the activities done in class as draining.  I wonder, am I contradicting myself? Or, is it okay to sometimes say, “Well, I didn’t engage everyone, but at least some of the students connected with this?” Or could we find a middle ground: teach and foreground some stories, and let students read for enjoyment on other stories?

Chloe's Chapter 4

There were a couple points that this chapter made me think about. I think that I find this chapter difficult because they bring up many components that boys need and want from their classroom environment.  The boys want the teachers to be more interested in them, they want the readings to be more interactive, they want a challenge at the right level, and so forth.  All of these are completely valid and I can see why they would want those, but what I find difficult (from the teacher’s perspective) is how to provide it all for them.  This is reinforced by how little concrete solutions the authors are giving us.  This chapter is better though than the others, because we get some ideas that are valuable.

As a teacher, I would love to get to know all of my students personally and be invested in them.  However, how realistic is that? Each classroom has potentially 20 students in it, and most teachers are teaching more than one class.  In some ways, the design of school does not allow for individuality.  Many of the boys said that "[teachers] want a collective" (p.100).  I don't think it's necessarily that they want a collective, but that one person cannot adhere to the needs of so many students.  Perhaps a compromise is to allow more freedom for the students, I like the idea of having students do an I-Search paper because they can choose a topic that is relevant and important to them.  Book clubs could also be a good way of letting students have more choice.

 I also liked the idea of the SRI as a way to process a story.  On a side note, I’m a little confused about how this would look.  If I understand it correctly, it can be more visual and hands-on.  This seems like it would give the students way of working through the story in a way that’s meaningful to them.

The other point that I definitely agree with is the idea that students should have more interactive activities.  In the example of the two English classes that were working on the play, the second class (where they had to act out portions) seemed much more successful.  I think having an interactive classroom is better anyways (not just for boys). I wonder though if that I the norm, because if they boys are afraid of looking incompetent, or foolish, would they do the interactive activities? I suppose that depends on the type of scaffolding that the teacher provides. What do you think?

Keira Chapter 6

Ugh! The last chapter was, for me, a big let down.

I did like this book, but I'm not sure I like the authors' conclusions. I'm left with quite a few questions.

First of all, I do kind of think that the authors were pretty invested, before the fact, in their "inquiry units"...and I'm not sure those impress me quite as much as the authors seem to think they should. My main reason: I don't love the idea of reading literature with an eye to finding evidence to use in a pro/con type of debate. Early college students have enough trouble doing justice to complexity; this type of training isn't going to make that problem any better. It could make it worse.

Next: In general, the authors say they end up believing that literature should be demoted from its special place in the high school curriculum. But...but...but: How does this conclusion fit with the fairly encouraging results they got from their story-reading protocols?

Also: Do Smith and Wilhelm adequately address the importance of rebellion in adolescent life? I don't think they do. At times, I suspected that "school" played an important role in the boys' lives as something in opposition to which they could define themselves. I don't want that to turn into a cop-out for teachers. But, still...I would have thought that this possibility might be discussed. I definitely remember thinking that the one girl I knew who wanted to be just like her parents was incredibly lame.

I may write more later.

Chapter 6

In this chapter the authors do a good job of summing up major key points in the book. One thing that is painfully obvious after reading this final chapter is that none of their conclusions have anything to do with males exclusively. Perhaps it doesn't matter, but it feels cheapened to me since the whole premise of this book is to focus solely on male student readership. What was the point? Why didn't they just do this study to include females, then, if these are the conclusions they are going to end with? Anyone have similar thoughts?


I was mostly underwhelmed by the conclusions because, for me, it didn't reveal anything "new." Maybe discussing it with you all will shed some light...


I did think that their statements about shifting from the "student-centered model" to a "learning-centered" model was interesting. Usually I hear about the student-centered classroom, while, shifting this to be a learning-centered classroom makes more sense to me (192-193).

Chapter 5

This post will most likely be pretty short because I, again, did not post right after reading and now have to go back through the chapter. (Ugh! Why did I not learn the first time?)


Some take-aways I got from this chapter:


1) Pick texts that invite the social (whatever that may mean--interaction, debate, connections, ect.). This will act as intrinsic motivation (147).


2) Teachers should choose texts that sustain engagement and embody the right amount of challenge. As I have said before...this is so much easier said than done since students will be at varying levels within a class and all have different interests. As we see from the way they read the various stories the researchers ask them to read, different students are engaged with different texts. Some like one story over another--they vary (as to be expected).


I thought is was pretty interesting that most of the boys tended to do story-driven readings when reading the given/assigned stories. This seems like encouraging news. The results are not devastating, most students are at the very least on the right track. Cup half-full view?


I agree with their point on front-loading reading. This is something that we talk a lot about in class and the authors' view on front-loading supports much of what we have already concluded. I think front-loading reading can also be used to achieve the authors' suggestions to "cultivate concern" for the characters in the readings (175).