I see it with my own eyes from the front of my classroom each and every day. Overall, the boys are getting their butts kicked by the girls – particularly when it comes to reading and literacy skills.

Of course, these are generalizations – I have boys that are wicked smart and truly great students… and girls that are just not stepping up whatsoever – but taken on the whole, there are more girls achieving at higher rates with greater regularity and consistency in school these days than there are young men.

And the data supports this assertion. Here’s a link to an article about the most recent report on how Boys Trailing Girls in Reading Across the States.

And so, should we hit the panic button?

Yes and no.

Yes because no matter what your gender, I couldn’t be more staunch in my belief about how kids need to own excellent literacy skills. Those who can read and write well are at a huge advantage over those who cannot in this world and I don’t care what tech invention Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony, and so on comes up with… the need to be able to read and write well is not a skill that is disappearing anytime soon.

(Goodness, I hope that doesn’t one day make a list of the world’s dumbest predictions one day like, “Who wants to see talking movies?”)

So yes, boys need to elevate their reading performance. And their writing performance. Why? Because it ultimately relates directly to their thinking performance and the fact is, for those who do not own solid literacy skills, a glass ceiling exists.

A glass ceiling being lowered by things like Friedman’s The World is Flat recognition.

But no, we don’t need to panic. And why? Cause panic isn’t going to do anything. Doing something is going to do something.

• Accessible relevant reading material that wins the hearts and minds of boys must be better embraced as a classroom tool.
• Reading for pleasure has to be recognized as something that does not just occur, but rather, is cultivated in young people. (Expecting it to just bloom is silly – we need to garden.)
• Bludgeoning our lowest level boy readers with scripted curriculums, disengaging, watered-down, 5 pound textbooks and drill-n-kill materials has got to be kicked to the curb.
• Sending the message that good bubbling on bubble tests is the penultimate goal to which readers should aspire needs to be exorcised. Reading is not about being tested on reading.

All in all, we need to listen to our literacy light leaders. I mean it’s not like we do not know how to better win over more boy readers. We do know bhow. And there are a ton of people who do, indeed, provide workable answers to this problem. Thing is, we are not listening to them. Our best thinkers in the field of literacy are holding a map, a flashlight, a canteen of water and a supply pack of tools saying, “Follow me!” …and still, these “experts” are not being entrusted to guide us through the rough terrain us we currently face.

Boy readers are reachable.
Young men do like to read once the right material crosses their path.
We can do better.

But let’s not forget one thing, we oughtta be proud of our girls. A few decades ago they couldn’t even vote and now they are taking the boys out to the woodshed and kickin’ their butts.

Remember, in our effort to raise up our boys, let’s make sure we do not slow down our girls. They are to be saluted!

I pulled onto campus this morning to see a host of peers protesting layoffs, budget cuts and program slashing. Somehow, I missed the memo saying they’d be gathering but my heart dropped to the floor when I saw some of my closest friends on the “picket line” imploring the people of the community to demand that our schools do not get cast into an abyss from which it will be spectacularly hard to return.

Damn, it’s hard.

It’s hard for the teachers who got pink slips. It’s hard for the teachers (like myself) who did not get pink slips but know in their hearts that losing good people when you are in a battle like all of us are for the hearts and minds of the next generation is a deep, traumatic wound. It’s hard for the district administrators, too, who have to make supremely hard choices about where to slash, where to cut and where to forge ahead. (Goodness knows, I do not envy anyone having to make these tough choices… when you are forced to cut so deeply, nobody wins. That seems quite obvious.)

It’s getting ugly out there and the fact is, at the end of the day, lots of people are going to suffer. (Ultimately, no one more so than our students, though.) I want to more vocally advocate for the idea that we need to figure out a way for all of us to join together and NOT fall victim to the finger pointing, blame, hurt and hate that is so very much right at everyone’s fingertips right now, but when you didn’t just find out you lost your job, it’s easy to say because you don’t have to go home facing the prospects of unemployment. Truly, I don’t have credibility on that front.

Not being pink-slipped almost has me feeling survivor’s guilt — which makes it tough to do my work today. Really, just when you think the madness can’t get worse, it does.

We must find a way to fight through this. And I am sure we will. But it ain’t gonna be pretty.