Simple Moments in Which Boys Thrive
By Ben Malbasa
Director of the Center for the Education of Boys, Varsity Football Coach
On a spring afternoon, I spent a few minutes catching up with two senior football captains. Both were wrapping up their college-selection processes and looking forward to graduation; they were also more talkative and especially reflective in thinking about their experiences. We may have talked for 15 minutes, but later that evening, after running our out-of-season workouts and heading home, I realized that short conversations like this one are among my favorite moments of the school year.
We often hear from researchers that adolescent males pull away from close friendships with other males and experience isolation to avoid appearing “less masculine.” Much of the literature and even popular culture takes for granted that males resist showing emotion to “man up.” As parents and educators, we have a responsibility to think carefully about how we conceive of masculinity and what it means for our sons and students.
Thinking about this has led me to consider the times when boys and young men do not behave according to stereotypical expectations. School life is one of these contexts. The young men I teach and coach develop incredibly close relationships, exhibit emotion, and demonstrate vulnerability.
One of our football game-day traditions is our mission period – a time set aside roughly three hours before kick-off for our team to be together and to reflect on our values and objectives. Sessions have included discussions ranging from how fear affects us to the meaning of commitment and the effects of adversity.
During these periods there have been many remarkable examples of young men sharing their emotions. Some of this is limited to the context of our game, such as when football players share their fears of getting hurt just hours before a game.
Still, there are other times when the conversation transcends our sport: In one mission period focused on purpose, a young man who was new to the team shared with teammates and coaches his recent loss of his father and how this affected him in preparing to play. Tightly packed together in a room, after a shared meal, and with little prompting, young men preparing to play a sport that many associate with the most stereotypical notions of masculinity consistently do not play to type.
I see similar examples in my English classroom. I devoted one of our classes to reading and discussing Peggy Orenstein’s essay, “The Miseducation of the American Boy.” In her work, Orenstein contends that adolescent males face narrow paths to masculinity and that following these paths leads them to engage in negative behaviors.
I asked students to reflect on and discuss an experience from their own lives that Orenstein might use to support her arguments and to explain what her reasoning might be before discussing whether they agreed.
The discussions and writing that followed were rich. The students’ reflected on childhood experiences involving a father encouraging his son to fight back against a bully rather than involve a teacher, on seeing a friend reluctantly break up with his girlfriend only because of pressure from his male friends, and on how a Mixed Martial Arts watch party led a group of friends to cheer each other on in a series of actual fights. In every reflection, these young men in their junior year of high school offered thoughtful examples.
Next, the young men reflected on their own feelings about these moments. Students wrote about their desire to “portray emotion” and expressed hope that adulthood means “growing out” of feeling insecure about expressing emotion and asking for help. Moreover, these thoughts carried over into our class discussions. Expressing such vulnerabilities and admissions aloud is dramatically different from sharing them in written form with an audience of one.
Just like their peers participating in team mission periods, the young men in my English class defied type. Such instances raise an important question: Why do the young men described behave differently in different contexts? I realize just how much that context matters: in the right contexts, boys develop the confidence to share who they are, how they feel, what they fear, and who they hope to be.
When boys and young men develop trust in their peers and the adults surrounding them, they gain the confidence to be authentic in sharing who they are and how they feel. Our challenge as teachers and parents of boys is to support our students and sons in developing such trust. We are best able to do this when we create spaces for boys and young men to express their feelings and offer them structures that make it easier for them to do so.
Education is a series of simple moments, and it is our responsibility as teachers and parents to be mindful of each opportunity to create the right contexts for boys to thrive.
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