One camp, two ways of teaching boys

Camping Magazine, May-June, 2007 by Michael Thompson

There is a debate going on in the U.S. about boy academic underachievement and whether or not teachers really know how to teach boys properly. There are charges and counter-charges: boys aren't ready to learn, they play too many video games; and the classroom is feminized, maybe women teachers don't "get it" about boys' learning styles. While I 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, often humorous presentation by the counselor in charge of that option. The "water polo" instructor, Will, had advertised his activity by saying, "We are going to play water polo, and I'll be wearing my helmet!" From his tone of voice and the helmet reference, I understood that he was advertising a free-for-all in the water. Steph, the waterfront director and swimming instructor, had simply announced, "I'll be doing swimming for anyone who wants to work on their Red Cross levels."

After circle broke up, the boys were permitted to go back to their tents, change into their suits, and laze down to the waterfront at their own pace. It is simply amazing how slowly boys move when you allow them to follow their inner clocks. Modern life has forgotten that there is a Huck Finn inside every boy saying, "... we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness." The beauty of a camp, if it is run right, is that there is a lot more Huck Finn time than anywhere else in America.

But I digress. By the time I got down to the dock there was a small group of boys on the dock with Steph. "Pencil dive!" shouted one boy as he jumped off the dock, clapping his hands to his sides to embody a straight line. Another boy yelled, "Jackknife!" and leapt in gripping one leg to his chest. "Pretty good," Steph said. After some minutes of diving, she announced, "In a few minutes we'll do some backstroke." The boys continued their free-form diving.

Meanwhile, Will's water polo group was taking forever to get into wet suits, but no one scolded them and no one hurried them. There was the inevitable conversation about peeing in the wetsuits to warm them up. Talk about urination and allusions to penises are a constant feature of life at a boys' camp, especially in the youngest boys' group, because bedwetting at camp is still an issue for some of them.

Two boys, now dressed in wetsuits, walked to the edge of the dock, and the bigger boy jumped in immediately. The other boy remained behind, trying not to look miserable, but he did and Will recognized the boy's anxiety immediately. He plowed through the chest-deep water, using his hands as paddles, and stood in front of him. "Are you ready, Anthony?" he asked quietly. The boy nodded. Suddenly, Will gave a mock command: "Then release your fear!" The boy jumped in.

As the game of water polo began, Will had donned his wetsuit and his blue skate-boarding helmet. He played the clown, shouting mock commands. "Go for the goal," he screams at a team-mate. "I've got you covered like a blanket." Then all of a sudden, lurching out of the water and grabbing off his water shoe he wails: "Time out ... Rock in my croc ... seriously, rock in my croc!"