Unmotivated
Apathetic
Disengaged
Disenfranchised
Disconnected
Instinctual
Lost
Confused

These words come to mind after a morning of observing male students in grade 8 and 9 programs in an outreach school workshop. I try to imagine what these students would look like in a larger traditional education classroom. I pause to shudder. I know that recent brain research indicates that something happens (or has not yet fully happened) in the male adolescent brain, where the reasoning teachers expect is not present in the functional brain of the majority of these individuals. Of course, there are exceptions, and sometimes great exceptions to brain research. It is almost as if our expectations change, and the behaviors of boys change commensurately.

Perhaps adolescent boys magnify the increasing difficulty with maintaining our dinosaur school system in the digital age. Perhaps they are the litmus paper indicating that the rest of the organism is in crisis.

Our students are out of balance, lost, disconnected. Something is not fitting, and the bandages we put on the scrapes don't seem to stick.

At 47, having taught for 25 years, what words can be observed about my behavior in the outreach school site?


Unmotivated
Apathetic
Disengaged
Disenfranchised
Disconnected
Instinctual
Lost
Confused

Shudder.
Balance is about finding the happy medium between change and tradition, between work and leisure, between digital and analog, between dark and light. If we desire balance in our students, we must have balance within ourselves, and model that for the students.