VANCOUVER - Last fall, Greg Barnes, the principal at Sir William Van Horne Elementary in Vancouver, heard from a teacher that some of the boys in her classes seemed depressed, didn’t think good things about themselves or feel that they were accomplishing very much.

Barnes and his team wanted to try to change that, so they started up a boys’ construction club at the school, a special time for boys to get together and build stuff.

Educators have been worried about boys in schools for the past 15 years or so, Barnes said.

“At this school, we see way more boys identified as vulnerable or at risk for failure,” Barnes said. “There is very little for them, and they are kind of lost.”

The problem for boys is not unique to Van Horne Elementary.

“Young men are significantly more likely than young women to be less engaged with school, and have low skills and poor academic achievement,” a March 2015 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report found.

The report, What Lies Behind Gender Inequality in Education, found that boys are eight percentage points more likely than girls to report that school is a waste of time, and they are more likely to drop out.

Barry MacDonald, an expert on boys and the founder of mentoringboys.com, said he sees many boys who are disengaged in school, but he prefers a solution that looks at building engagement among all students rather than separating boys and girls.

“Whatever they’re doing in the club, I just wonder why that’s not happening in the classroom. There are other options, so that the children who are engaging in a learning concept are engaging in different ways,” MacDonald said. “We have to let go of the idea of what a classroom looks like. It may be a bit noisier, but that just means some children are going to need to wear a headset to cancel out some of the noise.”

At Van Horne, Barnes said there are efforts to get more active learning into classrooms, but that with 71 per cent of the school’s students with special needs being boys and 34 per cent of the boys in the school found to be at risk for school failure due to academic, social or emotional factors, he wanted to do something specifically for boys.

He started the construction group to build the boys’ sense of self and their engagement at school. For the most part, he says it seems to be working.

Every week, on Friday afternoons, the boys get together to build cars, bridges and other contraptions with a supply of Lego and K’Nex that was previously only used for summer school. They are now focused on building mousetrap cars and racing them against each other.

Tristan Necker, in Grade 2, said he has fun building things in the club because it’s more fun than regular class time.

Tristan’s mom Tracey Rossignol said the Friday construction sessions help Tristan make it through the rest of the week.

“Like any Grade 2 child, it’s a lot of math and reading all week, but on Fridays I never hear any complaints because it’s the boys’ construction group. He’s clearly excited about his Fridays,” Rossignol said, adding that Tristan is a hands-on learner, so he has learned a lot from the construction club.

Barnes says he has noticed a change in the boys. “I think they are proud of their accomplishments and I think they have made some connections,” Barnes said. “They feel like they’re doing something meaningful, enjoyable and productive.”

Sun Education Reporter

tsherlock@vancouversun.com

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