Underway...

It's been a bit more than a week since my last post and Listening In is in full swing at The School.  The boys really seem interested in delving more into themselves as they explore characters, talk about what it means to be a young man, and engage with each other.

By happenstance I found a really interesting short story by Lois Gould titled, X: A Story of Childhood.  I'd already chosen my "gender" short story for this project, but I couldn't help using it.  The story centers on a baby raised in a unique experiment; could a child be raised  gender neutral?  In the story, Mom and Dad go against the grain in their interactions with Baby X (Mom teaches the baby about sports;  Dad encourages cooking and Barbies).  The boys were perplexed with such an idea at first.  They asked questions that centered around biology (genetic "sex") and how Baby X would fare in adolesence. We discussed the feasiblity of such an experiment and then I had the boys craft a "glimpse" of what life would be like for X as a teen.  What advantages or difficulties would X face?  What the boys produced was great.  It was one of their first creative writing opportunities and they exceled.  The story was a great prelude to short story chosen for the project, "Girl."

Yesterday, I decided to have the boys write down a typical day's schedule (from the moment the wake up until they fall asleep).  Last week, I'd asked the boys to think about how being a boy influenced their home lives.  Do they have specific responsibilities or chores?  Are they expected to carry themselves in a particular fashion (either at home or because of what they've been taught at home)?  The responses that I received were good, but they didn't necessarily get as specific as I'd hoped.  I decided to break down the task even further.  How could I get at those expectations, chores, and tasks without frankly saying that's what I was looking for?

I came up with a few things I could use for daily writing prompts:

• typical day's schedule
• manners learned at home or expected at home
• what does a mess look like?  smell like?  how would this compare to how a girl might answer this question?

The boys really enjoyed writing down their daily schedule.  When we discussed them, I asked what patterns did they observe?  Who determines what you do when?  What kind of routines do you have?  I learned that some loved watching the same tv show at the same time everyday.  Others had the exact same snack everyday.  Still more had responsibilities that actually broke gender stereotypes.  A few had cooking responsibilities or laundry duty.  Older brothers were entrusted to care for younger siblings, particularly girls.

After this task, I assigned Jamaica Kincaid's very short story, "Girl."  We've simultaneously been learning and writing with semi-colons/commas, so the boys have been quick to point out the grammatical nuances of the story.  Later this week, we'll discuss the story in depth.  I wonder if they'll see how each of the daily writing prompts (written from their male perspective) relates to the protagonist of the story?

Signing off...