{"id":170,"date":"2025-04-27T13:08:51","date_gmt":"2025-04-27T17:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/savannahbarker\/?p=170"},"modified":"2025-04-27T13:08:51","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T17:08:51","slug":"reimagining-middle-school-health-exploring-healthy-masculinities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/savannahbarker\/2025\/04\/27\/reimagining-middle-school-health-exploring-healthy-masculinities\/","title":{"rendered":"Reimagining Middle School Health: Exploring Healthy Masculinities"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Introduction<\/h2>\n<p><strong>How might we reframe the current middle school health program to explore healthy masculinities and better address students&#8217; evolving needs, making it more relevant to their lives?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This question became the foundation of my Cohort 21 Action Plan journey. My motivation stemmed from several key aspirations: to create a stronger sense of belonging for our students, to challenge and make visible the societal stereotypes and expectations that can be harmful for boys as they grow up, to help boys develop healthier relationships with peers and future partners, and to nurture identity development that fosters positive mental health and well-being.<\/p>\n<p>This focus connects directly to our school&#8217;s mission of challenging and inspiring each boy to become the best version of himself. By creating a more diverse experience in our health program and meeting students&#8217; current and future needs, we&#8217;re supporting this mission in tangible ways.<\/p>\n<h2>What I Did &amp; Its Impact<\/h2>\n<p>My implementation focused primarily on revising Grade 7 and 8 health lessons to make more visible the connections between gender expectations and various aspects of boys&#8217; lives, including relationships, nutritious eating, mental health, and consent. I updated discussion prompts to directly address these connections, including questions like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What challenges do boy-identifying youth face in puberty\/adolescence?<\/li>\n<li>What expectations are put on boys in healthy relationships and conversations involving consent?<\/li>\n<li>How can you support a friend who is struggling with body image, being &#8216;average&#8217; and wanting to fit in?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Students responded well to these discussions and demonstrated an ability to identify the pressures boys face based on societal expectations. While I haven&#8217;t yet observed impacts beyond engagement in these discussions, the groundwork has been laid for deeper understanding.<\/p>\n<p>To inform my approach, I engaged in professional reading, including works by Niobe Way and Peggy Orenstein, including &#8220;Rebels with a Cause&#8221; and &#8220;Boys and Sex.&#8221; These resources deepened my understanding of masculinity and the current world boys live in, helping me better understand their lived experiences. This reading inspired me to do more to practice vulnerability, connection, and explore the grey areas of &#8220;being a good guy&#8221; in relationships.<\/p>\n<p>I also gathered student feedback through a Google form survey, which provided valuable insights into their perspectives and needs. While my all-male teaching team is implementing the updated discussion prompts, direct collaboration on curriculum development has been limited.<\/p>\n<h2>What I Learned<\/h2>\n<p>This journey has yielded several important insights:<\/p>\n<p>I discovered that middle school students already have a surprisingly broad view of healthy masculinity and what it means to be a &#8220;man&#8221; &#8211; they identify traditional traits of strength and success alongside more gentle traits like being emotional and kind. A significant challenge I&#8217;ve observed is the connection (or lack thereof) that boys experience with friends, which impacts all relationships and mental health.<\/p>\n<p>The student feedback revealed that they receive conflicting messages about masculinity that highlight stereotypes, gender roles, and pressure. They experience many day-to-day stressors and have deep feelings they want adults to understand better. Students expressed a desire for health classes to be relevant, practical, and interactive, addressing real-world issues with more focus on sensitive topics like mental health, emotions, relationships, sex, body changes\/puberty, bullying, online safety, stress, fitting in, and family issues.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, students seem to know how to support friends and what to say, though it&#8217;s unclear if they&#8217;re actually using these tools in practice. I was struck by their honesty in survey responses, particularly to questions like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What does &#8220;being a man&#8221; mean to you?<\/li>\n<li>What&#8217;s the most confusing part about the messages you get about &#8216;being a man&#8217;?<\/li>\n<li>What&#8217;s something about growing up as the gender you identify with that you wish adults better understood?<\/li>\n<li>What do you think most students your age worry about but don&#8217;t talk about?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I encountered several challenges, including time constraints that limited my ability to revise the Grade 3-6 curriculum or informally survey parents, other teachers and older students. I found myself taking small steps to incorporate these themes into health classes through discussion prompts and journal activities, being patient with the process, and focusing on what I could accomplish within my sphere of influence, both formally and informally.<\/p>\n<h2>Resources to Share<\/h2>\n<p>For others interested in exploring healthy masculinities in education, I recommend:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Books by Niobe Way and Peggy Orenstein (including\u00a0&#8220;Rebels with a Cause&#8221; and &#8220;Boys and Sex&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li>The IBSC Podcast<\/li>\n<li>Next Gen Men workshops and newsletter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Big Takeaway<\/h2>\n<p>My most significant insight from this Action Plan journey is that students want to be seen as emotional beings who face real challenges and pressures. They don&#8217;t always know how to be a &#8220;good man,&#8221; but if given the opportunity, they engage in discussions about masculinity, gender expectations, and stereotypes with openness, vulnerability, and maturity.<\/p>\n<h2>Lingering Questions<\/h2>\n<p>As I look to the future, several questions and areas for further exploration remain:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How can I expand these curriculum revisions to include our Grade 3-6 health program units?<\/li>\n<li>What opportunities exist in the Grade 7 &amp; 8 start-of-class journaling routine to practice vulnerability and foster deeper connection between students?<\/li>\n<li>How can we measure and document student growth and school growth in this area over time?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n<p>This Cohort 21 journey has reinforced for me the importance of creating spaces where boys can explore their identities beyond limiting stereotypes. By taking small, intentional steps to make masculinity visible in our health curriculum, we&#8217;re helping students develop a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be their authentic selves. While the work is challenging and sometimes faces resistance, the openness and engagement of our students confirms that this is a valuable and necessary direction for our health program.<\/p>\n<p>The journey toward healthier masculinities is ongoing, but each conversation, each revised lesson, and each moment of student reflection moves us closer to a program that truly meets our students where they are and helps them become the best versions of themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Introduction How might we reframe the current middle school health program to explore healthy masculinities and better address students&#8217; evolving needs, making it more relevant to their lives? This question became the foundation of my Cohort 21 Action Plan journey. My motivation stemmed from several key aspirations: to create a stronger sense of belonging for&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":460,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-face-2-face-sessions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/savannahbarker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/savannahbarker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/savannahbarker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/savannahbarker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/460"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/savannahbarker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/savannahbarker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/savannahbarker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/savannahbarker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/savannahbarker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/savannahbarker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}