True story ... Many learning specialists will testify that boys take longer to develop their organizational and attention skills, and the practical implications for educators can be profound. A good friend of mine is an educational consultant, and her job is to place students in private schools and colleges. For many teenagers, especially boys, this can be a difficult process. The steps required to gain acceptance to a good school or college are complex. Thirty years ago, an application could be submitted to Harvard, UCLA, or NYU without much hand-wringing; today, by contrast, the steps to enter such schools are numerous and the competition is steep. For boys, who lag behind girls in terms of organizational skills, the process is that much harder. My friend the consultant told me the story of a sixteen-year-old boy named Ryan she’d recently been counseling. He was a star hockey goalie on his high school team, and at the start of his junior year coaches from several excellent private colleges in the Northeast contacted him and asked him to apply. Naturally, they requested his grades and test scores. Ryan, apparently, is an intelligent and highly motivated student. However his grades, in the C+ to B range, were probably too low for acceptance to these schools, even with a coach’s endorsement. When the consultant asked him about his grades, he complained about the “three hours of homework every night” and his many other commitments, such as volunteer work and varsity sports, which seemed to make it harder for him to succeed at academics. His mother told her, “Truth is, Ryan has trouble getting his homework in. He’s disorganized and waits to the last minute to study for tests; then he’ll spend too much time on his history, for example, and completely forget the math test.”
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 20:56:34 +0000
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