Boy Talk at Recess: Pokemon, Light Sabers, and Things That Go Boom!
My most recent post for The Huffington Post just went live. It chronicles my embarrassment when my 9-year-old son chose his classroom’s parent-led art session to voice his recent interest in bloody talk. It also chronicles my son’s frustration at being told he can’t talk about any of the topics that interest him right now: Pokemon battles, weapons, light saber duels, you get the idea.
But the post also moves beyond my embarrassment and his frustration to illustrate how his anger was turned to advocacy. His teacher leveraged his growls and harnessed them into inquiry by allowing his exasperation to become a driving factor in his Genius Hour topic. It also includes and how I created a Google Custom Search Engine (screencast here) to help him research his potentially scary topic safely while still requiring him to do the actual work of researching.
“We can’t talk about weapons. We can’t walk about Pokemon because they battle. We can’t talk about magic. We can’t talk about war. What do they think boys want to talk about…Fluffy purple unicorns?!”
~ My 4th grader
Click here to read the full post.
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