Motivation: the Key to Boys’ Success

From Dr. Sax: Over the past 24 years, I have visited more than 500 schools (you can review my list of school visits at https://www.leonardsax.com/schedule/). I cannot count the number of teachers who have said to me, “He’s perfectly capable of doing the work: he’s just not motivated.” How can teachers motivate boys to fulfill their potential? In this presentation, I share motivational strategies for use in the classroom, and school wide, to motivate every boy, across every content area. Some of these strategies, such as team-competitive formats, may sound familiar. But team-competitive formats, as they are usually deployed, often fail in coed schools, for reasons I will explain. I will share some tips so that the team-competitive format will work in the coed school. Other strategies, such as all-boys advisories, may not appear to have an obvious connection with motivation. I will explain the connection, with examples from schools I have visited that have used this format to boost achievement and motivation for boys across grades 3-12.

Dr. Leonard Sax earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from MIT, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in five semesters at the age of 19. He then went on to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned both his PhD in psychology, and his MD. He has more than 30 years’ experience as a family physician. Dr. Sax has led workshops for more than 500 schools not only all across North America, but also in Australia, England, Germany, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Scotland, Spain, and Switzerland. He has written four books for parents: Why Gender Matters, Boys Adrift, Girls on the Edge, and The Collapse of Parenting, which was a New York Times bestseller. You can watch some of his TV interviews, read some of his articles, and link to some of his recent interviews, at www.leonardsax.com.