Workshops

And yet, for all boys and men, the forces of masculine gender socialization are potent and complicated and do not often receive the scrutiny and honest exploration that they deserve. Thus, this workshop helps to fill in those gaps with the primary goal to provide gender and masculinity education with transparency, while allowing participants to self-explore gender and masculinities on their own terms. Thus, this workshop will:

• Provide participants with an evidence-based comprehensive gender and masculinities education to augment their own lived experiences as male-identifying individuals; and 
• Foster a supportive and exploratory space through which male-identifying people of diverse backgrounds and ideological positions can explore their gendered upbringings, histories and make meaning of those experiences. 

While many boys are struggling, other boys are excelling. Thus, it feels oversimplified to contend that schools are simply not sufficiently “boy friendly” or that all boys are struggling. Boys are an incredibly diverse group with a range of strengths, interests, dispositions, and cultural backgrounds. Our unique workshop takes a strengths-based approach to engaging boys in the classroom and at school, with a focus on improving educational outcomes for boys by supporting healthy gender expression and diversity through the development of authentic classroom relationships.

In this workshop, educators (including school counselors, coaches, and administrators) will learn how to effectively engage diverse boys across the curriculum. Learning Objectives include:  

• Participants will be able to define gender-related constructs and explain how social constructions of masculinity can influence the achievement of many boys in school.
• Participants will safely self-explore and reflect on their own gender and cultural belief systems and how those factors can influence classroom interactions and teaching.

• Participants will be able to identify their relational teaching or engagement style and describe personal and professional characteristics that can contribute to student performance in the classroom, with a focus on students who identify as boys.

• Participants will be able to identify strategies they can implement to improve their relationships with boys and the overall achievement of boys in their classroom and school setting. This will include the development of an individualized and evidence-based Tool Kit to support individual growth and greater instructional and relational efficacy with diverse groups of boys.

• When interested, we can help to identify prospective teacher or school leaders to facilitate ongoing professional development and organize ongoing programming to support boys in school and contribute to improving overall achievement and school success.

Consequently, men’s mental health problems are under-diagnosed by practitioners. Indications that many boys and men are suffering alone and without adequate supports include numerous indicators such as suicide at four times the rate of girls and women, elevations in violence and externalizing symptoms, and higher rates of substance abuse and risk-taking behaviors. One of the forces at the heart of these issues is adherence to dominant masculine norms, i.e., the guy code, which can undermine help seeking in boys and men. Even when entering professional therapy, significant barriers to therapeutic progress can exist in the form of ambivalence to treatment and insufficient experience with making one’s self emotionally vulnerable. As therapists and practitioners, what can we do to help boys and men become more visible in treatment and avoid the consequences of isolation and aloneness in the face of distress? This workshop, for therapists, counselors and helping professionals of all different levels, includes:

• Increasing knowledge and awareness of masculine gender socialization in the United States and ways that these social forces can impact the mental health and well-being of male-identifying clients; 
• Exploring one’s own gendered self and gender journey, including belief systems and biases, and ongoing socialization influences; and  
• Learning strategies and interventions for working effectively with boys and men of all different presentations and backgrounds from initial engagement at the start to ongoing treatment and assessment.

When working with and attempting to engage boys and men from diverse and marginalized backgrounds, therapists should utilize approaches that account for individualized and intersectional differences and enable clients to feel deeply known, respected and heard. Additionally, empowerment-based interventions for engaging boys and men in psychotherapy have a considerable amount to offer clinicians and clients. This workshop focuses on clinical approaches for effectively engaging adolescent and/or adult males of diverse backgrounds. Objectives include: 

• Apply skills for contextualizing male client experiences in individual therapy and execute approaches through which to support clients in situating themselves with regard to varying intersectional statuses; and
• Develop and demonstrate skills for facilitating difficult dialogues in group therapy for males from diverse backgrounds and utilize group exercises that enhance clients’ abilities to self-reflect, build connections, and explore a range of social and cultural topics.