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Old Boys’ Stories
Advancement NEWS
OLD BOYS’STORIES teach GRADE 8 BOYS
by James McMillan, Director of Advancement
In last year’s Veritas magazine I told you about an amazing opportunity I was given to participate with an international team of teachers in a year-long research project focusing on the learning of core values. The organization that coordinated this effort was the International Boys’ School Coalition (IBSC). The Coalition consists of over 300 boys’ schools from around the world and holds a national conference every year. This year’s conference was in Nashville, Tennessee. The following write-up from the conference brochure describes my research.
Building on the well-documented power of story as a teaching and learning tool, this presentation will focus on the use of story to connect boys with the core values of Selwyn House School. In an IBSC action research project, four Old Boys related personal stories about a particular core value to twenty Grade 8 boys in an Ethics and Religious Culture class. Data were gathered through video, written assignments, and teacher feedback. The research findings showed that the boys not only enjoyed hearing the stories, but appreciated that the Old Boys were sharing very personal information with them. The results also showed that the majority of the boys connected with the core value of the story, and had a better understanding of that value and its application to their own lives.
My research was inspired by the many interesting stories that I hear every year when I meet with Old Boys at events and reunions; and I always felt that the current students should be the ones hearing these stories. I also noticed that when Old Boys do come back to the school and interact with the students, there seems to be an automatic relationship between the students and the Old Boy because they know that an Old Boy is one of them.
The combination of the symbiotic relationship and the fact that the Old Boy was sharing a personal story with them, contributed greatly to the outcome of the research, which concluded that Old Boys telling personal stories to the students did enhance their understanding of the topic being described.
My presentation of the research was well received at the conference and there seemed to be a lot of interest by other schools around the world wanting to implement this same process with their Old Boys.
While the actual research project officially ended in June at Nashville, the next step at Selwyn House is to try to
Dr.Victor Goldbloom ’37 speaks to Middle School
implement this process during the 2014-2015 school year, and involve a few more teachers from different grade levels and various subject areas, in both English and French. Once I have lined up the teacher volunteers and worked out what subject areas and topics they think they would like to have an Old Boy share a personal story about, then I will Continued on following page
