How Strengthening Relationships with Boys Can Help Them Learn

Years ago, when Michael Reichert’s oldest son was born, he and his wife made a commitment to shield him from the “toxic pressures and cultural norms that we believed would try to steal our son’s humanity from him.” 

But it turns out that parents can’t build a wall around their children, says Reichert, a clinical psychologist and author of "How to Raise a Boy: The Power of Connection to Build Good Men." What parents and teachers can do is strengthen boys’ resilience to be themselves.

Reichert is hopeful that a new space is opening up in how we think about boys and boyhood. For generations, he says, “we have rationalized a wide range of losses and casualties” by repeating intractable myths: “Oh, that’s just the nature of boys, or boys just don’t do as well in classrooms, or boys don’t do well with emotional intimacy.” 

These persistent stereotypes have influenced how we interacted with boys from infancy, says Reichert, and infiltrated our classrooms and playing fields. For example, he points to a long-term study of boys between ages 4 and 6. Researchers found that boys dramatically changed how they related to others during these years as they “absorbed norms for how they were supposed to act as boys.” They traveled from “presence to pretense,” says Reichert—from being emotionally honest in relationships with peers to using posturing and bravado as they adhered to group norms about how boys “should” behave. In molding their behavior to this standard, “it cost them their authenticity, exuberance, and confidence.”  

Boys Are Relational Learners

There are troubling statistics about boys in K-12 schools. They are more likely to drop out of school than their female peers, and according to data from the Department of Education, boys account for approximately 70% of all suspensions and expulsions, a rate that is disproportionately higher for boys of color. 

To support boys in our classrooms, Reichert points to one robust, consistent finding from his 30 years of research: boys are relational learners. They learn best in the context of strong, supportive relationships. 

In one study, Reichert and his team gathered data from 2,500 teachers and students in six different countries.  He asked the boys and their teachers one simple question: “What’s worked?” For teachers, what has worked to help you reach boys? For boys, what have teachers done that has worked to support your learning and engagement? When the researchers coded the data, a couple of themes emerged. 

First, effective teachers used strategies to capture boys’ attention and then carried that energy into the lesson. The strongest teachers entered into a relationship with the class, using feedback from students to refine the lesson until it worked.

But another dominant theme came from the boys themselves. “In the survey, we said, ‘Please don’t mention names or provide identifying information,' ” says Reichert, but the boys ignored those instructions and described teachers’ personalities in detail. They cared about the relationships they had with teachers. 

“We, the adults who design the structures and pedagogy they experience —we were missing something. The boys, however, were very, very clear about it: They are relational learners. This is first base.” 

Healing Relationship Breakdowns

If relationships are central to engaging boys in academics, then teachers need tools for healing inevitable “relational breakdowns.” 

“Every teacher in every classroom has some students who they have a hard time working with,” says Reichert. And in any relationship, there is a natural cycle of connection, disconnection, and then reconnection.  But this process does not always go smoothly. After teachers have tried multiple strategies for reaching a student, they can enter “defensive, self-protective mode,” says Reichert, thinking, “I’ve done everything I can, so the next step is his” or “That boy’s learning issues or behavior or family issues are just too much.”  

Reichert’s research found that, for boys, these relational breakdowns with teachers were highly consequential, causing them to construct self-concepts around failure and to turn off from certain subjects or school altogether.

“Here’s the rub,” says Reichert.  “In our research, we have heard about every kind of problem, and we have also heard from boys who were being reached and transformed” despite those problems. “Every boy, theoretically, can be reached by a teacher or a coach,” he says, and adults need to hold out hope that “if they find the right relational approach, they will be able to reach the boy they are having a hard time with.” 

Reichert contends that the job of being a relationship manager “follows the professional,” and that as professionals, teachers need to take the lead in “instigating repair for relationships that have been damaged.”

Why? In his research, he found that even high-achieving boys struggle with approaching teachers when a relationship has soured. “I put together a focus group of boys at one school– top students. When I asked, ‘Do you have breakdowns in relationships with teachers?’ they were immediately able to tell stories.  What did you do to fix it? Nothing, they said.”

When he probed them to explain why, the boys described a power asymmetry with adults. They did not perceive that it was within their role to initiate restorative conversations. 

Of course, this also speaks to the need to coach boys with concrete strategies they can use when they are in a conflict with a teacher, says Reichert, and parents can help with this. “We need parents to sign up to the idea that the relationship between the teacher and the student is primary. Our job is not to swoop in and solve the problem but to empower the boy to go back to the teacher and work it out.” 

Creating a System of Support