David O'Halloran, Headmaster - Saint David's School, New York City

In the third entry of our Teaching Boys Initiative quarterly blog series, Master Teacher Jim Barbieri explores how providing boys with agency to choose builds motivation and enhances learning. BUILDING STUDENT MOTIVATION THROUGH CHOICE By the time I was eight years old, I had become completely absorbed in all things baseball. Living in New York was perfect for a baseball fan; although I was a Mets fan thanks to my idol, Tom Seaver, I was also interested in learning about all the amazing Yankees stars of yore. How could I call myself a baseball fan if I didn’t know the history and records of stars like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Yogi Berra? I loved collecting baseball cards and reading the career statistics of each player on the back. Looking through my collection one day, I discovered that I shared a birthday with the legendary Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente. At eight years old, I was crushed to hear the news that he had died tragically in a plane crash while trying to ...

Organizing fundraisers for The Seeing Eye, making sandwiches for the homeless, and participating in the school-wide Thanksgiving Drive were some of the service projects Ethan K '21, and his fellow classmates engaged in as Saint David's students. These initiatives were embedded in the school program. During a recent Chapel, Ethan, who will attend the University of Notre Dame come September, urged our current seventh and eighth graders to continue the tradition of giving back: "We are called to be good men, to choose others before ourselves. I want to call on all of you to continue this vocation after you leave this building, to make that choice when no one is telling you to." For Ethan, volunteering for two years at the Horizons at Saint David's summer program provided the opportunity to address summer learning loss, which can be as high as 40 percent in some student populations. "I wanted to find a way to help keep others from falling behind," he said to...

Do the benefits of genetically modified foods (GMOs) for human consumption outweigh the harms for the health of people and the environment? Should the government impose an age limit of 18 on the use of social media platforms as it imposes age limits on the use of tobacco and alcohol?  Should physician-assisted suicide be legalized in the United States as a compassionate option for terminally ill patients? With passionate defenders on both sides, our eighth grade boys recently faced off in a series of debates on these and other hot-button, complex public health issues. The boys were assigned to find and read an article that discussed a current issue in public health in which two or more “sides” were presented. They then selected the topics that they wanted to debate. In their opening statements, arguments, rebuttals, crossfire questions, and closing summaries the debaters were judged on how well they made distinct arguments supported by evidence, explained the science, and presented...