8 Years ago, Bagley's daughter Scarlett died, age 7. We take some time in this episode to examine how this deep loss strengthens her work in the classroom.

Rarely does anyone gain an insight like this into the privacy of another person's grief. As a listener to this podcast perhaps you'll get a sense of the honesty and inner strength that makes Bags such a successful classroom teacher of English.

Shakespeare features too. Of course.

23 years ago Chris wrote an entry in his online journal that described his time at Otago Boys' High School. This was subsequently published in a history of Otago Boys' High School that was published for its 150th.

We'd been searching around for a text to analyse on the podcast and Bags suggested that Chris read it. So here it is.

Other autobiographical work Chris has published on the queer subject includes this article for the UK National Association for the Teaching of English: “The Importance of Being Out”

Bags and Chris come out of their respective closets for Pride week and we discuss how setting up patterns in the classroom accelerates boys' learning.

This week we start looking inside (and as it happens, outside) the doors of our classrooms with an exploration of the routines we operate in our classes to support safe healthy relationships and to keep the focus on the learning.

Today's routines are the macro ones, the procedures we use as students enter and leave the class which can be crucial to setting the tone.

What are the routines like in your classrooms, or the classrooms you remember - and importantly: what purpose do they serve?

This week we get to hear what advice Bags gave the delegates during her conference presentation and we reflect on how to get the culture right in the teaching of boys. There are some new boys' voices too.

So we succeeded at putting on a conference that focussed our attention on Teaching Boys English, and by all accounts it was a real success. Gena and Chris chat about the messages of the event - including a few reasonably contentious points of view - until we were interrupted by boys arriving for English!

Our last episode attracted some really interesting feedback, so we've used that to cue us into this week's discussion. After setting out our stall last week with apocalyptic statistics about boys' education - we're now embarking on our mission to explore what we do, should do, and will do about it.

This week we explored the precursors for success with boys. It's mostly about love.

REFERRED TO IN THE PODCAST:

A quick interrogation of assessment outcomes for boys in New Zealand education renders some alarming results. Boys achievement is some 30% beneath that of their female counterparts in almost every measure you can come up with.

HoDs of English Gena Bagley (Otago Boys' High School in Otepoti Dunedin) and Chris Waugh (Christ's College in Otautahi Christchurch) examine some of these statistics and set out their intentions with this podcast series: to tackle boys' education - specifically in the teaching of secondary English - to face this truth and set about doing something about it!

MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST