Prairie Bus Lines Jumps on Board!

We are excited once again to announce that another local supporter and sponsor of the Knights in Training Conference 2013 has jumped on board! Prairie Bus Lines will provide transportation for all of the boys within Red Deer Public School District to and from the conference.

Prairie Bus Lines has been offering transportation service to the citizens of Red Deer and surrounding communities since 1958. Prairie  provides school transportation under contract to Red Deer Public School Board, and charter services to sports groups, other organizations and industrial employee transportation service to work sites. Prairie also operates a fleet of luxury coach buses for those interested in VIP service.

We are proud to welcome yet another local business into the Grow Boys family. We are very thankful for the support we receive from significant other community members who understand how important it is to nurture the happy, healthy growth and development of our  boys as they grow up in Red Deer.

Thank you Prairie Bus Lines!

Our Newest Partner!

We are thrilled to announce a new sponsorship partner! North Star Sports of Red Deer, AB has joined us in supporting the happy, healthy growth and development of boys within our community. North Star Sports (Red Deer) Inc. is a Canadian owned and operated Sporting Goods Store catering to Canadian Team and School organizations, and one of the premier businesses within Red Deer. The DeZutter family has been serving the Red Deer sporting community and beyond for many, many years.

North Star has provided a new logo for our Grow Boys Knights in Training Conference this year, and will be supplying over 700 t-shirts for our participants and volunteers.

On behalf of the Grow Boys team planning Knights in Training 2013, I wish to sincerely thank the DeZutter family for their support, and invite you to check out North Star Sports for all your sport supply needs.

We are raising boys...

flickr image via Ryan Qiu

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard.

Mother would come out and say,

"You're tearing up the grass!"

"We're not raising grass," Dad would reply.

"We're raising boys." -author unknown

We are raising boys. All of us. No matter who we are in the community, whether we are a parent or not; we all have a responsibility to support the happy, healthy growth and development of boys. Of course, we need to do this for girls as well, but Grow Boys is a collective that focuses specifically on what can be done to nurture the particular needs of boys, and there are many. As the dad in the poem suggests, we need to take a critical and reflective perspective toward what our boys need from us, and how we're going to provide for them.

flickr CC image via Dave_B

Herbert Vilakazi's opening address to the National Association of Child Care Workers 1991 Biennial Conference (http://tinyurl.com/yfxzdwn) in South Africa provides one such perspective with his brilliant insight to how we need to think and act if we are to support today's children as our gifts to the future.

"The problems of children and of youth, giving rise to child and youth care programs, can only begin to be solved in that society of humankind’s dream; a more collective-oriented society than at present, when the father of the child shall be every man as old as the child’s father; when the mother of the child shall be every woman as old as the child’s mother; a society of responsibility of the entire community; a society without poverty; without the inequalities of society members, based upon race, class, or sex; a society without the use of violence against other members of society; a society without any exploitation and oppression of any group by any other group; a society of equals; a thoroughly democratic society; last, but not least a society that shall have, once more, incorporated productive labour into the educational process."

The Alberta Advantage!

We are ecstatic to announce that Grow Boys!  received additional funding support from the Alberta Sport, Recreation Parks & Wildlife Foundation (ASRPWF) today. We are all very fortunate to live in a province that supports initiatives like Grow Boys! through government grant programs. This grant enables us to design and create the type of supportive environment described in our mission and vision statements...

Mission: Provide opportunities for local boys to discover, improve and share their skills in a variety of contexts.

Vision: A society where the unique social, emotional, physical and psychological needs of boys are supported without bias or stereotype.

The funding support we have received from ASRPWF today allows us to provide a full-scale conference for fifth grade boys in Red Deer this May 9th, and it frees up other resources so we can continue working on our broader goal to engage boys in their own happy, healthy growth and development from birth to adulthood and beyond. We are currently conducting research in support of this goal, and are always looking for new opportunities and like-minded partners to help pursue them.

On behalf of every fifth grade boy in Red Deer, the Grow Boys! organizing committee is extremely grateful and thankful for the funding support we received from ASRPWF today.

Grow Boys! at the Knowledge Institute...

Grow Boys! on Prezi

Last Friday I had a wonderful opportunity to share the Grow Boys!  concept with my colleagues from Red Deer Public Schools at our annual Knowledge Institute symposium. The Knowledge Institute is a effort to create a culture that supports original inquiry and applied research among professional educators. “Our goal is to expand knowledge and improve practice within our profession,” says Jay Hetherington, district psychologist and project coordinator. “We recognize that our classrooms are data-rich environments that can support applied research. This initiative encourages, supports and promotes research projects undertaken by our teachers.”

Having the good fortune to be chosen as a presenter at this year's Knowledge Institute turned out to be a fantastic opportunity to showcase what Grow Boys!  is all about, and more importantly, to share our concept with teachers who teach boys in grades other than grade five. Our rationale has always been to provide a local network of people supporting the happy, healthy growth and development of boys within our community from birth to adulthood. We had to start somewhere, and chose grade five as our jump-off point mainly due to the fact that an annual conference for fifth grade girls has taken place for about ten years already in Red Deer. The "Go Girl" conference addresses the issue of physical literacy for girls and intends to highlight the importance of staying active, eating healthy and making healthy choices. We have worked closely with, and learned a great deal form this well-organized effort to support girls.

May 9, 2012... What a day it will be!

This is a guest post by Melissa McLean, KIT 2012 Program Committee representative and teacher... 

The upcoming Knights in Training Conference  for all grade 5 boys in Red Deer Public and Catholic Schools will provide an opportunity for them to connect and reflect about several important and lifelong learning areas: Responsibility, Respect, Understanding and Relationships, and at the root of each of these; HOPE.

During my time teaching boys in Grades 3, 4 and 5, I have learned a lot about who boys are, not just as students, but also as “future men”. These boys are going to one day be the men fixing my car at the garage, working as an engineer at Nova, balancing my finances at the bank, driving in NASCAR, playing in a symphony, selling their art, building houses, playing in an NHL game… (I have big dreams for my students!!!!) Some of the biggest memories that stick out in my teaching career were sparked during an activity in class, a school sports game, a field trip, recess etc. Were any of these moments created during one of my amazing lessons on Creative Writing, Triple digit by double digit multiplication or Canada’s regions?… no-no they weren’t! The memories were sparked because the students and I had created relationships of mutual respect; an understanding that I wanted them to do their best, that each student had responsibility for their own actions and words, and that as their teacher, I had big hopes for their near and distant futures.

Not just a conference...

Grow Boys! will be hosting our first conference for fifth grade boys in Red Deer, AB, Canada this May, but Grow Boys! is more than just a conference.

The idea to initiate an effort to support the happy, healthy growth and development of boys was conceived a little over a year ago. All along Grow Boys! has been framed as the creation of a broad support network that includes efforts like hosting our conference. With emphasis on the word network, it has always been about identifying the particular developmental needs of boys, and then accessing local resources to provide services to boys within our community. Our network has grown significantly since then, and we continue to connect with new supporters every week. What we know through our experiences working with boys as teachers, health care providers, counselors, coaches, mentors etc. is that boys need our support in a world that's throwing a lot at them lately.

Happy and healthy boys...

flickr CC image via lorenkerns

Grow Boys! is an effort to engage boys. "But boys are easy to engage," you say. Many of us might say the real challenge is getting them to disengage as they run about wildly without focus or direction. Whether boys are running about wildly or doing otherwise, however, the point is they need to be engaged if we're to help them grow into happy, healthy young men. They need to feel that they are actively involved in determining their own paths of learning, growing, living.

Last June the Grow Boys! team collaborated with Red Deer College on a literature review addressing effective programs and strategies to help boys navigate learning, living and growing in contemporary society. We also held a knowledge cafe to tap local insights and establish a needs-assessment for boys in the greater Red Deer area. A knowledge café (KC) is a workshop where a group of people gather to openly and creatively discuss a topic of mutual interest in an effort to bring to surface their collective knowledge, to share ideas and insights, and gain a deeper understanding of the subject and the issues being discussed.