An advanced tactic to improve the chances of my strategy with the young men I work with has just occurred to me. I was thinking about the few things I have tried with the teenagers I teach nutrition "literacy" (this might be the best way to put it) to create dialogue and interest in the issue of their health. On a number of occasions I have had little to no success because the conversations I tried to start or the activities I tried to implement were not controversial enough. Now, I don't mean controversial in the sense of judging a celebrities outfit while trying to eat healthy, what I mean is piquing the interest of the students by posing questions about issues that really matter to a male audience. (This shouldn't suggest that the following issues don't also matter to women, but men in particular react strongly to these themes.) Loyalty, Manhood, Justice, Crime, Love, Hate, these are the themes I have come up with thus far. I believe that spurring conversation about these themes will lead to serious discussion of relevance to them. Once they come to something close to a conclusion I can redirect the ideas they have regarding those "male-oriented" themes to nutrition and health. Creating such a dialogue is important to improving their critical thinking skills and group relations skills, all of course, while improving their nutrition literacy skills.
The exact format is still a work in progress. I will probably use a traditional brainstorming routine; just with a twist. Hopefully the young men will react to these words with the kind of passion I can imagine them exhibiting in a typical social situation where any of these themes were at question in real time. Indeed, only time will tell.
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