The Wild Joy of Boys Being Boys

So there I was, sitting in the faculty lounge watching Mr. Peterson—bow tie perfectly centered, pressed slacks without a single wrinkle—explain his revolutionary new assessment rubric. Sixty-four criteria for grading an essay. Sixty-four! The man had found a way to quantify a student's soul down to the fourth decimal place.

And all I could think about was what happened at basketball practice yesterday:

Danny missed a free throw so badly it bounced off Marcus's head, which made Jamal laugh so hard he farted, which made everyone lose their minds, which somehow led to the best twenty minutes of shooting drills we'd had all season.

And I wondered: what if that's the container we should be building?

The Beautiful Chaos Engine

I've spent a decade watching boys create learning containers for each other that Harvard's School of Education couldn't design with a billion-dollar grant and a thousand PhDs.

These containers aren't built with rubrics or lesson plans or learning outcomes.

They're built with:

• Inside jokes that make no sense but somehow contain the wisdom of the universe

• Challenges that start with "Bet you can't..." that lead to impossible achievements

• Competitions that get ridiculously intense and end with belly laughs

• The sacred space that forms when someone says "I tried this thing and totally ate shit"

• The unexplainable magic of a perfect round of insults followed by genuine "I got you, man"

  
  

You've seen it. When boys are allowed to be boys—really, authentically be the gloriously chaotic creatures they are—they create spaces where learning sneaks in through the side door. Where mastery happens while everyone's too busy cracking up to notice they're growing.

It becomes about love, though they'd rather die than use that word. It becomes about laughter. It becomes about feeling so ridiculously alive that you forget to check your phone for three hours straight.

I keep thinking about Tyler, who couldn't write a five-paragraph essay to save his life but rewrote his jump shot 500 times because Marcus said his elbow was "looking janky." Or Jason, who wouldn't speak in English class but performed a five-minute comedy routine about mitosis that somehow contained more scientific detail than the textbook.

That's the thing about boys being boys: they'll iterate themselves into excellence as long as it feels like play instead of work.

Container Theory for Dummies

After my tenth year teaching, I discovered something revolutionary that apparently every kid already knows: the container matters more than the content.

The Jesuits figured this out centuries ago with their fancy Latin phrase cura personalis—care for the whole person. Meanwhile, our educational system is still busily caring for the standardized-test-taking appendage of the person while the rest withers from neglect.

Every Kairos retreat, I'd watch these young men transform. Not because I'm some spiritual genius (I still laugh at fart jokes, for God's sake), but because the container allowed them to be human for once. To be boys in the best sense—messy, honest, alive.

They'd ugly-cry. They'd laugh until they wheezed. They'd tell stories they'd never told anyone. They became, briefly, unfiltered humans—the creatures we all were before we learned to shrink-wrap our personalities for optimal social acceptability.

And then they'd return to school, where the container tells them: sit still, speak when spoken to, care deeply about things that don't matter, prepare for a future that doesn't exist.

So I built Spill the Water while thinking: what if the container could be the curriculum?

The Universal Flavor of Boyhood

Here's the thing that keeps me up at night, staring at the ceiling fan: "boys being boys" isn't about gender. It's a flavor of being that belongs to every human soul.

It's:

• The holy act of trying something you'll probably suck at

• The divine comedy of face-planting spectacularly and laughing harder than anyone

• The righteous joy of getting covered in mud/paint/sweat/life

• The sacred cycle of try-fail-laugh-try again

• The miracle of competing fiercely without keeping score

  
  

I've seen this energy in humans with every possible configuration of chromosomes and body parts. But I've watched it flow most naturally, most abundantly, in spaces where boys build the container together.

When they're not trying to impress anyone, when they're just being the ridiculous creatures they are, they create a space where learning becomes indistinguishable from play. Where iteration isn't some educational buzzword but just what happens when you're having too much fun to stop trying.

And I believe with my whole heart that this flavor of being is something everyone should get to taste. That iteration—the willingness to be gloriously bad at something on your way to being slightly less bad—is the pathway to aliveness for all of us.

Meanwhile, our educational system is like someone who heard about swimming and designed an elaborate land-based curriculum to teach it, complete with worksheets about water density and multiple-choice tests about arm movements. And we're all quietly drowning while filling out the rubrics.

Why I Keep Building Boy-Shaped Containers

I'll tell you a secret that would get me disinvited from fancy educational conferences: I build all-male spaces because they're fun as hell. Because when men are allowed to be the ridiculous creatures they naturally are, life gets good in ways I can't explain without sounding like I'm on mushrooms.

I've got nothing against anyone. I just know that a room full of guys who feel safe enough to be idiots together creates a kind of magic I've grown addicted to. The kind where authentic learning happens accidentally. Where deep connection forms disguised as casual bullshit.

It's like how some plants only grow in very specific soil conditions. I've found that this particular flavor of learning—iterative, playful, alive—flourishes in the soil of male camaraderie in a way I haven't been able to replicate elsewhere.

But the philosophy of Spill the Water isn't male. The principles of iteration, aliveness, and nutritious collectives aren't gendered. They're human technologies that belong to everyone who's ever been born.

What I'm celebrating isn't maleness itself. It's a particular learning container that I've seen work miracles—one where the reset button isn't something to fear but something to fall in love with.

The container I enjoy building happens to be male-shaped. But the water we're spilling? That's the ocean everyone's swimming in.

The Quiet Heartbreak

Let me tell you what breaks my heart:

I've watched teenage boys create learning environments for each other that our most advanced educational institutions couldn't design with unlimited resources. I've seen them instinctively build containers where vulnerability is protected by humor, where creativity is nurtured through challenge, where mastery is pursued through play.

And then I've watched as they're systematically taught to distrust these containers. To believe that "real" learning happens only in approved formats, with proper documentation, culminating in measurable outcomes.

I've seen the light dim in their eyes during standardized tests. I've watched them translate their natural genius for communal learning into college application fodder. I've held space for seniors who did everything "right" and still feel completely empty inside.

This isn't just sad. It's a crime against human potential.

We're taking children who instinctively know how to learn through play, iteration, and community, and we're teaching them that these approaches are childish, unserious, and inefficient. We're convincing them that their natural containers for growth are somehow less legitimate than our artificial ones.

I've participated in this system. I've assigned grades to essays that should have been playground conversations. I've enforced silence when collaborative chaos might have taught more. I've privileged documentation over experience.

And I'm tired of it. I'm tired of watching us drain the aliveness from learning in the name of seriousness.

That's the water I'm desperate to spill.

The Invitation to Play

Beyond all my ranting is a simple invitation:

Do you remember the last time learning felt like play? When you were so absorbed in the joyful struggle of mastering something that you lost track of time? When iteration wasn't a chore but a game?

Because if you do—if even the faintest echo of that feeling remains—you understand what Spill the Water is trying to reclaim.

This isn't about joining a boys' club. It's about recognizing that "boys being boys"—in its purest, most authentic form—is a masterclass in creating containers for alive learning. It's a way of approaching growth that everyone deserves to experience:

• Learning disguised as play

• Mastery disguised as messing around

• Community disguised as hanging out

  
  

I spent most of my career pretending. Wearing ties. Writing objectives on the board. Saying serious-sounding things about pedagogy while my soul slowly shriveled.

Until I started paying attention to what was happening on the basketball court. In the hallways between classes. During retreats when the scheduled programming ended and boys just started being boys together.

That's where the real learning was happening all along. Not in my carefully crafted lesson plans, but in the containers these young men were instinctively creating for each other.

The answer turns out to be ridiculously simple: learning should feel like being alive.

Not like preparing to be alive someday. Not like documenting that you were once alive. Like BEING ALIVE RIGHT NOW.

Spill the Water is a celebration of this approach to learning, and it's meant to help usher in the next evolution of education. One where we stop fighting against our natural instincts for playful iteration and start designing containers that work with them instead.

I'm betting everything on the belief that there are others out there who've glimpsed this truth. Who are tired of separating learning from living. Who want to reclaim the boyish joy of growing through play.

Are you one of them? Or have you forgotten what it feels like to learn with your whole self?

The reset button is waiting. Let's play.