Hello Teachers!
We’re looking forward to having you and the boys in The Man Cave! Before the day, please read these key points to help you get your bearings inside the Cave.
What is The Man Cave?
The Man Cave is a preventative mental health and emotional intelligence charity that empowers boys to become great men. Using evidence-based workshops and expert facilitation, our programs provide boys with the critical emotional and social skills they need to thrive in their relationships, their communities and their lives:
The Flow of the Day
Session 1
Start of Day – Recess
Play, enrolment, building psychological safety, increasing awareness of societal pressures
Session 2
Recess – Lunch
Deepening empathy, challenging limiting stereotypes, authentically connecting and expressing themselves
Session 3
Lunch – End of Day
Visioning the person they want to be, acknowledging strengths in each other, consolidating learnings
How We Work
We let the boys play
Play helps boys build psychological safety, trust and helps us understand their culture as a group, which in turn we use to open discussion throughout the day. We intentionally give students a “longer leash” to build rapport with groups so that they feel safer to be authentically themselves when we move into more challenging conversations.
Calling up, not calling out
When a young person speaks or acts disrespectfully in our workshops, our approach is to take out ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and instead guide students to consider the impact of their behaviour on themselves and others.
Our invitation to you
Be authentic to yourself
In our experience, when the boys get to see you as people with your own emotions, challenges and triumphs, this helps build deeper connection and authenticity in the group. Within this, we fully support you to manage your own professional boundaries to the level that you feel comfortable with.
Respect the sacred space
When a young person speaks or acts disrespectfully in our workshops, our approach is to take out ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and instead guide students to consider the impact of their behaviour on themselves and others.
Leave group management to us
Please leave any group management to our trained facilitators and if we need, we’ll ask you to step in. This helps us build a relationship with the boys and unpack what might be driving their behaviour and attitudes
– it’s a critical piece of our work.
