WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — On a Friday morning in November, 11 or so boys trickled into the dean of students’ office at Hartford Memorial Middle School.
They filled the mismatched chairs that school dean Patrick Lincoln had pushed into a loose circle, and helped themselves to the donuts, clementines, and cheese and crackers he’d laid out on a side table.
It was time for Boys Group, a weekly open-invitation meeting Lincoln has been hosting at the middle school, which serves grades six through eight, since 2024. The goal is to create a place for boys to share what’s on their minds and untangle complicated topics around boyhood and masculinity.
A licensed clinical mental health counselor with over a decade’s experience working with children and families, Lincoln views instilling boys with a healthier mindset as paramount to creating a safer society for women.
“If we honestly want to end the kind of gender-based violence that men perpetuate or the harm caused by men in our society, I think we have to attend to the wounds caused by rigid expectations around manhood and masculinity,” he said in an interview.
Those expectations — to be stoic, to keep emotions inside — send men the message that it’s wrong to share how they’re feeling or what they’re struggling with. In lieu of healthy communication skills, aggression or isolation becomes the default modes of dealing with difficult feelings.
“Hurt people hurt people,” said Lincoln, who lives in Sharon.
Middle school is the ideal time to begin picking apart society’s expectations for men, Lincoln said, because “socialization has not become so rigid” and the boys’ conception of masculinity and gender roles is still being formed.
The group also is an opportunity for the boys to practice opening up to one another, a skill that’s not cultivated regularly among groups of men, Lincoln said.
“Men tell stories, and they tell jokes, but it’s not always related to feelings or what’s actually going on,” he said.
The formation of the group coincides with a period of concern in the broader zeitgeist about men’s well-being and sense of personal identity, especially as new data points show boys and men underperforming in school and work.
Women currently outnumber men in terms of college enrollment, with 66% of women ages 16 to 24 enrolled in a two- or four-year college versus 57% of men, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Lincoln, for his part, is cautious about feeding a narrative that boys are being left behind or victimized amid shifting gender roles.
“If there’s anything we can say about human beings, it’s that we are relational creatures, and so don’t worry about being a man, worry about what it means to be a good friend. What does it mean if you’re a good community member? What does it mean to be a good son, brother, partner?” he said.
Building relationships
Boys Group typically starts at 8:20 on Fridays during advisory period, when groups of teachers and students meet up to check in and socialize before the rest of the school day.
The number of participants in Boys Group can fluctuate anywhere from six boys to somewhere in the teens.
The group is a place for vulnerable discussions, but it’s also meant to be fun. “Connect before you direct,” is Lincoln’s guiding principle.
The structure of the meetings remains a work in progress, but Lincoln typically begins every gathering with a lighthearted question that can range from “What’s something you do in the morning to feel grounded before school?” to “Do you prefer your cereal soggy or crunchy?”
The latter question sparked fervent debate at the Nov. 14 meeting. One student pointed out that the answer depends entirely on the brand of cereal, while another reminded the boys of the sweet chocolate elixir that results from soaking Cocoa Puffs in milk.
Lincoln chimed in that as a kid, he used to enjoy his cereal with Kool-Aid, which elicited shocked expressions from the boys.
After the boys have swapped answers to the icebreaker, Lincoln introduces a more serious topic in the form of a question. “Agree or disagree: Teachers here at the middle school make assumptions about boys?” or “Who’s the strongest man you know?” Or, he’ll ask the group to name stereotypes about boys and men.
During the meeting on Nov. 14, he invited the boys to reflect on a time when they felt angry with someone. “How did you deal with your anger in a healthy way?” he asked.
Eighth grader Liam Woods talked about how he uses hockey as an outlet when he’s feeling upset. “A lot of anger and frustration builds up,” he said, but sports help.
Another boy talked about how his dad set up a wooden plank wrapped in leather in the yard for him to hit when he got angry.
The group grew animated as they responded to each other’s stories and observations. One of them shifted a clementine between his hands, and another reached for a small game to play with while he listened to the others talk.
Jokes were interspersed with the more serious moments, the boys spoke over one another and the volume in the room rose, at times it seemed as if their enthusiasm was about to throw the meeting into a state of chaos.
But then Lincoln would regain their focus, always keeping in time with their steady clip.
At the beginning of meetings, he acknowledged each of them by name. A couple of times, he reminded the boys that he loved them.
Establishing a close rapport with the boys is key to the group’s success, he said.
“If I’m going to work with a young man and he doesn’t think I love him in some profound way, then there’s no change that’s going to be possible,” he said.
Growing up in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia, at times, Lincoln, 44, found himself chafing against the expectations for boys his age.
For instance, he hated playing sports. In middle school, it dawned on him that he could simply quit, so he did.
“That was kind of a moment of actualization,” he said.
As he got older, he sought out friends who shared his passion for poetry and music, and eventually enrolled at Virginia Tech, where he studied Spanish. While in college, he began learning about anti-globalization and participating in activist groups on campus.
He continued to participate in activist groups and began to see counseling as an extension of that work. For several years, he served as director of training and consulting at Men Can Stop Rape, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that leads violence prevention programs for boys and men.
Eventually, he went back to school to study education and train as a clinical mental health counselor before working as a child and family therapist and later a counselor at Dartmouth College.
But balancing 24-hour shifts on the crisis rotation at the college and raising four kids proved difficult, so in winter 2024, Lincoln began the position as the new dean at HMMS.
Improving behavior
District leaders created the dean position at the middle school two years ago to help address disruptive behavior through a holistic approach that took into account students’ mental health and well-being.
In May 2024, students staged a walkout at the middle school to express their frustration at their classmates’ disrespectful and distracting behavior in the classroom, which coincided with a period of budget cuts and staffing shortages across the district.
To help improve school culture, the district also has put a larger emphasis on bolstering students’ sense of belonging, Hartford School District Superintendent Caty Sutton said. That included training teachers to lead group bonding activities in advisory.
“We want students to have at least one adult who you trust and feel close to,” Sutton said.
At the middle school, incident referrals — reports that a staff member has logged pertaining to disruptive behavior, inappropriate language, interpersonal conflict or other behaviors — have “gone way down” in the last year or so, Principal Cody TanCreti said. Now there are days when “not a single student is sent to the office.”
Lincoln “cares a lot about all students, and when he sees a need or an area where we can grow the school, he just does it,” TanCreti said.
When conflict arises between students, Lincoln is responsible for mediating respectful dialogue between the students as part of the restorative process, Associate Principal Emily Marshia said.
While it is too soon to measure Boys Group’s impact on the school’s culture, TanCreti said he has noticed that some students in Boys Group seem to have gained more confidence and formed close friendships with each other.
‘The freedom to have a feeling’
This year at Hartford High School, which sits across the parking lot from the middle school, physical education teacher Peter Driscoll has started a group for ninth graders that’s open to all genders.
The focus is on helping students address challenges in their life, regardless of their gender, but Driscoll still took inspiration from Boys Group.
He usually starts the weekly meetings with a lighthearted question, before gradually getting into more serious topics. Students also are invited to bring up issues that they’ve been wrestling with, and Driscoll and the group will help them brainstorm some strategies to tackle them.
“The students are really good about sharing with each other their thoughts and perspectives,” Driscoll said.
The group currently has six to eight regular members, plus a handful of students who join occasionally.
Ninth grader Lucas Speckert, an original member of Boys Group and now a part of Driscoll’s group at HHS, said he’s had more conversations about gender roles and “how people see us versus how we actually are,” since participating in the two groups.
Ezra Tane, another ninth grader, noted that the structure of the support groups makes it easier to talk about complicated issues.
“You might not have a super casual conversation with someone about those topics because they’re just so heavy,” he said.
The groups are also a place where students can confide in a trusted adult at a time in early adolescence when they’re beginning to push for space from their parents.
Mother Sadie Woods, for instance, said that “probably not unlike other 14-year-old boys” her son Liam isn’t “particularly receptive to suggestions that either his father or I make to him.”
“I was happy that he has a place in the school that he can go to and at least have the opportunity to talk about things that he may not be comfortable with or think that we know what we’re talking about at home,” Woods said.
Liam said enjoys coming to the group because the topics they cover can be applied to real life.
“This is a good space to learn how to be a better person,” he said in an interview.
For 14-year-old Durell Burns, who’s been attending the Boys Group since its early days, coming to meetings has shown him that he “has the freedom to have a feeling,” he said. “Other people can feel the same way you’re feeling.”
When Lincoln asked how the group manages their anger in a healthy way, Durell recalled getting in an argument with a friend. Eventually they “talked it out,” but at home, his dad could see that Durell was upset and invited him to vent about how he was feeling.
“I just let it spew out,” Durell said.
“That’s the definition of a good person,” Griffin Holzwarth, 13, responded. “When someone knows how you’re feeling just by looking at you.”
“Everybody needs somebody like that to just get all their feelings out,” he said.
