Do we need more male teachers in the younger grades?

Just like it says, do you think we should have more male teachers in the younger grades? Even as far back as kindergarten? My experience, I never saw one earlier than 4th grade.

Two things:

  1. Would kids benefit from a male teacher?
  2. Would the social and professional environment of the school staff be changed if their were males around? I mean, look at your own workplace and compare what it is like when their is only one gender to when it is mixed. So how would say the environment of the teachers lounge and the staff meetings be changed if it was mixed gendered?
  1. Probably, depends on the quality of the teacher and the lifestyle they portray. Having good male role models is important. Having crappy ones is detrimental. Growing up I had some good male teachers and some absolutely horrible ones.

  2. Probably. In my experience, there was definitely a difference between all-male professional staffs which I have been on, predominantly female professional staffs which I have been on (14 women and me) and mixed-gender staffs. I don’t want to get into the realm of the exact differences since it could veer dangerously close to stereotype, but I have found that my mixed-gender staff were the most professional.

I had a colleague who taught second grade and was hired by a predominantly Black district because the superintendent believed that many of the kids came from homes with no fathers or homes where the father was a horrible role model or even abusive. They basically were raised by women at home and sent to school to be raised by women there. He wanted kids to see that men can be loving parents, mentors, and role models.

I think it was a great idea.

There is some limited academic literature about how teacher gender affects student learning, although I’ve yet to see anything sufficiently convincing to warrant a policy recommendation.

Having any job perceived as being for men or for women could reduce the pool of qualified applicants.

(1) Probably. Even if they’re not THAT kid’s teacher, I think it could be helpful to have kids see male teacher role models in a setting other than gym class and administration.

(2) I doubt it would change much. Although male elementary level teachers are a distinct minority, they do exist and there’s other male school staff as mentioned above. It might change stuff some but I don’t think it would be dramatic.

From what I remember of pedagogy class, the primary barriers for male elementary level teachers are public perception of it as women’s work and the very low starting pay (especially in a society that still views men as primary breadwinners). Probably need to do something about the second one before many men are willing to overlook the first.

Definitely yes.
I was, for a couple of years, the only male teachers grades 1, 2, and 3, and I have to say that a male presence was important. Starting from my baritone voice the kids saw my classes as different. It was, if anything, a change of pace for them.

Some might, some might not, but I don’t think it would hurt.

Most schools I know of have mixed staff, even if the male staff only teach higher grades. I don’t think it’d make that big a difference outside dedicated kindergartens, which are the only mono-gendered teaching environments I have experience with.

Paging Left Hand of Dorkness!

I think that more diversity is needed in general in teaching–greater gener diversity, greater racial and ethnic diversity, greater religious diversity. Teaching used to be at least socio-economically diverse: you had single moms supporting their kids, teachers married to construction workers, teachers married to doctors–but, anecdotally, that seems to be diminishing. I score AP exams, and I gotta tell you, at the grading sessions it’s like Attack of the Middle Aged White Women. You say 'Hey, Sarah" and half the room turns around. Kids of all ages need to see teachers they can identify with–and learn to identify with people that are different than them. Everyone benefits from more diversity.

There are several factors working against male teachers in general, and especially in elementary schools. One is simply that teaching is generally seen as a low-prestige profession, and teaching younger grades carries the least prestige of all. A woman can get away with this easier than a man and still be respected as a person. But even as a woman, I can’t tell you the amount of pressure I got not to go into teaching (high school!) because I was “too smart”. When my husband was in grad school we’d go to mixers and people would be insufferably smug when they found out I taught high school–and I am not generally sensitive to that sort of thing, so believe me when I tell you it was bad. Men can teach for a while, but the expectation is that they want to be a principal: teaching as a career is acceptable to women, who can stay in the “mom” roles, but men need to move from the “mom” role to the “dad” role as soon as possible. All the male teachers I know who are any good at all get asked all the time when they are going to be principals. I get asked that, but not 10% as often.

I’m going into my 14th year as a school librarian, after 15 years in college and public libraries. Kids definitely like to come in just to talk, which I don’t see as much with my colleagues. Nobody has ever suggested becoming a principal to me. I don’t have the temperament, plus I’ve never taken an education class.

I was a teacher for ten years, and for most of that time I worked with younger grades. I was happy to be there, and most of the issues we’ve identified in this thread weren’t problems for me. At times I was the only male in the school, but more commonly there were two or three others.

There were a few odd moments that I could possibly attribute to my being one of the only guys there, but really they were probably more due to the usual moments of poor judgement or bad management at any workplace. I left teaching because I came to see my particular school district and building as disfunctional, and because I came to feel micro-managed. At one point I found myself asking a vice principal, “I have ten years experience, a masters degree, I’m published in my discipline and am regularly asked to present at professional conferences - any chance you could start trusting me to exercise some of my own judgement?”

That, plus I had acquired sufficient credentials to begin another career and I was out of there. There are some challenges for men in education, but my experience is that the problems stem more from management by fire, following educational fads, trying to depersonalize a profession that is highly personal and lack of resources. Fix all that stuff and I’ll go back!

Despite this critique, I am still a strong supporter of public education.

I think it would benefit our educational system overall. There’s still a tendency to put less value on jobs that are traditionally seen as “women’s work”. If society stopped seeing teaching as a woman’s profession, teachers - male and female - might start getting the pay they deserve. Better pay for teachers would lead to better education. And better education benefits everyone.

How was it important?

Because believing that your groin doesn’t define your whole life is a lot easier when the society you live in has people of different sex in all sorts of professions.

I think having diverse examples of caring adults in the primary grades is very important- genders, ethnic backgrounds, religions (or lack there of), everything.

I think there are serious problems coming up with enough money to pay the salaries currently being paid, and it’s hard to imagine society deciding to just pay more than they need to just because some men joined the field.

But FWIW, my HS math teacher (a man) believed that salaries had gone down when the field became predominantly female. Not because of anything to do with prestige, but because most of the women were not the primary breadwinners for their families and could afford to work for lower wages. This meant cash-strapped BOEs could afford to pay lower salaries and still get a supply of teachers, and conversely that there was less support in the teachers union for all out battles over salary.

I’m not sure either of these are true. But probably a subject for another thread.

There’s another barrier, too. We as a society seem to be less comfortable with the idea of a man being alone with young children than we are with the idea of a woman being alone with young children. Think about how a man watching small children at a park is perceived, versus how a woman doing the same thing is perceived.

I had a male teacher in 2nd grade. He was great. One of the few I can remember by name.

I can’t remember having another male teacher til… high school? I’m really reaching and can’t remember a single one. Either they were very few or they were not impactful at all.

I do think it is probably beneficial to have more male teachers. I mean, if we value diversity it seems like that’d be a good one to have.

You rang?

Interesting…that’s not at all my experience, and I don’t think it’s the experience of any of the male teachers I know. It may be different in my city, or at the elementary level.

I have a hard time answering the OP’s question, since I see things from an adult’s perspective, and I overwhelmingly spend time in classrooms where the teacher is male, so I can’t compare easily. I don’t see a ton of difference overall between my teaching and that of my female counterparts, or between my male coworkers and my female. Any stereotype I can come up with, I can think of exceptions to, just in my own school.

There may be some value to having kids get a map for masculinity that’s not Thor or Master Chief, the idea that a man can be more Mr. Rogers and less Grand Theft Auto in how he relates to people. That’s something that not all kids get outside of school, maybe.

But if we’re looking for diversity among teachers, I’d far rather we promote nonwhite teachers. I think that’d make a much bigger difference.

Imagine your elementary school kid having a librarian ride to school on a motorcycle. He has long hair, a beard, and a leather jacket. He has endless patience for rambunctious kids and smart asses. He has no patience for anyone who’s being mean to his/her classmates. That’s me, pretty much.

Maybe but we DO have male elementary level teachers so that doesn’t seem to be too high a barrier.