I was reading an article in the Atlanta Journal the other day about the lack of men teaching in lower grades (3rd grade and lower). Low pay was a concern (how’s THAT for reverse discrimination!). Also, some of the men said that they got a lot of weird reactions and even some suspicions. Apparently men can’t teach young children without being a child molester! I did some volunteer work several years ago as an aide in a school for deaf and hearing-impaired children. It was only one day a week (and my vacation week), but it has been the most rewarding work I’ve ever done. I thought about the possible reactions, too, but, thankfully, none came up. The teachers at the school were just happy to have ANYONE volunteer. They told me that potential volunteers are intimidated or afraid of these children!! The children I worked with were ages 2 to 7 and we hit it off right away. I have lost touch with them all :(. Several of them have graduated or will graduate soon. Doing this type of work again tops my list of “Jobs to take when I win the lottery” :).
I’ve been very fortunate in my experiences teaching children; most of the kids I’ve worked with, I already knew their parents, and people trusted me. But I’m not about to assume that every parent should be trusting (and I would be surprised if every parent trusted every teacher, to be honest). And it doesn’t seem illogical to me that a pedophile choose to be a lower-school teacher for the children there, though I would personally think a nursery or something like that would be a better option.
I volunteer at a place where I mentor (teach, etc) kids. When (if?) I escape college with some form of a degree I’m hoping to go into teaching lower grades. I don’t expect I’ll be met with open arms everywhere because it isn’t uncommon for someone to be suspicious of a guy wanting to teach young kids. I just hope people won’t assume anything.
What makes this especially difficult is that I can be a very touchy person. The kids I work with at my volunteer place learned that I’m okay with them bumming rides off me, so to speak (piggyback and such). Where I used to go to school (grade school) I rarely saw this happen, mostly because there were rules against it. Sometimes I’m confronted with a nightmare where a child wants me to pick him/her up, and when I am doing so, the parent(s) of said child show up and think I’m engaging in inappropriate behavior. Not a fun idea.
I thoroughly enjoy working with kids. I thoroughly enjoy kids themselves, and I enjoy teaching. So it makes sense to me that being a teacher is something I would happily do for a long time. But one thing I definitely do not enjoy is that I may be faced with people who initially don’t trust me simply because I’m male.
I think administrators can drop in on the classes any time. I also think that most men would like to keep their jobs, so they would not do anything to give bad perceptions if they teach young children. I met one man who teaches 2nd grade, and he never mentioned any problems. Never thought about it before, but I don’t believe I had any male instructors during my wee years.
Mrs. Dave-Guy teaches third grade, and two of her colleagues (also third grade) are male. I don’t know if either of them have had problems with suspicious parents, but knowing these men, those suspicions would be groundless.
It’s my experience that teachers know what age groups they hit it off with. Some men just have a natural affinity for elementary school children, and they are great, effective teachers in those grades. I’ve also met some male elementary school administrators who just loved working with kids that age. And there was absolutely nothing sexual involved. It helps having understanding parents and especially being a very good teacher or administrator.
iampunha, more power to you. Should you decide to teach elementary school, I hope you avoid narrow minded and suspicious parents. You sound like a dedicated teacher, and I’m sure that you’d do a lot of good. Press on, my man, yours is a noble calling.
Speaking as a dirty old man, I just have to observe the incentive for a guy teaching elementary school - a lot of my kids’ lower grade teachers were hot, HOT, HOT!
And the moms! Especially hot young suburban moms, whose Type A hubbies neglect them, and who wonder if they are still sexually attractive after having kids. “Mrs. Smith, will you come in for yet another private conference?”
I taught 4th and 3rd grade, and I’ve decided that there’s a reason for the fact that most teachers in elementary school are women. You have to really connect emotionally with younger kids to do the job right, because you can’t just give them information and help them work on it. You have to have the “romance” of just being there.
Personally, I discovered that I need to be in high school, or maybe middle school. That’s where I’m headed, even this January, if I can find districts hiring at the semester change.
BTW, there’s no discrimination in pay for elementary teachers. Go find a district’s salary scale. There’s never a distinction on what you teach. OTOH, if you teach 0 period or something extra, or coach a sport, you might get paid more at the high school. I knew a Bio teacher who took an algebra class on his prep period, partly because they’d pay him 1/5th more to take on 1/5th more work.
I am a male teacher at a K-2 school, one of very few that I know. There are only four men in my school out of 70 teachers and staff. My experiences have been very good, and most people’s reaction to me is, “We need more men here!”
There are so many kids with absentee fathers, and consequently some almost never have any contact with men. Although some of these kids are a bit afraid when they first meet me in Kindergarten, they usually warm up to me immediately when they see that I’m not threatening. I make a point of greeting them when they come in off the buses in the morning, and I get lots of hugs.
I’m not sure why more men don’t teach younger kids. I think they’re really fun, and they understand my sense of humor better than most people.
My husband is an 8th grade teacher. He didn’t want to teach younger kids for several reasons, and the molestation thing is the biggest one. Even a completely unfounded accusation can be incredibly damaging, since it seems with this type of thing you are considered guilty until proven innocent, and these cases are often very difficult to prove one way or another. I remember one day when he was working as a substitute teacher he had first grade students. The classrooms for the first graders had bathrooms right in the room so the kids didn’t have to go out into the hall alone. A little girl asked to use the bathroom and then had trouble rebuttoning her pants. She asked for help. A female teacher probably wouldn’t have thought twice about helping the girl, but he knew he couldn’t touch her. He ended up asking her who her best friend in the class was and sending that girl to help her. He also had a girl who started crying in the middle of class because she said her mother didn’t hug her when she left for school. He again employed the friend tactic, asking if the friend hugged her if that would make her feel better. A female teacher probably would have supplied the hug herself.
I can also tell you that school district he was working in at the time really prefers to hire women for the younger grades, and it shows in that most of the elementary schools only have men in administrative positions. The general feeling was that the little kids need nurturing and that women feel more comfortable with providing that. In light of the above I can understand this view. Little kids like to hug their teachers sometimes, and they need reassurance, and if a male teacher is not comfortable with providing it due to the possibility that someone may look upon them with suspicion, then you’re going to have more women in the lower grades.
Sometimes little kids are scared of men too. At the same time my husband was substituting, there was another guy he often ran into who was also going to school to get a certification - he was a former Marine with a really gruff voice, and some of the little ones would start to cry when they heard him talk!
I wonder how often the pay differential exists these days - in both states where my husband has been a teacher, the public schools have the same pay scale for all teachers, regardless of what grade level they teach. I’ve never understood why there was a difference - teaching is demanding no matter the age of the students.
I’m curious. How is this reverse discrimination? Men don’t get paid less than women simply because they’re men. If anything, it underscores how MUCH female teachers are considered inadequate, unprofessional, and undeserving of better pay. The pay’s not good enough for men??? Guess what, it’s not good enough for us either!!
Your comment only furthers my point. I teach high school (much to the detriment of my bank account) because it’s my calling, not because I won the lottery and don’t need a “real job”.
As to the topic at hand, I don’t think men should teach in lower grades. I don’t trust men to keep their grubby hands to themselves. I realize that’s an ignorant statement swathed in bitterness, distrust, and anger, but so be it. That is indeed how I feel. In four years in the profession, I’ve known three male teachers to have affairs with students and no female teachers to do the same.
That said, two of the men I have worked with in education have been two of the most outstanding people I’ve ever met. They keep the hope alive in me that not all men are raving sexaholic pedophiles.
My “reverse discrimination” comment wan’t aimed at teachers per se, Historically, men have USUALLY been paid more than women in the same position although the gap continues to close.
As for the “lottery job” comment, I should have specified that I would VOLUNTEER my time to work with children in any capacity. Unfortunately, I have a family to support (not to mention a mortgage). IF I chose to become a teacher, I would actually make MORE money than I’m making now. If I had the spare time in my current job, I would be volunteering.
Grok made a good point about absentee fathers. Several of the kids I worked with were from homes without a good, positive male role model (one divorce, one father who allowed his daughter (who had Down’s) to pretty much run the household and refused to make any attempts at discipline, another had a father who was a long-distance trucker who was rarely home). I feel that, if for no other reason, men should get into this field at this level to show children that men can be comforting people and not just disciplinarians (which is the way I perceived men when I was a kid).
Of course not. I stated in the post that I knew it was irrational thinking (I believe I said swathed in bitterness, blah blah blah). Yet it is still how I feel.
Especially when it isn’t the WHOLE truth. Granted male teacher-student affairs are more common, but female teacher-student affairs DO happen. They just aren’t talked about as much.
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Could you elaborate? I am seriously interested in why you feel this way.
How can my experience not be the whole truth? I did, in fact, know three men who had affairs with female students. If there were any female teachers having affairs with male students, I was unaware of them. Yes, female/male relationships do occur, but what do you think the ratio would be of female offenders vs. male offenders? In my experience, I’ve tallied 0:3 for the women’s side.
A lifetime of great big disappointments and a bellyful of disgust regarding men. I could attempt to be polite and say something like, “Well, I’ve known a few bad men, but I’m sure they’re not all that way,” but I’ve moved beyond pleasantries and am now into outright disdain. It’s not that I’ve had my heart broken mercilessly, nor is it that I don’t give men a chance, nor is it that I am outwardly rude to anyone (unless it is called for). I am not pulling the “I’m a bitch and proud” routine. That’s passe, boring, and completely uncreative. I adore my male students as much as my female students. I worry, however, on an almost frightening level, about the behavior my male students are picking up from other boys and from society. I devote time to them, I teach them, I attend their sporting events, I open their minds to new ideas, and then I discover they’ve gotten some poor girl pregnant and deserted her or they’ve forced some boy with mental disabilities to perform oral sex on them in the Gym bathroom. It doesn’t take long to become jaded.
There seems to be no end to the barbarism. There’s a polite charade going on, but nothing real, nothing that I can see anyway.
I am able to find hope in other things. There is a reaction formation that has come about since Columbine in which teenage boys seem to have found some dignity in being “good kids”. I find my hope in them. Does that mean I want strange (strange as in stranger) grown men around my elementary age children? If I had any, no.
Well it certainly seems like you’ve gotten more than your share of bad experiences where men are concerned.
Wouldn’t having decent men as role models for young children be a step in the right direction?
FTR, my wife is a teacher and she sees almost the same thing you have seen (though not to the degree you have). When her male students display piggish behavior, she calls their parents. You would not believe how some of them react: “Oh no, not my son. He would never do something like that!” or “My son never acted this way before he came to this school. It must be your fault!” (My wife teaches at a private school)
Cluemobile, you have a pick-up!
I do want to thank you for your replies. That’s why I started this thread. We’re not all pigs. Some of us really do want to help.
And there was a girl in New Jersey who gave birth in the bathroom AT HER PROM! She strangled the baby, dumped in the trash, then went back to dancing.
There are times when females can be cruel, cutting, petty, and spiteful.
Barbarism and inhumanity are not the sole provinces of males, shrew, and you should be smart enough to know it. Any man on this board who was stupid enough to target women with the same types of comments you’ve used to target men would be pilloried by men and women alike, and rightly so.
Your experience is not empirical evidence. It may be sufficient for you to be able to justify putting on the blinders, but it has absolutely nothing to do with universal truth.
As a devoted husband and father (read “Not Sex-Maniac”), I take offense to your blithe tarring of me, and many other upstanding men, with your odious brush.
I feel sorry for the young men who have to be taught by you. Do you honestly think you’re able to sublimate your poisonous attitude when you’re around them? Get a clue. The real world doesn’t remotely match up to your jaded, narrow viewpoint.
Again, you are absolutely correct. I know that my feelings here are irrational. I know it. Telling myself that my feelings are irrational does not change how I feel. Having you insult me doesn’t either.
Again, I’m not arguing with you, but instead of attacking me, maybe you should at least consider why a woman as educated as I am (and I do fall into the hyper-educated for my age category) has such irrational and angry feelings.
Right again. You seem to have a fabulous grasp of the obvious.
And you’d be foolish not to be offended by it just as I’d be foolish to allow the atrocities I see to NOT affect me.
I adore my male students. If you don’t understand that a woman can separate her pain from the ones she loves, then you don’t understand women. It’s what we do best. Feel sorry for them if you wish, but I can only assure you that in my anger I find solace by trying to make the world a better place. I don’t take my anger out on them, but rather I use my anger as a reason to be even kinder and more understanding.
Yes, absolutely. I know that makes sense, but my fear of men I don’t know makes that a horrifying concept.
I do not teach in a private school. I teach in one of the poorest counties in Georgia. When I call the parents, I hear, “If he’s not expelled, don’t call me,” or “What’s wrong with that? Boys will be boys.”
I know. Thank you for asking and not getting judgmental. It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to a man at all who didn’t balk at my feelings. Most men get angry and incredulous, never stopping to ask why.
Unfortunately true. One of our students has duel-placement, which means the child attends the “regular” morning kindergarten in their town(we have kids from 2 towns) before coming to our afternoon session. The child’s aide there is no longer employed by the school because she was witnessed hitting this child. While this little one is a handful, I cannot imagine deciding to work with children if you’re capable of striking a small child with Downs’ for any reason. Anyone who even considers hitting a valid means of controling behavior does not belong in a school, IMHO.
But back to the OP. I’d be inclined to judge a man’s fitness as a teacher of young students on a case by case basis- just as I would do a woman. There were young men in my education classes that I know would make wonderful teachers for small children, and there are men in another branch of our program who are also caring professionals who work wonders with the very young. In short, while there are men I would cring to see working with children, there are almost an equal number of women who give me the same vibes, so gender isn’t the determining factor for me.