Why Don’t More Men Go Into Teaching?

New York Times ^ | 09/08/2014 | Motoko Rich

[SeekAndFind]

AS Tommie Leaders, 22, approached college graduation last spring, his professors told him he would have no trouble getting hired. “You’re a guy teaching elementary, ” they said.

Mr. Leaders, who earned his education degree from the University of Nebraska in June, started teaching fifth grade last month in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He is the only male teacher in the building.

Across the country, teaching is an overwhelmingly female profession, and in fact has become more so over time. More than three-quarters of all teachers in kindergarten through high school are women, according to Education Department data, up from about two-thirds three decades ago. The disparity is most pronounced in elementary and middle schools, where more than 80 percent of teachers are women.

Educators, advocates and lawmakers fight bitterly about tenure, academic standards and the prevalence of testing, but one thing most sides tend to agree on is the importance of raising the status of teaching so the profession will attract the best candidates.

A change in the gender imbalance could sway the way teaching is regarded. Jobs dominated by women pay less on average than those with higher proportions of men, and studies have shown that these careers tend to enjoy less prestige as well.

[cyclotic]

I have a friend who is retiring from the Army as a Major next month. One of his options is a program where he can become a teacher. He’s giving it serious consideration as JROTC instructor.

[Mastador1]

Because the deck is stacked against them by people who view a man who wants to teach children as a potential pedophile and by the OLD, sometimes really really old, girls only club that exists in teaching today. I know my son went through it and decided to work in a different field instead of put up with it.

[Hieronymus]

Perhaps women are innately better equipped to handle cute irrational and semi-rational beings without killing them?

I teach first-year university students, would not want to handle high school students, and especially in the present environment would never dream (outside of a nightmare) of teaching in an elementary school. At my level, I can take the position “if you don’t like it at least enough to cooperate, there is the door.” Any lower than this level and that is not an option.

Four of my six years in elementary school were spent with male teachers, and they were quite good (it was a small school so I had each for two different grades), but it was also a time when corporal punishment was accepted.

[Mastador1]

Sorry about the double post

[KeyLargo]

Troops to Teachers

Troops to Teachers (TTT) is a DANTES-managed Department of Defense (DoD) program that can help you begin a new career as a public school teacher – giving you the opportunity to use your leadership skills, knowledge and experience to have a positive effect on our nation’s youth.

For an overview of the TTT program, download our program overview PDF.

http://www.dantes.doded.mil/service-members/troops-to-teachers/index.html

Vets go from the front lines to the front of the class
Greg Toppo, USA TODAY 12:24 a.m. EST January 3, 2013
Administrators are increasingly finding that many servicemembers make good teachers.
AXX SOLDIERS TEACHERS XX

School officials push to bring vets into mainstream of teacher recruitment
Teach for American has seen an increase in military candidates since 2009
Unemployment rates high for Iraq and Afghanistan vets

WASHINGTON — Stationed for 13 months along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border in 2007 and 2008, Brian Thompson had a lot of time to wonder what could come next for him.

In charge of a mortar squad with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, Thompson often thought he would go to law school once his three-and-a-half years were up.

Then one day he got a care package from his mother with a paperback copy of Teacher Man, the third in a series of memoirs by Angela’s Ashes author Frank McCourt. “You would make a terrific teacher, just like Mr. McCourt,” she wrote inside the book, “especially making kids laugh with that sarcastic humor.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/02/soldier-teachers/1804537/

[SgtHooper]

Agreed. Our whole society is being emasculated in many different ways. Truly incredible and disturbing.

[Peter W. Kessler]

I am a citizen, for better or worse, of the real world.

I do what I do to earn a living. That I enjoy what I do (and I DO!) is just icing on the cake.

I would be an excellent teacher. I would be a lousy “facilitator,” or lackey for the politically correct administration.

So... I’ll continue to teach individuals who are thirsty for knowledge and TRUTH.

(I’m a Sunday School teacher for middle-high school students. What a blessing!)

[Peter W. Kessler]

I am a citizen, for better or worse, of the real world.

I do what I do to earn a living. That I enjoy what I do (and I DO!) is just icing on the cake.

I would be an excellent teacher. I would be a lousy “facilitator,” or lackey for the politically correct administration.

So... I’ll continue to teach individuals who are thirsty for knowledge and TRUTH.

(I’m a Sunday School teacher for middle-high school students. What a blessing!)

[SgtHooper]

Be sure to clean your history files as well.

[petitfour]

A friend from college became a kindergarten teacher. He came out of the closet a few years after college. He is so gay, I think he should have been born a female, and I am waiting to hear that he has decided he is a female. I am guessing that he was the best kindergarten teacher at the school where he taught. Illness made him leave teaching. Now he plans weddings and plays housewife to the “love of his life.”

[gaijin]

schools and the lefty union leadership regard male hierarchy as the enemy.

Why would you want to work as a man all day around the systems that said your sex was evil..?

It doesn’t make sense.

that is also why more and more men are simply deciding to not go to university - they are consenting to making less money later cuz they just do not want to be harassed.

[Jacquerie]

Bingo.

Why enter a profession in which you are for all practical purposes expected to leave your figurative manhood at the door?

[Mjaye]

I think people are more comfortable with women teachers in Kindergarten because kids are still young, some still having “accidents” at times, etc. In this day and age, men are of course tending kids from all ages at home, taking them to restrooms, etc. I think some moms just feel more comfortable with handing them over to women for the early school experience in K. After that, I wouldn’t think there would be any anxiety about having male teachers. We had a couple in my grade school back in the stone age and they were excellent teachers who were respected and revered by their students as well as the parents.

[gaijin]

Women kill 10 or 100 times the number of kids that men do.

[Hieronymus]

One would need to break that statistic down somewhat, and need more concrete statistics. If one isn’t sure within an order of magnitude, one ought to figure things out more precisely.

I have heard repeatedly that the most dangerous person for a child in a home is a male who is not the biological father, and am inclined to believe that.

Mothers and female baby sitters probably kill more than Fathers and male baby sitters, but there are a heck of a lot more female sitters than male sitters, and many more mothers going 24/7 with kids than fathers.

[petitfour]

Good for you! When I was in elementary school, we had one male teacher who happened to be black. He must’ve taught for forty years. My older children had one male teacher at their elementary, and he taught PE. He was black. He recently retired after teaching for at least 30 years. We loved him and the discipline he brought to his students. My middle children had one male teacher at their elementary school, and he was a little light in the loafers. Only one of my children had him as a teacher, and we moved her to a charter school because he thought she was too smart for the school. He was having to teach multiplication tables to fourth graders. She was the only one who knew them! My youngest children have one male teacher in their school. He teaches PE. I trust the male custodians more than I trust him. Oh. If we had not left Tucson, my youngest child would have had a retired Marine as his kindergarten teacher. I was looking forward to that, but we moved. :-)

[Sparklite]

I went to public grade school in Texas from 1947-1953. To the best of my recollection, every one of my teachers was female, every year.

[woodbutcher1963]

Why don’t most Males go into teaching?

Because MOST males are not gay. However, I do find that a lot of homosexual men like to go into teaching to prey on younger males.

[folkquest]

I was not a successful student in lower grades. I went to public school, then Catholic school, and back to public school. At the beginning of 5th grade, I had my first male teacher. He was energetic, encouraging, thoughtful, and had high expectations of his students. He taught me how to learn and I never looked back. I went from C’s and D’s to A’s and B’s right through college. He left for another job before the school year ended, but he had a tremendous, positive impact n my life. I wish I could find Mr. Taylor to let him know what a difference he made in my life.

[Agamemnon]

Maybe I'll go into teaching when I retire. Who knows, maybe design a business course on scientific entrepreneurship. Attract the kids who actually want to make money doing meaningful science. Of course consultants never really retire ... we just bill fewer hours!

And, it would have to be on my terms. School board would have to give me enough autonomy with my lesson plans to make it all worth my while.

When it comes to teaching life science and biochemistry courses I would have it written into such a contract that I would have the right to share BOTH sides of the Creation debate -- all evidence- based, and let the better scientific explanations play out -- that is, if in the end a scientific explanation is even possible for what is observed!

So much of what is called "science" is in fact very much faith-based -- though not many in science routinely consider that aspect of their work long enough to acknowledge it!

FReegards!