Male Elementary School Teachers

I recently received the following letter from a male elementary school teacher who wrote persuasively about some of the reasons we need more men teaching our pre-school and elementary aged boys and why there are so few.

Dear Beth:

Many young, impressionable Florida boys (where I'm from), come from single, female-parent homes and have never ever seen a man read anything until those boys enter our middle schools, after about six or seven years of learning from exclusively female teachers. Here in the part of Florida where I live, most of our elementary schools are staffed with females only. Many well-qualified, Florida State Certified, male elementary school teachers interview with elementary school principals, but those principals usually hire female elementary teachers – with one exception. Many elementary-certified, male teachers are often hired as sixth grade, middle school teachers, as proof that male elementary teachers are available and sixth grade is almost like 5th grade.

Federal Law TITLE IX (1972) was (or is) supposed to prevent Gender-Discrimination in hiring elementary teachers for schools receiving federal funds---all our public schools do receive federal funds. One male elementary teacher interviewing with a principal was told, "This is a very impressive resume...and you're a military veteran, too. WOW! I am very impressed, but I'm going to go ahead and hire that sweet little thing from Kentucky, if she ever gets her paperwork turned in."

Nationwide there are only 6% male elementary teachers; we need to proactively recruit and hire many more, male elementary school teachers. Our young, impressionable boys need to emulate professional men. Our elementary school children need to see a gender-balance of men and women working well together.

When our politicians say things like "Let no child be left behind," they actually have no power to enforce it. They pass the buck to local and state departments, which usually are disinterested in proactive action.

I am a retired elementary school teacher and also a middle school and high school certified teacher. I always keep my certification areas up-to-date and once in a while, I return....to teach. Maybe I will eventually qualify for a second retirement.

Here in Florida, for many years we fourth grade teachers were wined and dined by reading textbook publishers to convince us to select the different basal readers to be used in our county and schools for the next ten years. I was the only male fourth grade teacher in our district. My point is that since mostly all female teachers selected the reading textbook (one I remember was filled with chapters about a girl named Rosalind, a preteen), boys may not have been very interested in those stories, further turning them off to the important skill of reading. Maybe a different subject content would appeal to the boys, causing them to take a better interest in reading.

For many reasons, we need both male and female teachers in the early grades. I have been able to really make a difference with the students and their parents, causing our school to become more father friendly.

Perhaps some female elementary school teachers and female elementary school administrators deeply resent men entering a "woman's workplace" i.e. elementary schools. So, our boys suffer....more males go to prison than females; more females go to college than males. Many males have died as Army/Marine foot-soldiers because they lacked academic skills to learn a more advanced, protected trade/skill. Yes, we definitely need positive male role models for our boys and all children need to see men and women working effectively together in our elementary schools.

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Please send questions or comments to bbruno@snet.net.

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