“She acts like a bitch” — Registering My Male Teacher Privilege

Dr. Manuel Rustin
Sep 6, 2018 · 6 min read

I’m celebrating my 15th year in the classroom with a series of reflections on some of the formative experiences I’ve had as a teacher. I explained in this thread and in this video just how rare it is for a teacher to make it to their 15th year in the classroom. I’m taking this moment as an opportunity to reflect on my years of service and the many experiences that I’ve learned from on the road towards this personal milestone. If you’re looking for research-heavy think pieces, you’ve come to the wrong place (but! you can find that on my show AOTAshow.com)

“Ms. Reilley isn’t here today?”

“Nah, it’s just me.”

“Good, I don’t like her.”

“Why not?”

“She’s acts like a bitch sometimes.”

Wait, what? Full stop.

This summer teaching experience in 2007 was one that I had been looking forward to since it was first announced. I always avoided teaching summer school because as much as I loved teaching, I desperately needed the time away from my classroom. Teachers’ summer breaks are well-earned and often vital to avoiding burnout and being able to rejuvenate in time for a new school year. But this year an administrator of ours wanted to launch a summer bridge course for incoming freshmen that would blend some ELA/Math instruction with field trips, food, and various creative activities. And best of all — it’d be a course that I’d get to co-teach with my closest teacher-friend, the homie Ms. Reilley.

As far as teacher-pals go, I didn’t have any. I spent all of my time with students because, unlike teachers, they never seemed to get on my nerves. Lunchtime in Rustin’s room usually featured an assortment of kids, music, and overall chillin’. I found this to be far less stressful than faculty lounges and staff meetings.

The one teacher who didn’t ever get on my nerves was Ms. Reilley. Her overall dopeness is difficult to explain, but suffice it to say she’s the homie for real. We’ve got similar teaching styles, similar personalities, similar senses of humor, similar political leanings, and we both entered the classroom at about the same time. The chance to co-teach a fully-funded summer bridge pilot program with Ms. Reilley was definitely worth forgoing summer vacation. It was about to be ON.

Until it wasn’t. The excitement and optimism that Ms. Reilley and I had at the launch of this summer experiment was quickly met with a reality check that, for me, was totally unexpected. These were incoming freshmen who had been flagged by their middle schools for low grades, low test scores, and/or “bad” behavior. To be sure, we anticipated some resistance. What I didn’t anticipate, however, was how targeted that resistance would be.

From day one students treated Ms. Reilley noticeably different than they treated Mr. Rustin. When I gave instructions, such as, open your math book to page ten, students complied. When she gave instructions it was an entirely different matter.

Reilley: “Take out the handout from yesterday.”

Eye rolls. Snickers. Heavy sighs.

Reilley: “Everyone have it? Donald, do you have it?”

Donald, flatly: “I don’t know.”

Rustin: “Donald, take it out.”

Donald, gladly: “Okay, Mr. Rustin.”

The double standard on display from the very first day of class was as troubling as it was shocking. Well, shocking to me at least. Embarrassingly, this was the very first time in my career that I considered the differences in how students responded to teachers based on the perceived gender of that teacher. Three years into the profession and I never thought of that before. Ouch.

Reilley, Rustin & Crew visit the state capital (2007)

I always thought of myself as a Black teacher. You can’t be one of the only Black teachers in your teacher education program and at your school site without this being foremost on your mind. But a male teacher? I never really thought about that outside of the rare case when a female student was the last one left in my room and I’d go make sure the doors and windows were wide open. An O.G. told me to always do that, so I did.

This was the summer that I realized I was tremendously benefitting from being a male teacher. The thought finally occurred to me that some of my “success” in directing classes of outspoken learners was tied to my maleness and I had been cashing in on this privilege the whole time. How different would my early teaching experiences have been had I been a woman? How had my male privilege contributed to the smooth, empowering start of my teaching career that I thought was all thanks to my own awesomeness?

The case of Ms. Reilley and I wasn’t about a difference in personalities. We didn’t run a “good cop, bad cop” game on students. I wasn’t the cool dad and her the stern mom. We were two peas in a pod who alternated lessons, co-constructed the environment, and were pretty much indistinguishable outside of our perceived identities. And yet students treated her like she was just the worst.

There came a day when I had to run the class on my own while she was out. That’s the day when a student told me “she’s acts like a bitch sometimes” after I asked why so many in the class seemed happy that Reilley was absent. As far as “teachable moments” go, this was absolute peak.

I’d love to tell you that I took the opportunity to help students explore identity and bias.

I’d love to tell you that I took the opportunity to help students question misogyny.

I’d love to tell you that I took the opportunity to help students challenge their perceptions of Ms. Reilley.

Instead, I just chided them and quickly changed the subject. “Watch your mouth! How can you say that about a teacher? You don’t use that word! She loves y’all! Now let’s take care of this math…”

We did it all that summer. Except, of course, deal with the elephant in the room.

I didn’t tell Ms. Reilley about the incident. I was afraid of bringing it up. I wasn’t comfortable. Yes, all those trash excuses (If you are nodding your head in disappointment, your reaction is spot on).

Which begs the question — how was I helping to reinforce misogyny in my classroom and in my workplace all these years? I went from not seeing it to seeing it but not wanting to talk about it. And by not talking about it, how have I continued to reinforce it all these years since that summer?

I suppose there are parallels between this experience and what some white teachers tell themselves regarding racism in schools. I also suppose that I should mention that Ms. Reilley is a white teacher. Would this experience have been different if we were both teachers of color or if we were both white? Sure. Had Ms. Reilley been Black, would the air of misogyny and male privilege have disappeared? Of course not. I’ve seen enough classrooms and I’ve listened to enough women of color to know that male privilege doesn’t just evaporate when whiteness leaves the room.

The complexities of race, gender, and my sluggish climb out of my own gender blindness require a much more critical and deliberate examination than this mere blog post can offer. This post isn’t for that sort of deep dive.

This is just a reflection on the summer that I became aware of my maleness in the classroom and fumbled the chance to do better by the kids.

Dr. Manuel Rustin

Written by

High school social science teacher & co-host of All of the Above. From the Westside, with love. AOTAshow.com

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