Do We Really Need More Male Teachers?
“We definitely need more men in our school”
Think about the teachers you had growing up. How many of them were men? How many were women? Now that I think of it, the vast majority of my elementary school teachers were women. When I got into middle school, there were more male teachers, but the majority were still women. In high school, the ratio was about 60–40 women to men.
I mention this now because I am a teacher now, and you don’t have to be in education spaces long to realize there’s a huge push for more male teachers, particularly Black male teachers and male teachers of color. According to Education Week, an AASA survey found 70% of all K-12 educators are women.
Over the summer, I sat in a room (on Zoom) with 24 current and former educators. We were coaching new teachers for my teaching program, and as I scanned the screen, I realized I was one of only two men. Everyone else was a woman. I’ve been thinking about gender and education for a long time, and that definitely brought the issue to the forefront.
Many people want better male role models, male role models that can model positive, peaceful behaviors. This argument especially comes with the implication of absent fathers.
