May, 2010

With the absence of men in most households in Jamaica, Kayson Jones said a male teacher was very important in his mentoring process.

"I find that the children (boys) are excited to have a male role model, someone they can talk to, someone who look like them, someone who smell like them," said the educator.

Jones was accustomed to wearing light-coloured clothing to school. However, he avoids wearing them now.

Tynita Johnson had attended predominantly black schools in Prince George's County for 10 years when she walked into Will Thomas's AP government class last August and found something she had never seen.

"I was kind of shocked," said Tynita, 15, of Upper Marlboro. "I have never had a black male teacher before, except for P.E."

Nearly 90 percent of elementary and secondary schoolteachers in a selective survey said schools should establish a quota for male teachers to correct the gender imbalance.

The Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations (KFTA) surveyed a total of 549 teachers; 433 males and 116 females across the nation between July 3 and 6. Most of the respondents replied that they face some problems in teaching and counseling students due to the lack of male teachers.

In the last Licensure Examinations for Teachers (LET), a total of 26,812 took the elementary level test while 23,975 took the secondary level exam.

Only one male examinee -- Gian Carlo Auxilian, a graduate of St. Anthony’s College in Antique—made it to the top 10 in the elementary level.

In the secondary level, 11 of the 25 topnotchers were men, including Benedict Barayuga of Central Luzon University and Gerard Vincent Mendoza of the University of the Philippines-Diliman who tied for first place.

My friend recently came to visit and lend a hand with the birth of our new son. As we sat in the midst of diapers, toys and dirty clothes, we said our good-byes as my husband and daughter headed toward the door to go to preschool. My husband, with a guitar on his back, adjusted our four-year-old daughter's piggy-tail one last time and bent down to fix her shoe.