MenTeach E-News
January 2015
1) Male teachers in Canada
2) Benefits and Challenges of Male Early Childhood Teachers in Trinidad and Tobago
3) The lesser spotted….male primary school teacher?
4) Don’s Column: Expect Male Involvement
5) More men would be attracted to teaching for better wages
6) Solution needed for male teacher shortage
7) World Data about Male Teachers: How many men in the world taught in 1996? 2012?
8) M.E.N. Organization meeting was a success in Wisconsin
9) MenTeach New England Meeting in January 2015
10) When was the last time you encountered a male teacher? Apparently, not soon enough
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1) Male teachers in Canada
Towering above his students at Windsor’s Northwood Elementary School, six-foot-11 Richard Shaw hardly looks like an endangered species.
Yet Shaw and his male peers are becoming increasingly rare in Ontario’s classrooms, especially at the elementary school level.
Only 18.2 per cent of elementary school teachers employed by the Greater Essex County District School Board are male. That’s slightly below the provincial average of 19 per cent.
“I dreamed of trying to play (basketball) professionally, but teaching was always my fallback plan,” said Shaw, who attended Milwaukee’s Marquette University on a basketball scholarship and was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers and later the California Angels as a pitcher. Read the story: /node/2535
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2) Benefits and Challenges of Male Early Childhood Teachers in Trinidad and Tobago
There are few men in Early Childhood Education in Trinidad and Tobago (island population 1.2 million). In fact the total is 6 male teachers trained in Early Childhood (EC) in a twin island republic with 167 government and government assisted EC centres and 865 private EC centres. The number of male early educators seems strikingly low particularly since the government in its quest for quality EC provision is currently funding the expansion of the EC sector.
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3) The lesser spotted….male primary school teacher?
The Irish News reported statistics earlier in the week illustrating how the decline in the number of male primary school teachers has continued in spite of initiatives aimed at increasing males into the profession (though the paper does not outline the nature of these employer-led efforts.)
In the current academic year, just 1,307 of the 8,473 primary school teachers were male, representing just 15% of the profession. Of these, some 60% of the males were aged 40 or older.
In post-primary schools, the ratio of female to male teachers is just 2:1, so the disparity is certainly most pronounced in the primary sector.
It is a picture that will become apparent to many parents of young children as they notice the absence of male teachers in the schools in which their children are enrolled.
But it is one that, perhaps uniquely, I am rather unfamiliar with working in a school in which some 40% of the staff are males and, of that, all but two under the age of forty.
But does it really matter?
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4) Don’s Column: Expect Male Involvement
[MenTeach: Don Piburn has be working in early education for years. He has been instrumental in recruiting and retaining men teachers through his work in Hawaii hosting MenTeach retreats, serving on the AEYC affiliate board and being a founding father of the World Forum Men in Early Childhood Education (MECE). These articles were written 10 years ago and are still relevant to our work today.]
“Expect Male Involvement” is the message on roughly 100 buttons that circulated at the 2004 NAEYC conference.
Expect that men’s contributions matter in the lives of children.
Expect that many men want to be involved in children’s lives.
Expect that men and women will share equally in nurturing, educating, and guiding young children’s development.
Expect that male involvement is the future and that future is at hand.
The seed for the “Expect Male Involvement” message came from Dr. James Levine, in “Creating a Father-Friendly Environment” (Child Care Information Exchange, v.155.p. 58 – 61.).
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5) More men would be attracted to teaching for better wages
When Saeed Al Ameri was asked three years ago to pick a career, he did not hesitate. He wanted to be a teacher.
His Emirati classmates teased him. Long hours, they said, and terrible money.
But Mr Ameri’s response was simple: “I want to be a role model for young Emiratis.”
He said: “Being in a career with a small amount of local talent, I will be unique and will stand out.” That, he added, was his way of “making a difference”.
Next year, Mr. Ameri and five others will be the first male Emiratis to graduate from the Emirates College of Advanced Education (ECAE), the UAE’s first teacher training institute.
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6) Solution needed for male teacher shortage
The Ministry of Education appears at a loss as to how to resolve the chronic shortage of male teachers, a challenge hampered by both red flags and red tape.
Despite a public relations offensive from the ministry, the number of male teachers in both primary and secondary schools has continued to drop during the past 10 years.
In 2013, men made up only 16.5 per cent of primary school teachers and 41.2 per cent at secondary schools. The figures are even more severe at preschools, where males make up just 2 per cent of teaching staff.
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7) World Data about Male Teachers: How many men in the world taught in 1996? 2012?
MenTeach: We came across this collection of data about the percentage of men and women teaching all over the world. It’s interesting to do a comparison between 1996 and 2012 (the latest data). For example, did you know that in 1996 Turkey and Thailand had the highest percentage of men teaching in early education and primary grades? Look the data over and send us some of your thoughts.
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8) M.E.N. Organization meeting last night was a success in Wisconsin
I just wanted to follow up with this good news about our M.E.N. Organization on campus. Read the email below…I sent this to our teaching partners in the field this morning. I am SOOOOO excited.
Hope you are doing well and life is good to you.
Good morning to you!
I am most happy to report that our ‘first official’ M.E.N. Organization meeting last night was a success. We had 12/14 male ECE students attending which allowed us to vote for officers and decide on dues and possible activities. They decided that they would like to create t-shirts, bring in guest speakers and engage in a community service project (if any of you have ideas, please let us know.)
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9) MenTeach New England Meeting in January 2015
MenTeach-NE planning session and conversation
Saturday, January 17, 2015, 10-2ish
@ Jerry Parr’s house in Londonderry, NH near MA border.
Camaraderie, brotherhood and food!
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10) When was the last time you encountered a male teacher? Apparently, not soon enough
Boys will rarely if ever encounter a male teacher until they reach high school, a fact lamented by many both because teacher’s serve as important role models and because the lack of gender diversity tends to turn the profession into a prestige ghetto.
“We have so very, very, very, very few men,” Sherry Cleary, executive director of the Early Childhood Professional Development Institute at the City University of New York told NPR recently. “The sad part of it is that young children love to be around men. They love guys, they love their strength. They love that they’re fun and they feel safe and trust them.”
Ninety-eight percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers are women, and 82 percent of elementary and middle school teachers female, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
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