MenTeach E-News
January 2016
1) How Rochester Schools Grapple With Their Teacher Diversity Gap
2) Switzerland: How do you get more men into primary teaching?
3) How to Become a Teacher in Lots of Steps
4) New Zealand: Women left holding the baby
5) MenTeach.org has had millions of hits
6) Kellogg Foundation Awards CSUN Grant to Tackle California’s Teacher Shortage – MenTeach lead consultant
7) Become an Urban Teacher
8) Path to a new life takes these minority high school graduates back to preschool
9) Japan: Online debate on male nursery workers dressing girls heats up after mayor’s tweet
10) Editorial: The List Maker
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1) How Rochester Schools Grapple With Their Teacher Diversity Gap
Christopher Fields is rare in the teaching profession. He’s an African-American man, and he teaches sixth-grade English at East Lower School. According to the U.S. Department of Education, you’d have to stop by more than 50 classrooms in this country before you found one black male teacher.
“We have a lot of African-American male students who – they need that interaction with a male,” Fields said. “Because they may not live in a two-parent home. So sometimes they just need that interaction. You know, they live at home with Mom, most of their teachers are female, and it’s just a refresher for them to see an African-American male.”
The Albert Shanker Institute recently issued a report on the gap between teaching and student diversity in nine large American cities. The city with the largest gap was Philadelphia, with 86 percent students of color, and 31 percent teachers of color. That’s a gap of 55 percentage points. Had Rochester been included in the study, it would have ranked first, with a gap of 65 percentage points. Rochester students of color make up 90 percent of the school population, but teachers of color comprise just 25 percent. Read the article & Listen to broadcast: /node/3031
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2) Switzerland: How do you get more men into primary teaching?
Men thinking of making the change into primary school teaching can now take a taster day to find out more. It’s part of an initiative to boost the percentage of men in the profession in Switzerland – which currently stands at around 18%.
It’s a cold, crisp day in November. Inside the Stigeli school house at Affoltern in Albis primary school, year 4 pupils, aged 9-10, are listening attentively to their teacher, Thomas Walker. They are preparing for a visit to the nearby Kindergarten, in which the young children will tell stories and the primary schoolers will have to write them down. The topic: the circus.
“What kind of animals might they see at the circus?” asks Walker. Hands shoot up; Walker makes sure everyone has their turn.
Observing the lesson is Reto Schatt, aged 21. He is on a taster day – actually a half day – at the school. This involves not only shadowing a male teacher, but also doing a little teaching, if wanted. Afterwards participants can quiz their teacher mentors on what life is really like as a male primary school teacher. Read the article: /node/3034
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3) How to Become a Teacher in Lots of Steps
Training for the profession of teaching, even in 1971, was not the easiest major to enter at Michigan State. When I transferred from Central Michigan as a junior, I was headed into secondary education, as I mentioned in my initial blog entry. After the first term, I decided to switch my major to elementary after several conversations with my oldest brother and his wife, both of whom were teachers. After applying to do so, I had to prove some sort of ability, interest and dedication to the career. Not to mention just how much I personally liked the little ones and how I interacted with them. The anticipated switch began with “Ed 101A”, an intro to elementary teaching. Read his article and go to his blog: /node/3036
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4) New Zealand: Women left holding the baby
Women today can do any job, so why do we still see large numbers of women workers in childcare kindergarten and other early childhood services?
Answers to this question usually go along the lines of: “it’s a job that women are best suited to” and “what man would want to work with children anyway?”
Diversity and equal employment opportunity policies have opened the door for women in traditional male occupations and boardrooms, but have clearly not made as much as, even a scratch, to the stereotypes pervading early childcare work.
Just under 98 per cent of all staff working with children in any Ministry of Education licensed early childhood service are women – 24,788 females to 494 males.
The early childhood sector thus provides a strong example of occupational segregation which contributes to and helps to explain the gender pay gap in our society and acts to restrain the full utilisation of women’s and men’s talents across the economy.
Read Dr. Alexander’s editorial: /node/3039
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5) MenTeach.org has had millions of hits
A few readers have asked how much web traffic does our site have. The website – MenTeach.org has been around since April 2002. We’ve had one revision of our site back starting February 2007. You’ll see that we’ve had over 2.9 millions hits in the last two years. The software that tracks our site traffic screens out the spambots (as best it can).
See the data: /node/1121
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6) Kellogg Foundation Awards CSUN Grant to Tackle California’s Teacher Shortage – MenTeach lead consultant
California faces a looming teacher shortage, and, in particular, a deficit in the number of men interested in working in elementary education.
Hoping to help alleviate the problem, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded California State University, Northridge a $385,651, three-year grant for a teacher-preparation project aimed at increasing the number of men — particularly African-Americans, Asians and Latinos — who want to work in elementary education. Read the entire article: /node/3040
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7) Become an Urban Teacher
Why Urban Teacher? Among other things, we have a 14-month residency as part of our master’s curriculum from Johns Hopkins University. This allows you to observe and teach in the classroom before you become a teacher of record. You’ll also benefit from three years of teacher placement and one-on-one coaching. Round that out with a lifelong AmeriCorp membership and corresponding awards towards the cost of tuition, and you have all the support you need to thrive! Find out about the program: /node/3041
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8) Path to a new life takes these minority high school graduates back to preschool
Sekani Malcolm was serving coffee and pastries at Dunkin’ Donuts last month, a 20-year-old high school graduate with no plans to go to college and few aspirations for a solid career. He had struggled in school, where he sometimes found trouble, and he was working the part-time job to help support his 3-month-old daughter.
Like many D.C. Public Schools alumni who don’t consider college an option, he didn’t have clear ideas for his future. Then, in January, he went back to preschool.
Malcolm and nine other recent minority graduates have returned to classrooms this school year as literary coaches, teaching preschoolers to read and learn alliteration and rhyming, part of a program that aims to give recent black and Latino male graduates teaching experience. Schools officials hope the program will inspire the young men to become teachers, as many urban school systems face a critical shortage of minority male educators, who many experts believe can be the best role models for young minority boys.
The Leading Men Fellowship is one aspect of the city’s push to better serve its minority male population, a group of students who lag far behind their peers in the public schools. The program puts the recent graduates to work in a steady job, could create a seed of ambition and serves the city’s youngest students. Read the article: /node/3043
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9) Japan: Online debate on male nursery workers dressing girls heats up after mayor’s tweet
Online debate over the use of male nursery staff is heating up after the mayor of this city tweeted about some parents asking their daughters’ day care centers not to have male staff members help them get dressed.
The Chiba Municipal Government is set to launch a new 10-year plan in April to boost the number of male staff at city-run day care service providers. Chiba Mayor Toshihito Kumagai tweeted that the plan was a countermove inspired by incidents where some parents asked not to have male nursery staff dress their daughters, and the number of retweets and responses topped 20,000 over 10 days.
In April 2016, Kumagai, a father of a 5-year-old daughter himself, met with eight male day care staffers to exchange opinions. After hearing their stories, such as being taken off from work routines out of consideration for parents of girls who did not want male workers dressing their daughters, and a lack of men’s bathrooms at their workplace, Kumagai decided to map out the plan to promote the active engagement of male nursery staff. The Chiba Municipal Government’s department of child care has reported that directors at several day care facilities exclude male workers from supervising duties during the children’s dressing and shower time. Read the article: /node/3048
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10) Editorial: The List Maker
Every year around the Christmas holiday when I hear the words to this famous carol, “making a list, checking it twice” I smile to myself. You see, I consider myself the queen of lists because I carefully create and re-create lists daily. Are you a list maker? Did you know that there are many reasons why people create lists? For me, creating lists has become a habit and one of my favorite daily rituals. Rationalization for my need to create lists includes: bringing some order to chaos, remembering important things, preventing procrastination and managing stress by maintaining a focused mind. Read the editorial: /node/3037
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