Getting More Men and Blacks into Teaching

Title: Getting More Men and Blacks into Teaching

Source: Chmelynski, C. (2006).  Getting more men and blacks into teaching.  Education Digest, 71(5), 40.

URL:  ARTICLE COPIED BELOW

Key Points: Chmelynski takes a deeper look at the need for men, namely black men, in education.  Many perceptions are keeping men away from becoming teachers including lack of the job’s social status, fear of being accused of abuse, and relatively low pay compared to other professions.  Further into the article Chmelynski discusses that classrooms need more diversity within its staff because the classrooms need to mirror or represent society.  The article mentions men play several roles within education, not just the role of a teacher.  Men are expected to play the role of a father to children coming from single mother homes.  Discusses that black male students need to see black men in positive roles of authority demonstrating the importance of academics.  The article also focuses on the importance of producing black male teachers, but high quality teachers first. 

Intended audience: Individuals considering entering in the education workforce and everyone in society as a whole.

Relevance:  It is important all educators take on the role of mentor for students.  Educational environments need to continue becoming more diverse but it is more important we teach accepting and embracing diversity.  Focus on producing high quality teachers and not just teachers that will assist with reaching a quota.  

GETTING MORE MEN AND BLACKS INTO TEACHING

DAVE Bartz, a fourth-grade teacher at Roosevelt Elementary School in Mandan, North Dakota, says people have questioned his career choice, but he enjoys it. He started as a music teacher 27 years ago and also taught history and political science in high school. "But this is more fun. I like the variety of all academic disciplines, and teaching at the elementary level provides that," he says. "To me, it's the best job in the world." Of 40 teachers at Roosevelt, Bartz is one of just five men.

Roosevelt Principal Tom Conlon says once in a while, parents ask to have a child placed in a classroom with a male teacher, especially if they are a single parent. But, he adds, "A good teacher is a good teacher; kids will relate to good teaching."

Roosevelt's teaching staff mirrors the nation's, with many more women than men teaching in K-12 schools. The National Education Association (NBA) says the number of male teachers in public schools is at its lowest level in 40 years. Under a quarter of all teachers in U.S. public schools are men. In elementary grades, just 9% are men. And if male teachers are uncommon, African-American male teachers and male teachers of any minority group are even rarer: 2.4% of our 3 million K-12 public school teachers are black males.

Why? Partly, it's self-perpetuating: If boys don't have male teachers, they are less likely to consider entering the profession. Men also are deterred from teaching by lack of the job's social status, fear of being accused of abuse, and, most important, relatively low pay compared to other professions.

"States with the highest salaries tend to have the highest proportion of male teachers," the NEA says. Michigan, with the highest percentage of male teachers (37%), also has the highest teacher salaries. Mississippi, with the lowest percentage of male teachers, is ranked 49th in teacher pay.

Elementary schools have the fewest male teachers, says NEA, due to "the prevailing philosophy within education that men go into teaching to 'teach the subject,' and women enter teaching to nurture and develop children." As result, male teachers tend to gravitate to secondary schools, leaving "a critical shortage of male teachers at the elementary level."

Several groups seek to address the shortage and diversify the teaching force. Many advocates believe it important for boys to have male role models, particularly when so many children live in homes where the only adult is their mother or grandmother.

"We'd like our classrooms to represent our society," says Bryan G. Nelson, founding director of MenTeach, a Minnesota-based clearing-house created in 1979 for men in K-12 schools. Nelson travels to high schools and asks teenage boys to think about a teaching career. His group provides mentors, training, and stipends to prospective male teachers.

In Maryland, the Prince George's County school district formed a partnership with Bowie State University to support male teachers. The school district serves 135,000 students, 77% of whom are African American. But less than a quarter of its 8,600 teachers are men and more than 75% are white.

Bowie's School of Education set up Men Equipped to Nurture (MEN), a specialized teacher education program to help male teachers in urban settings get fully certified. It pays for up to 15 hours of education classes to help men prepare for the Praxis, the national teacher certification test, and pays fees to take the exam, which range from $75 to $185.

Participants are loaned a laptop computer and meet monthly with a mentor to discuss issues like classroom management and financial planning. In exchange, they agree to teach for two years in Prince George's County schools after they complete the program.

"This is a great way to provide strong, positive male role models for boys as well as girls," says Homer McCall II, assistant director of MEN. So far, 52 male teachers aged 24 to 63 have signed up, McCall says. The majority of the candidates, who must be district employees, are in their late twenties or early thirties and from a variety of backgrounds.

The program's first-year funding comes from a combination of sources, including $347,000 from the federal government, $52,000 from the university, and $ 160,000 from the district. "We're looking for funding for year two," McCall says.

The Call Me MISTER program (Men Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models) was founded in 1999 as a partnership of Clemson University and several historically black colleges and universities in South Carolina. The program seeks to recruit, train, certify, and secure employment for 200 black males as elementary teachers in South Carolina's public schools.

Only 150 black male teachers work in South Carolina public elementary schools, under 1% of the state's over 20,000 elementary teachers, says field coordinator Winston Holton. So far, 45 men have completed the program, gotten teaching degrees, and teach in South Carolina public schools. About 140 teaching candidates are now in the program, all of them black, "but as a public program, we do not exclude anyone based on race," Holton says.

Call Me MISTER is not aimed just at providing role models for black boys, he notes: "We never want to give the misperception that we are producing teachers for black male students. We are producing quality effective teachers who are going to meet the needs of all their students. As a black male and a former elementary teacher here in South Carolina, I know the value of having a black male in the classroom that can counter people's stereotypes of the black male population.

"All students need to see black males in authority roles — roles of responsibility, academic roles showing there are manifestations of black maleness other than athletics, entertainment, or, unfortunately, crime. Call Me MISTER is a leadership program" where students in it are "change agents in the community, and they are trying to empower students to become change agents also."

© 2005, National School Boards Association. All rights reserved.

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By Carol Chmelynski