Comments about ‘Male teachers lacking in the classroom’

My wife is a teacher and I have spent a great deal of time with her in her classroom and I think I would absolutely love to be a teacher - especially at the Jr. High level. It would take a little more education to obtain the teaching credentials that are necessary. There's only three words stopping me: $ $ $

I would quite literally halve my current salary. We discuss it often at home, but I just can't commit to making less money, even though I think I would love it and I think I would be good at it.

While my first male teacher was my sixth grade middle school teacher (before we had different teachers for each subject), I had only female teachers, but my twin sister had male teachers for first/second grade and fourth grade, and they were exemplary. It's really sad that the low salary (especially in Utah) cannot attract more guys to the profession.

My kids had male teachers in the elementary school, and they were fabulous! They connected with the kids with a different approach rather than the "mommy" approach. It was so refreshing to see. They got the kids to think science and math in terms that they never would have associated with before.

Male teachers are needed to show another side of good learning skills. I applaud them for doing so.

Good and needed story. A shout out of thanks to Mr. Mednick who taught my daughter in kindergarten. You were absolutely wonderful!

Hey metisophia - my daughter had Mr. Mednick for Kindergarten as well! She still talks about the toilet-seat guitar.

It is absolutely shameful that a college graduate can work full time teaching our children and still has to work at Wal-Mart to make ends meet. Maybe if corporations and John Huntsman's rich friends paid a non-regressive income tax (rendering them less-able to purchase more vacation homes) Utah could afford to pay its teachers a living wage.

I would be a teacher in a heartbeat if they offered even half what I earn.

Any connection between this and the fact that more females than males enter and graduate from college now?

Historically, what percent of teachers have been men? The article addresses temporary "upticks," but no real longitudinal perspective.

Any studies that look into how well male students do under male teachers vs. female, and female students under female teachers vs. male?

This may be a big issue, or it may be no issue at all. Like the end of the article notes, it's no so much about gender equity in the workforce as it is about the success of students.

Hey, I'll retire from Idaho and come teach in Utah. Sign me up! Logan please so I can root for my Aggies.

Teacher are under-appreciated and under-paid for the great work they do. But I think the story is right: for families holding to the traditional model of working father and stay-at-home mother a teacher's salary is just not enough to make ends meet.

The nice thing about male teachers is that they allow boys to be boys.

I've seen it over and over again, the hammer of discipline that just turns boys off to learning from female teachers who just don't understand that squirminess in a boy doesn't necessarily mean he's not trying his best to learn.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that truely does make it harder for men to teach or do things with kids, especially not their own. In the last year or so in Utah, a women was convicted of the same crime as a man: having sex with a student when a teacher in high school (position of trust). The man received 5 to life, the woman, one year in prison. Check out the different punishments for men and women in the legal system. Then check out the different laws and outcomes of Court and DCFS hearings existing for men but not for women. Yes, men are as much responsible for making these laws as women and totally sympathetic to most of this. But you would be one brave, crazy soul to teach K-8 or so.

New culture forces aside, in a family with a husband and wife, the husband is still the one who feels primary responsibility to financially support the family. So long as teacher pay is so low, not many males will choose this profession.

Lets see, after getting our degrees in education one of my friends ran a warehouse, one went back to get his MBA, one started a construction company, one worked for a Japanese phone company, and I ended up in real estate. You can recruit all you want, but until teachers are given a little respect, and paid like professionals, men won't teach.

Teachers should be paid at least 10k more per year to start with... say 35k starting and then go up from there. It is a joke to spend 5 years in college with student loans and all and then have to work at Wallmart as a second job just to pay the light bill. It's great that this guy likes to teach and is happy but if you do the math of the time he has to spend away from his family - between his teaching job and Wallmart - he has a double negative of being poor and being away from his family for most of the day. Lousy life. Really, how is it that we pay basketball players or actors 15 mil per year to entertain us and teachers 25k per year to teach our kids? Which profession has a stronger and more important impact on society? Don't get me wrong - I love sports being a college baseball player myself but things in this country are sooooo screwed up and out of whack it makes me wonder how long this sort of imbalance can continue and have America stay atop the world in industry and standard of living.

When I taught in Idaho the word from other teachers was that the only worse place to teach was Utah.

I quit teaching for two reasons: first, I couldn't support a family on $33k/year. Second, our society doesn't respect teachers nearly as much as they should. It's a tough job, and I admire those good teachers who stick with it. But I can't recommend it to someone who's the sole provider in their family. Which is a shame, because more male teachers would be a good thing.

I am a teacher, and my husband started out as a teacher, but, as our family grew...our income didn't...so he went into administration. He has been a great, positive role model for kids who didn't have dads, or who had dad that aren't in the picture. Since he began working as an administrator, he has tried really hard to out there for those kids who need that positive role model in their lives. He has has kids come to him who had been abused by their own dads, kids on the verge of suicide, and kids who's parents are in jail for drugs, or sexual assault. As male teacher/Administrator he has dealt with and been an adviser to so many more kids than I have. I think that kids feel safe with a big strong male (as cliche as that sounds) over a smaller female teacher. It is really AWFUL that the State doesn't pay enough for a man to support his family. I have seen so many male teachers begin, start a family and then quit teaching and do something that pays the bills. Shame on Utah :( MALE TEACHERS ARE REALLY NEEDED!

Another possible factor that is not mentioned. Our elementary had 4-5 teachers when we got a new (female) principle. In the next year all of the male teachers left, driven out by the principle who really disliked men.

My fourth grade teacher quit his job teaching on a Seattle public television station and came to our little farming town to teach. He was an incredible teacher and used to set up his equiptment in the front of the class to demonstrate various science principles. After 45 years I can still remember many of the demonstrations, and can even remember some of the books he used to read to use in our daily "quiet time"

Add my name to the list of males whose dream job is to be a teacher. Unfortunately, I can't take a $75k pay cut right now.

Someday when my kids are grown and I don't have to pay for them (and my wife can return to working full-time to supplement our income), I still harbor the dream of being a teacher. Of course, by then I'll be so old that no school in the world would want me.