Zachary Jackson thinks a lot about what his students may be learning from him in class. For some of his first graders in Atlanta, that goes beyond actual academic lessons. They are also practicing how to be a man.
For Jackson, the question of how to model masculinity is an obsession, something he thinks about all the time.
She has worked with children since 2018 through Wings for Kids, a nonprofit organization that operates after-school programs in Georgia and South Carolina. She has taught music, drawing on her experiences in music production. And since the beginning of this school year, she has taught first grade in Fulton County schools in north Georgia.
“I feel like the reason I continue to work with kids is because of their hearts. “They are so pure,” Jackson says.
He wants to instill drive in his students. “I myself have a crazy drive to succeed,” he says, adding that he pushes his students to excel through basketball tournaments and clubs.
Jackson especially strives to ensure that her male students are “selfless,” learning to care about others and be there for each other. That may depend on chivalrous-sounding notions, like making boys pick up folders when a girl drops them. But a big part of it is the drive for excellence, something Jackson believes needs to be embodied for male students in particular.
So far, the school seems grateful, aware of the fact that its students love it, Jackson says. Still, sometimes Jackson, a relatively new teacher, worries that he's putting too much pressure on students, he says. But he then reassures himself that he is one of the few men who “goes out of his way” for them.
This approach sounds old-fashioned, with its emphasis on social pieties. It is not the style that all male teachers would model when trying to demonstrate masculinity to young boys. But it's a sign that at least more men are starting to pay attention to the fact that many boys don't do well in school, even when there are few men (especially men of color who teach in the younger grades) in the schools. schools. American schools.
Let's hear it for the kids
Lately, as women's educational outcomes have improved, men's performance has not kept pace. Low college enrollment rates for men have also drawn attention to men's struggles.
But it's not just academically that men are barely staying afloat. The educational profession feels more feminine than ever. In 2021, according to the latest publicly available data, 79.5 percent of teachers at Georgia, where Jackson teaches, were women, according to the Governor's Office of Student Achievement, although the incoming teacher population included slightly more men . This was compared with national figures, which showed that approximately 23 percent of teachers were men. in the 2020 to 2021 school year.
It may even be surprising to find men who want to teach.
In his work to create programs that can lead young people to jobs in early childhood development, David Thomas says he was surprised by the number of men interested. Thomas is vice president of strategic initiatives and community engagement at the Community College of Philadelphia, connecting K-12 students with college opportunities that help them earn associate degrees or industry credentials and land jobs as paraprofessionals.
It's unusual today to see young men, particularly from communities of color, interested in teaching young children, Thomas says, but he recently helped three high school students get a job at KenCrest West Philadelphia Early Learning Centera before and after school care program.
Entering education as a profession is sometimes difficult to accept. Part of the problem is that teaching doesn't always seem like a viable occupation, Thomas says. Many of the families she works with perceive careers in education as underpaid, undervalued, and disrespected, and it is difficult to convince students to enter the profession, especially if they would have to take out student loans to obtain teaching degrees and have No There is family wealth, he says.
But there is an additional problem.
Many of these students had traumatic experiences in the low-resource schools they attended, Thomas says. A disproportionately high number of children of color are labeled early on by schools as having behavioral or emotional problems simply for acting in developmentally appropriate ways, he adds.
In some families there are generations of bad experiences that go back to the same schools. This can make families more reluctant to push their children, especially young men, into education. “Why would they want to go back to that?” Thomas asks.
All of this encourages men to seek careers elsewhere.
While they often value learning, these men don't see much value in the traditional K-12 education system, Thomas says. So they're not even considering it, he says. To attract more men to education it may be necessary to show them that becoming teachers would give them the ability to prevent what they have experienced from happening to others, he adds.
Rethink masculinity
But there are other perceptions that also keep some groups of men out of the early learning profession, some argue.
When the national gender conversations are over went from binary of femininity versus masculinity – or have focused on the “toxicity” of masculinity – it may seem out of place to foreground it. Once widely considered “women's work,” and historically transmitted to unpaid or even enslaved women — caregiving continues to be influenced by gender stereotypes. An ironic consequence is that men are still perceived as less competent child care workers than women, keeping the field decidedly feminine.
What does that mean for early childhood education?
There are so few black men in early childhood education partly because of stereotypes that hold these men to be callous and not educators, says Curtis Valentine, one of the founders of Real Men Teach, a campaign that seeks to help schools recruit and retain male men. educators.
Valentine estimates that the group has partnered with several dozen schools across the country, primarily connecting Black male educators to opportunities and highlighting the work of outstanding educators, especially in early childhood education. The project grew out of Valentine's own sense that male educators are underappreciated and that, because they are relatively few, they can get lost in other people's projections of what it means to be both a teacher and a man. .
Overall, the work has underlined his belief that many more men would want to be teachers if they did not feel they had to sacrifice in the process.
“My only fear is that we are recruiting men for these spaces. And in some cases, their coworkers, especially women, unconsciously continue to protect this outdated view of what masculinity is for them,” Vantine says. That could prolong the caricatures, rather than giving men a chance to express themselves (through the way they wear their hair, their nails, their clothes, their appearance) in the classroom.
Inviting the whole person into teaching, particularly male and gender nonconforming students, requires giving them the space to be authentically themselves, Vantine says. That has a benefit that will carry over to work and students, she adds.
Social thanks
For Jackson, the Fulton County teacher, part of his mission is to make sure students are socially polished. It's something that his own father instilled in him. When Jackson was a child, he says his father didn't allow him to use slang. That's why he makes sure students understand those social nuances, too:
“You can't say 'what?' if a teacher calls you by your name.”
“It's not 'yes, yes' or 'no'. It's 'No, sir' or 'Yes, ma'am'. .”
Jackson carries the weight of his influence every day.
“I feel sorry for the young people,” he says. “I have a lot of eyes on me, especially the young people who admire me. I have to lead by example. And I have to show them the way so that they can do the same when they are in my position.”
Will this finally push these students in the right direction?
It's something Jackson thinks about all the time: how to help students become educated, thoughtful, selfless men.
After all, he adds, “Isn't that the man the world needs?”
