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Edward Waters College is offering a scholarship program called, Call Me Mister. The college needs more applicants. It is available for African-American men who want to become teachers.

December 1, 2014

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.

I would imagine that the lack of male teachers has long standing, structural causes. Teaching is not, after all, the only historically female profession that remains so. But if that is the case it’s a shame, since elementary classrooms have a lot to offer in career opportunity for men.

Even when the tasks themselves are relatively simple, the act of helping a gloriously mixed group of kids is hard.

Glenn Peters knew he would be in the minority when he started training to teach preschool as part of New York City's rollout of universal pre-K, the largest such initiative in the country. But he didn't realize just how rare men are in the profession until he attended a resume-building workshop for aspiring pre-K teachers.

Along with the hundreds of thousands of students heading back to school across the region this week and next, there are hundreds of new teachers, some of them leading a classroom for the first time.

And some of those teachers are just as nervous as the students.

Our guest author today is Travis J. Bristol, former high school English teacher in New York City public schools and teacher educator with the Boston Teacher Residency program, who is currently a research and policy fellow at the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) at Stanford University.

Changing demographics trend toward diversity

Despite the cry from people of color for more teachers who look like them, both whites and blacks benefit from a more diverse teaching force, according to a study by Center of American Progress.

Sixteen kindergarteners sat cross-legged on a rag rug, singing songs about the days of the week and the months of the year.

The classroom at Carnegie Elementary School in the Carlynton School District was furnished with the usual toys preferred by 5-year-olds -- trucks, blocks, a kitchen play-set, a miniature makeup table. There was a collection of books nearby, and a set of puzzles in cardboard boxes.

In addition to lists of class rules and words the students had learned to read, Penguins, Steelers and Pirates posters decorated the walls.

One in four primary schools in England are without a male teacher, figures have revealed.

But one Birmingham school is bucking the trend, with a trio of male teachers working in the classroom.

There were just 26,208 men working as teachers in primary schools as of March 31 this year, compared with 185,023 women, statistics from the General Teaching Council (GTC) show.

And despite growing numbers of men applying to join the profession, 4,000 schools are without single male teacher at all.

For the past semester, I’ve been student teaching at a middle school and I’m now currently at an elementary school as part of my music teacher certification process. It’s been a challenge learning all the ins and outs of being a teacher, but it has also come with great satisfaction.

Columbia, SC (WLTX) -- The U.S. Department of Education says it wants to recruit more diverse and qualified educators and created a new initiative to help the process.

It's called the TEACH Campaign, and has a goal of encouraging more minorities--especially males--to go after careers in the classroom.

Kindergarten teacher Paul Ferreter knows he is putting his credential on the line each time he opens his arms to hug one of his students.

While more and more teachers, especially male educators, are putting up barriers to protect themselves from false allegations, Ferreter said he can't bring himself to forgo hugs. But his hugs have been modified. He calls them "sideways hugs."

On a frigid Saturday morning recently in Prince George’s County there was a gathering of a rare species in public schools: Male teachers.

And while there were less than 100 people in Charles Herbert Flowers High School’s cavernous auditorium in Springdale, the meeting --dubbed The First Annual Male Educator Summit: Envisioning the Future of Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) -- marked a start.

When Albert Lewis attended middle school in Prince George’s County in the late 1990s, he was shocked to walk into his eighth-grade history class and find a black man sitting behind the teacher’s desk.

Nathaniel Laney’s presence was a first for Lewis, who is now a teacher himself. Until then, he had never seen a male teacher outside of gym class.

The fifth grade students in Brad Ericksen's class know what their teacher will be doing after school today. They can tell by his outfit — a navy blue shirt and khaki pants.

He'll be working at Walmart.