MenTeach E-News
April 2014

1) Get Paid: Need photographs of men teaching
2) Grants seek black males to teach in elementary schools
3) Where Are All The Male Teachers [Infographic]
4) Men in Early Childhood Education at the World Forum 2014 in Puerto Rico
5) Deputy Prime Minister’s wife hails ‘cojones’ of men who do childcare
6) New Zealand early education sector one of the most sexist
7) Appreciating men in early childhood – special session given in Malaysian convention
8) Men in early child care Radio Interview in Australia
9) Steady hand, big heart
10) Moms’ stories: Where are the men in Irish childcare?

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1) Get Paid: Need photographs of men teaching
Derry Koralek, the Chief Publishing Officer at NAEYC is looking for your photos of male (and female) teachers.  In her email to the M.E.N. Interest Forum below, she notes that submitting photos to NAEYC could be a way to raise funds for special projects.  Here is the link to NAEYC guidelines for any interested photographers: http://www.naeyc.org/publications/forauthors/photoguidelines

It certainly must be easier for NAEYC to include more men in their content, imagery, and advertisements, if they have a larger and more diverse pool of photographs to consider!

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2) Grants seek black males to teach in elementary schools
When Travis Pinckney was 3 or 4 years old, his father was jailed for selling cocaine. Through Pinckney’s elementary years, he had few black male role models in school, he said.

He remembers one moment of truth in high school, when he was studying for the SAT at the same time someone was trying to teach him how to cook crack.

That’s not the kind of mentoring young black boys need, says Pinckney, now a guidance counselor at Andrew Jackson High.

He told his story to about 100 African American high school and college students at Edward Waters College Tuesday, when the college announced a new grant called the “Call Me Mister” program, designed to attract black male high school and college students to study education and teach in innercity elementary schools.

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3) Where Are All The Male Teachers [Infographic]
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. To get students excited about something that I’m greatly passionate about is an amazing thing to fulfill. Also, getting to know such amazing and unique kids in the small amount of time I’ve had at each school has been fantastic. There’s just one funny thing I’ve noticed, especially in elementary school – there sure are a lot more female teachers in comparison with male teachers.

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4) Men in Early Childhood Education at the World Forum 2014 in Puerto Rico
Join over 800 early childhood professionals from more than 80 nations in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a life-changing experience! At the 2014 World Forum you will be exposed to widely diverse perspectives and approaches to the care and education of young children. You will learn about the lives of children, families, and early childhood providers from all ethnic, cultural, political, and religious backgrounds. You will make friends for life across the globe. You will learn, work, converse, sing, dance, laugh, and cry. You will change others and you will change!

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5) Deputy Prime Minister’s wife hails ‘cojones’ of men who do childcare
Miriam González Durántez on Wednesday interrupted a speech by her husband Nick to speak out in favour of fathers who look after their children, saying they have “more cojones”.

Her remarks came as the deputy prime minister made a speech in which he attacked “old-fashioned” bosses who “raise an eyebrow” when men ask for time off to look after their children.

Hailing new rules on parental leave that will attempt to break down what he called an Edwardian attitude that still prevails in the work place, Clegg insisted fathers should no longer see themselves as breadwinners instead of carers.

In what looked like an unscripted moment, his wife put up her hand, took the microphone, and said the measures to encourage male parenting were all well and good but that there was “an issue of attitudes”. She continued: “There are many, many dinosaurs, not here but out there, who still think that if a man takes care of his own children, he is less of a man. She goes on to talk about men teaching also.

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6) New Zealand early education sector one of the most sexist
New Zealand’s early childhood education system is one of the most sexist in the world with far too few men teaching in the sector and the Government has no immediate plans to correct the imbalance.

This does not surprise Dr Sarah Farquhar, whose Massey University research in 1997 first revealed problems for the early childhood education sector of men not being encouraged into teaching and supported to remain in teaching.

“Unfortunately our political leaders continue to fail when it comes to showing leadership on this matter.  There seem to be closed minds on the issue of men being involved in early childhood teaching.”

Dr Farquhar says that internationally NZ has one of the lowest rates of male teachers at just 2% and it has no policies or action plans in place to change the bias.

“It is a national disgrace.”

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7) Appreciating men in early childhood – special session given in Malaysian convention
We are organising a special convention of early childhood educators in May 31, 2014 at the Selangor State Building Auditorium, Malaysia.

We will gather more than one thousand people in the industry including Childcare and kindergarten operators, college/ university students taking early childhood education, teachers and childcare providers, parents plus interested individuals. 

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8) Men in early child care Radio Interview in Australia
Look around at your local child care centre and see if there are many men. Most likely there will be none, perhaps if you’re lucky one or two. Should there be more men looking after our young children? And if there should be more, why aren’t there?

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9) Steady hand, big heart
Keith May’s first big lesson as a first-grade teacher came during a Pendleton Round-Up in the 1980s, when he took his class to watch slack on his very first field trip.

“We’re sitting in the south grandstand, somebody ropes a calf, the calf falls, it breaks a leg and the leg is flopping all over. The kids go, ‘Oh, what are they going to do.’ I said, ‘They’re going to go make hamburger,'” May said, chuckling as he recalled the horrified reaction of six of his students. “They had no idea where hamburger came from. So there was a learning curve for me to understand, OK, where are these kids coming from?”

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10) Moms’ stories: Where are the men in Irish childcare?
Although we are very happy with Little Man’s crèche, one thing that Charlie and I really feel it is lacking is a male presence. For 8-10 hours a day on the days he is in childcare, Little Man is in a solely female environment. There are no male childcare workers there. And this is not a phenomenon that’s exclusive to one particular crèche.

When we were looking for suitable childcare, not one of the facilities we looked at seemed to employ male childcare workers. But of course that shouldn’t be surprising. According to an article called ‘Men in Childcare’ in the Irish Independent on May 28, 2009, fewer than 1% of childcare workers in Ireland are male.

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