As of today, I am the only male teacher left in my pre-6 elementary school. The only male teacher in a building with 600 kids. It’s me, myself, and I. At least the line for the men’s room will be short. Oh wait, they turned that into a unisex bathroom three years ago. Never mind.
It’s been a slow process. Four years ago 4 of the 28 classroom teachers were males, along with the principal. Slowly but surely, though, they’ve all left and moved up to the middle school. The last holdout was probably my best friend on staff, a sixth grade teacher, but they involuntarily transferred him this year because he was the only person in the district HQ to teach both math and science. I thought they might be able to find a guy to fill his position, but no such luck-the four candidates that they interviewed were all females. This is on top of my old principal retiring and being replaced by a female candidate, a dynamic lady who I think will do an incredible job, but that’s still one less male role model for the kids.
District-wide the situation is similarly bleak. 4 years ago 7 of 55 elementary classroom teachers were male, for 13%. Today it’s 4 out of 48, or 8%. That number is elevated by our 4-6 elementary school, where 3 out of the 12 teachers are men. If you look only at my school and the K-3 elementary it’s one teacher out of 36: 2.7%.