Male teachers - Mod Note Post #221

nice_guy80

Too many teachers are recruited from the leaving cert

This is a bad idea as girls outperform boys at this stage
A lot of the women go for the course due to the perception it's a good job, parents wanted them to do it or its the points that they'll get.
Fellas geverally swerve it as they mature later and have just come out of an education system of 13 years and want to do something else

I would change the intake to only people with degrees
That way fellas will gave caught up
The gender intake would be more balanced for a start
And it's much better to be training 20/21 year old a to be teachers than 17/18 year olds
You'd get a much better range of disciplines bring brought to teaching plus a higher qualified teacher

Obviously St Pats and Mary Immac would be totally against this as it would crush their hold on moulding young teachers minds

They are really just extensions of secondary schools the way they are run

Graduates never leave the 'system'. Groupthink is definitely an issue with primary teachers

Oh, and I'm a male primary teacher and enjoy most days at work

R.D. aka MR.D

Deleted User wrote: »

Interestingly, the majority of Western teachers in places like Asia are male and while some private classes might specifically ask for women, it's pretty rare. For a few years, my school had like ten male foreign teachers and no females.

As for teaching in Ireland, I'd never do it. Not for any money could it ever be worth it.

That's got to do with they type of foreigners that go to Asia. My friends who are teaching English in Europe say that it is quite female dominated or at least not as male centric as Asia.

It's much more difficult for women to stay long-term in Asia. I know in Japan, they love young foreign women because all they can find is old foreigner men especially outside the more establish programmes like JET. There are way more female teachers in Korea but still a majority male.

It also totally sucks being a female teacher in Asia. I was the most qualified out of all my co-workers but because of traditional norms, the men always were deferred to (except in China). However, the one good thing is that you aren't constantly under suspicions for your motives of being there.

noaddedsugar

My kids small primary school used to be about 50/50 male/female teachers. Over the past few years that has dwindled to just one male teacher as the other male teachers have gotten principal roles in other schools, none of the female teachers have gotten principal jobs in that time.

R.D. aka MR.D

R.D. aka MR.D wrote: »

That's got to do with they type of foreigners that go to Asia. My friends who are teaching English in Europe say that it is quite female dominated or at least not as male centric as Asia.

It's much more difficult for women to stay long-term in Asia. I know in Japan, they love young foreign women because all they can find is old foreigner men especially outside the more establish programmes like JET. There are way more female teachers in Korea but still a majority male.

It also totally sucks being a female teacher in Asia. I was the most qualified out of all my co-workers but because of traditional norms, the men always were deferred to (except in China). However, the one good thing is that you aren't constantly under suspicions for your motives of being there.

Vietnam has a really young expat population as it's not a typical destination so it's different here. Most foreigners are under 30.
And pretty much all of my local bosses have been women.

When you say type, what do you mean?

Samaris

nice_guy80 wrote: »

Oh, and I'm a male primary teacher and enjoy most days at work

Good to get a male primary teacher perspective! Question for you though, my partner (male) wants to go into teaching, much the course you just outlayed of going into it later than fresh out of secondary, but the religious aspects to the teacher training course, followed by the necessity of ..frankly, indoctrinating children into it troubles him, particularly the seeming "this is the right answer, this is the only answer to give"ness of it all. Did you find any issues with that, with the religious exams and the like?

endacl

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

I have no idea why any man would want to be a primary school teacher.

Finished at 2:30 every day, and nearly 3 months off.

nice_guy80

Samaris wrote: »

nice_guy80 wrote: »

Oh, and I'm a male primary teacher and enjoy most days at work

Good to get a male primary teacher perspective! Question for you though, my partner (male) wants to go into teaching, much the course you just outlayed of going into it later than fresh out of secondary, but the religious aspects to the teacher training course, followed by the necessity of ..frankly, indoctrinating children into it troubles him, particularly the seeming "this is the right answer, this is the only answer to give"ness of it all. Did you find any issues with that, with the religious exams and the like?

No
I put up with it for a few years, I'm not in a mainstream class lately
Don't believe a word of the mumbo jumbo myself
Hopefully that religious teaching will be passed out.
Schools already do a lot less than 10 years ago

The route into teaching involves a lot more work than it used to and the pay is less for new recruits
The quality of the job really depends on the staff in a school (especially principal), supportive parents and eager kids

Teachers miserable in their job either lack one or two of the above or shouldn't be let near kids

nice_guy80

endacl wrote: »

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

I have no idea why any man would want to be a primary school teacher.

Finished at 2:30 every day, and nearly 3 months off.

Why aren't lads queuing up to do it then?

steddyeddy

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

The teachers unions are always banging the drum for getting more men into teaching. The same with the teaching unions in the UK. I'd imagine they're the most relevant publications. I don't now if you want to see articles about the lack of male teachers in GAA match programmes and cook books.

You're the only one saying that all men are potential abusers. You create a stick out of thin air, and then beat yourself with it. You're creating this notion that all male teachers are suspects, then trying to encourage more men into teaching.

If i heard someone suspect a man simply for becoming a teacher, I'd consider them a moron. You seem to be one of the people who suspect men for becoming teachers. Weird

El Duderino the poster is speaking about the stigma about men being teachers. Not saying he/she suspects male teachers of being pedophiles.

R.D. aka MR.D

Deleted User wrote: »

Vietnam has a really young expat population as it's not a typical destination so it's different here. Most foreigners are under 30.
And pretty much all of my local bosses have been women.

When you say type, what do you mean?

I mean the type of person who is willing to totally uproot themselves to go live in a culture that is completely and utterly alien to most people.

I lived in South America for a year and the adjustment was nothing in comparison to the adjustment to Asia. It was still a European influenced culture there.

Unfortunately, many women are still intimidated by the concept of moving to a completely alien place without support. It's the same when you are backpacking, you meet way more solo men than solo women. It's really sad but unfortunately true in my experience. A lot of the women you meet who are teaching are in couples. Very few of the women I met came completely on their own. There were loads in Korea like that but Korea is easy and very hand hold-y.

Vietnam sounds awesome, always regret not doing a stint there. But Asia wore me down so I'm back home now.

endacl

endacl wrote: »

Finished at 2:30 every day, and nearly 3 months off.

Great apart from having to prepare for hours every evening.

nice_guy80

Yeah, the INTO promoting male teachers in its magazine is really going to make a huge difference among all those females out there!

The issue is how teachers are taken into the system - leaving cert is not the best way to do it

Samaris

nice_guy, do you reckon there might be any issue with a consequent lack of younger teachers that might understand teenagers more? I suppose there's not a great deal of difference between pre and post-degree ages, and I have seen a couple of young teachers come into..well, to describe it as "lions in the arena" is...actually, pretty accurate. One unfortunate fresh-out-of-training-college enthusiastic and nice young teacher coming into my primary school sixth class was absolutely eaten alive. I felt very sorry for her even at the time. (For anyone thinking that an adult unable to control a bunch of 12-year olds deserved it, our class were a bunch of maniacs with a sadistic streak that eventually got wholesale thrown out after the teacher had to take leave in her first year for stress*.) So perhaps older teachers might have an advantage there. Then again, one of the best disciplinarians (in a good way, although she needed to get a hang of just how much sarcasm to use on which students) was also fresh out of college, so...

May have answered my own question there /cough


*There were reasons involving a very abusive teacher prior and they all generally grew out of it, but at the time...

suicide_circus

In western society, I honestly don't see (with my patriarchal male privileged eyes) the impediments to women working in STEM areas. Discrimination in the basis of gender is illegal. There are numerous special interest groups getting unlimited airtime pushing for girls to do STEM courses. I'm not saying that social and cultural issues don't exist under the surface but these take time to die out. No one in their right mind is actively opposed to equal opportunity in these fields. We may find however that given limitless choice and opportunity, certain genders will continue to lean certain ways and I feel like an awful lot of people and vested interests have put a huge amount of time and energy into the equality game and if society doesn't swing in the "right" direction these people will continue to labour under their beloved mantle of victimhood and will be unable to accept that much of the perceived inequality we see has not been a sinister orchestration but to some degree a fairly organic state of affairs after all.

Crea

I'd say alot of it has to do with money and job progression. The best you can progress to is principal level and you won't earn enough money to support a family on one wage and get a mortgage.

nice_guy80

Crea wrote: »

I'd say alot of it has to do with money and job progression. The best you can progress to is principal level and you won't earn enough money to support a family on one wage and get a mortgage.

Err, yes you will
Sharing of tax credits
The bigger the school the bigger the principals allowance
Very few banks would refuse a mortgage to a permanent teacher
It's almost gold plated

El_Duderino 09

stefanovich wrote: »

Hold on. My post was sarcastic. I think that men are scared because of the negative stigma put on them these days. I'm actually of the same opinion as you, still think you are offside calling me a moron.

Oh I know. You're the only one who keeps talking about this stigma on male teachers and how they're all peado suspects. It's amusing that you're assuming that everyone else holds this stigma, but you're the only one who seems to be propagating it.

You're both promoting it and bemoaning it as a way to show how oppressed you are. This thread has nothing to do with encouraging men into teaching or finding a solution to the problem of the lacl of male teachers. It's just about how oppressed you seem to feel. It's very much a follow-on to your other thread from this morning but this is a serious topic. Shame

feebee12

tayto lover wrote: »

Female teachers lose a lot of time from the classroom due to maternity leave and it can disrupt the child's learning with subs coming in, especially in the case of young pupils who take time to build up trust and get used to a teacher.

Female teachers are perfectly entitled to have a family just like any other profession. A child in entitled to be taught by a fully qualified teacher- they are not entitled to have the same teacher for the academic year

El_Duderino 09

I know. They're the only one who even mentioned it as a real life phenomenon. As I said above, if knew someone e who held that view I'd consider them a moron. Maybe there are people who hold that belief, but I certainly wouldn't have much to do with them. Is it a real phenomenon outside of men's rights types' forums?

One eyed Jack

skankkuvhima wrote: »

I was reading this news article http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teacher-cleared-raping-pupil-says-10240712 and I got to thinking - is there any good reason for a man to go into teaching? I see in this INTO research publication https://www.into.ie/ROI/Publications/GenderImbalancePrimaryTeaching.pdf that by 2035 there could be a scenario where we have no male teachers yet we are doing nothing about it. Yet on the other side we have tonnes of "Women In Technology" scholarships and grants to encourage women into tech. Why no grants to encourage men into teaching?

Because the pay is shìte for one thing, I mean really shìte, for what they do and for what they have to put up with, between the bureaucracy, the paperwork, the commitment to long unpaid hours working outside of school hours and giving up their own time unpaid to do extracurricular activities with the children... oh there's a whole plethora of other reasons besides any notions of being falsely accused or even perceived as being guilty of any impropriety.

I absolutely detest the idea of "encouraging" more people of either gender into any career where some people are put out by the lack of one gender or the other in that career. There absolutely is a focus on getting more men into teaching, so much so that I've been on teacher interview panels where even if the male candidate hadn't hands to wipe his own arse, let alone be able to relate to and educate children, the other two interviewers on the panel (both women, the principal and an independent assessor), were practically giddy at the prospect of having another male teacher, as though it was the marking system in the interview was just for show!

Quotas would be an absolutely terrible idea, as bad as the idea that someone should be hired for a role on the basis of their gender over their competency, skills and qualifications to perform and excel themselves in that role in order to achieve the best outcomes for the children they would be teaching.

Samaris you asked about the religious aspect of it. You have no idea how frustrating it is when candidates reel off the stuff they themselves have practiced and learned off by rote because they are operating under the belief that this is what the interviewers want to hear (not just an issue in teaching, but in many other careers, but that's one for a different thread), It's bloody nauseating to have to listen to the rote stuff, and we both knowing they're only giving it as rote like they might as well be reading it off an autocue. People who are genuinely passionate about religious education are rare as hens teeth at this stage, but I wouldn't suggest we should encourage more people into religious education either as that would be more akin IMO to Scientology recruitment drives.

It's not the number of teachers of either gender is the problem, it's the quality of teaching IMO is the real problem, and most of that is down to how schools are being micro-managed and teachers are being loaded up with more and more work for less and less remuneration and job satisfaction. There are teachers I meet and I just don't know how they manage to be so positive and maintain such a passion for their vocation in the face of such an overwhelming burden being constantly added to and put upon them. They really, really love education and working with children and see so many positives that for me just wouldn't be worth it.

That's why even though I considered the Hibernia in the past, and I live within a stones throw of one of the largest teacher training colleges in Ireland where the student population ratio is three girls for every guy (even that's not incentive enough! :pac:), with all other factors taken into consideration, I couldn't and would never want to become a teacher, much and all as I love children but I can mentor and educate them in other ways besides the formal education system we have here in Ireland.

steddyeddy

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

I know. They're the only one who even mentioned it as a real life phenomenon. As I said above, if knew someone e who held that view I'd consider them a moron. Maybe there are people who hold that belief, but I certainly wouldn't have much to do with them. Is it a real phenomenon outside of men's rights types' forums?

Well there are people who hold the view that women are less capable of becoming scientists (only two Cambridge sorts that I've met), people who believe that once child deserves a better education than another because of socio-economic circumstances of birth and people who believe that male teachers are more likely to be paedophiles. All of the above are brain dead idiots, but that doesn't stop their comments having an effect on aspiring scientists or teachers. Any negative perception can hugely effect engagement with a particular subject.

skankkuvhima

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Because the pay is shìte for one thing, I mean really shìte

Pay doesn't look that bad, starting at 28k going up to nearly 62k.

Glenster

I wanted to be a teacher in college. but I also wanted to be successful in my career/life. I didn't feel I could do both.

The_Valeyard

skankkuvhima wrote: »

Pay doesn't look that bad, starting at 28k going up to nearly 62k.

Over twenty or thirty years?

kylith

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

In general Men don't tend to be as interested in children as women are so I suspect that is the reason less men want to be primary school teachers.

You're right, that's why there are no men involved in scouting, swim coaching, GAA coaching, football coaching, teaching music... :rolleyes:

Just on the front of The Irish Times website this afternoon:

Lure of overseas jobs creating crisis in teaching

The fact that the INTO are under the thumb of the politicians and don't resist any of the comical "reforms" imposed on teachers - as usual they were first to cave in on the HRA/LRA - has only worsened conditions for teachers. If the INTO were full of Constance Markievicz and Sighle Humphries types there'd be some hope. As it stands the INTO would be more honest if they took that fine portrait of Maud Gonne down from the Teachers' Club on Parnell Square. There'll be no 'hurling the little streets upon the great' under the current INTO leadership.

nice_guy80

kylith wrote: »

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

In general Men don't tend to be as interested in children as women are so I suspect that is the reason less men want to be primary school teachers.

You're right, that's why there are no men involved in scouting, swim coaching, GAA coaching, football coaching, teaching music... :rolleyes:

rugby, athletics in fact most sports the majority of coaches are men

Female teachers are far less likely to give their own time to sports teams in schools
That is widely acknowledged
But that is usually because their talents are in music, dance, art, drama
Unfortunately there is little or no scope for after school workshops in those due to the way successive pay agreements have been structured
Teachers are less and less willing to give their time

How many teachers will actually ever achieve 62k a year? So that's 20k at the higher rate of tax?

nice_guy80

One eyed Jack wrote: »

skankkuvhima wrote: »

I was reading this news article http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teacher-cleared-raping-pupil-says-10240712 and I got to thinking - is there any good reason for a man to go into teaching? I see in this INTO research publication https://www.into.ie/ROI/Publications/GenderImbalancePrimaryTeaching.pdf that by 2035 there could be a scenario where we have no male teachers yet we are doing nothing about it. Yet on the other side we have tonnes of "Women In Technology" scholarships and grants to encourage women into tech. Why no grants to encourage men into teaching?

Because the pay is shìte for one thing, I mean really shìte, for what they do and for what they have to put up with, between the bureaucracy, the paperwork, the commitment to long unpaid hours working outside of school hours and giving up their own time unpaid to do extracurricular activities with the children... oh there's a whole plethora of other reasons besides any notions of being falsely accused or even perceived as being guilty of any impropriety.

I absolutely detest the idea of "encouraging" more people of either gender into any career where some people are put out by the lack of one gender or the other in that career. There absolutely is a focus on getting more men into teaching, so much so that I've been on teacher interview panels where even if the male candidate hadn't hands to wipe his own arse, let alone be able to relate to and educate children, the other two interviewers on the panel (both women, the principal and an independent assessor), were practically giddy at the prospect of having another male teacher, as though it was the marking system in the interview was just for show!

Quotas would be an absolutely terrible idea, as bad as the idea that someone should be hired for a role on the basis of their gender over their competency, skills and qualifications to perform and excel themselves in that role in order to achieve the best outcomes for the children they would be teaching.

Samaris you asked about the religious aspect of it. You have no idea how frustrating it is when candidates reel off the stuff they themselves have practiced and learned off by rote because they are operating under the belief that this is what the interviewers want to hear (not just an issue in teaching, but in many other careers, but that's one for a different thread), It's bloody nauseating to have to listen to the rote stuff, and we both knowing they're only giving it as rote like they might as well be reading it off an autocue. People who are genuinely passionate about religious education are rare as hens teeth at this stage, but I wouldn't suggest we should encourage more people into religious education either as that would be more akin IMO to Scientology recruitment drives.

It's not the number of teachers of either gender is the problem, it's the quality of teaching IMO is the real problem, and most of that is down to how schools are being micro-managed and teachers are being loaded up with more and more work for less and less remuneration and job satisfaction. There are teachers I meet and I just don't know how they manage to be so positive and maintain such a passion for their vocation in the face of such an overwhelming burden being constantly added to and put upon them. They really, really love education and working with children and see so many positives that for me just wouldn't be worth it.

That's why even though I considered the Hibernia in the past, and I live within a stones throw of one of the largest teacher training colleges in Ireland where the student population ratio is three girls for every guy (even that's not incentive enough! :pac:), with all other factors taken into consideration, I couldn't and would never want to become a teacher, much and all as I love children but I can mentor and educate them in other ways besides the formal education system we have here in Ireland.

Teaching isn't a vocation, it's a job.
Stop sanctifying it!
If you want a vocation go join a convent or religious order.

Yes there are out of hours of paperwork but it's not excessive once you stay organised
More time spent on paperwork = I don't give a shīte once I come to actually teach it...

Yes there are out of hours meetings and other school functions but sure what can we do....

Children enjoy school so much more for the extra curricular stuff and it's a pity in so many schools that teachers cannot take sports etc on due to principals insisting on no games during school time & encroaching on the school timetable (happening in a lot of counties due to pressures from cigirí) or the unwillingness of teachers to be on a bus somewhere outside of school time.

Children deserve a balanced range of teachers, female and male

py2006

I thought this was down to Irish as a prerequisite? Far fewer boys do higher level Irish which is a requirement for teaching? Or is that primary teaching only?

Dirty Dingus McGee

kylith wrote: »

You're right, that's why there are no men involved in scouting, swim coaching, GAA coaching, football coaching, teaching music... :rolleyes:

Those things don't involve 6 hours a day 5 days a week.

In general men are less interested in children than women and I suspect that is part of the reason less men do primary school teaching than women.