Too few good men

More male teachers could also mean better discipline in schools, according to Brent McKim, president of the Jefferson County Teachers Association in Louisville.

Students require more disciplining than they did in previous decades, Mr. McKim says, and some students respond better to men. "A young male can sometimes connect better with a male teacher than a female teacher," he says. "It could be an overgeneralization to say it's always the case, but it might be true that boys accept male authority better than female authority."

Another group, equally interested in recruiting men, would do so precisely for the purpose of showing students that men can do anything women can do - diapering, comforting, and so on - in order to showcase equality of the sexes. There's also a second reason: To show that teaching is a career worthy of both men and women.

"It would be better for children if they had more of a gender-neutral environment," says Cris Watson, a teacher and curriculum specialist at Disney Elementary School in Burbank, Calif., where all 21 teachers are women. "Balance is good because we don't want children to think there are boundaries to what [they] can do" as boys or girls.

"There's nothing inherent that men are going to provide differently than women, except to be a male role model," counters Jaime Rossi, who taught elementary school in Los Angeles for two years after college and now lobbies for the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. "But there is a need for kids to see positive, strong men in a nurturing role ... where you have to wipe noses [and such]."

Two ideological camps, therefore, have come to share a common dream to boost the numbers of men teaching in schools. But men interviewed for this story say those who teach in the early grades and stick with it do so at a considerable personal cost - one many are unwilling to pay.

Principal Paul Young recalls a boon time three years ago when three of 25 teachers at West Elementary School in Lancaster, Ohio, were men. Since then, all three have taken jobs as principals at other schools, where a bump in salary enables them to support families. The school's sole male teacher today holds a position in physical education.

"It's pride, not money, that will sustain people in teaching," says Mr. Young, who currently serves as president of the Elementary School Principals' Association. Parents ask him and his fellow principals "all the time" if their children can have a male teacher, but only qualifications - excluding gender - determine if an applicant is hired.

In the case of Mr. Wilson, the Wichita teacher, starting pay of $26,000 wasn't what inspired him to put up with the rats, pigeons, and roaches inside the dilapidated 1917 school where he worked for five years. He worked two to three nights per week as a laboratory technician at a Wichita hospital to supplement his wages. Yet he stayed in teaching, and intends to keep teaching kindergarten even after attaining his doctorate in education.

"I grew up in a very religious home where I was taught that you give to society because you'll get back everything tenfold," Wilson says. "Kids look at me, and I am the role model."

MenTeach has the complex challenge not only to urge men to teach but also to convince schools that an applicant's "maleness" is an attribute worth considering in the hiring process. While some administrators worry about male applicants being sexual predators, the majority try to turn a blind eye to gender, just as they hire without regard for disability or race.

"To equalize [gender balance among teachers] would be nice, but I'm striving to get the best people I can," Young says. "You'd be foolish to go out and hire a male if there's someone more qualified who's female. Sometimes you'd have to look far and wide to find a man with the same qualifications. It's not always practical."

And yet, despite all the built-in hurdles, Nelson is convinced the profession will attract more men as the fringe benefits, especially the sense of doing a worthwhile job, are understood. "You go into a bar and someone says, 'I drive trucks. What do you do?' And you say, 'I teach kids.' It just doesn't have the same punch or cachet," Nelson says. "But a lot of men are looking for something more meaningful. So they get into caring for children."

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