I know that there are two schools of thought on male teachers -- perverts and queers. Little does anyone remember the powermad school masters who beat the snot out of kids who threw a fit or didn't "get with the program" in one room school houses. Later, the state was happy to pay women teachers less and require them to be unmarried. Later still, integration and the vast need for qualified teachers.
Men should be role models -- and many urbanites need good role models, men and women. Generally, it is accepted (through assumption and data) that urbanites tend not to have a stable father figure in their lives (via jail/prison, abandonment, death, etc.) I actually was a novelty, and I love teaching, but as life would have it, I failed to fullfill a requirement, relegating me out of teaching, which didn't pay me much anyway.
During my experience, there was always doubt, wonder, suspicion as to which one I was -- queer or pervert. As it happens, I'm neither, but that wouldn't sway most persons feeling I had to be one or the other or both. An EH (emotionally handicapped) child once called me a pedophile, actually perfunctory response in an attempt to defy me, get attention, and to seem superior. It was my only time that I met or saw the child, in that 5th grade class. A month later, she was removed from the school and into another program.
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I think that Ramsy's killer being a substitute teacher and caregiver spells a mess of problems for male teachers, regardless of the time they put in. It underscores fears, much like a Black male armed robber. It's common --statistically, almost predictable. It would be "newsworthy" if it was a Asian women in her 40s.A woman teacher, "mom" as it were, is trusted categorically because she is a woman, who could be a mother. I have found, even in my small group of 90 would-be teachers, that some carried too much baggage for the trip. One woman would not teach in a mostly Black or high-percentage Black school. She didn't like Blacks. You don't get to always choose. She could not have been a fair teacher. A couple others, I had in the back of my mind -- certain worries about their intents -- control mainly, over others; nothing more.
I did encounter some creepy adults; somehow affiliated with students at a sschool, whether parents, uncles, cousins, etc. Some surely would have been jailed for mindcrimes. Even others were, well, demonstratively too close with some kids. That may or may not have led to anything, but the wrongness was there.
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Now, away from that, I find that it really would have killed me anyway. I'm still wanting to be a dad someday and having all those kids around me would either make me crazy to adopt or jump into a stupid relationship (to be a father), or get soured on kids totally and never want to deal with them really. It is a fine line.---
So far, no job, but the month of August might bring something.
