I’m in the middle of writing my Teacher Research Project (minor thesis) on males in EC. Unfortunately due to time & word constraints I couldn’t do what I really wanted to. To speak to colleagues, parents, community members & men in the field.

I am now looking at how the print media here (specifically The Australian & The Sydney Morning Herald) have portrayed the lack of males present in the education of young children.

I’ll let you know how it turns out, but I already find it interesting, & even a little disturbing, if not surprising, that most of the research & academic literature, as well as media & government coverage of this issue, focuses almost exclusively on the situation in primary schools.

Any thoughts from you guys (and girls)?

Two teachers from our center (both male) recently went to a seminar for the project approach. They had done a project on music with our school age students and had to present it. There were preschool teachers from all over the state of Illinois who had worked on projects with various age groups and met to show them off. Of all of the teachers there were only 3 men, the two from our center and one who taught 3 year olds in another town!

Two of the women who put the whole seminar together (these names should sound familiar to most of you), Judy Harris Helm and Dr. Lilian Katz made it a point to recognize the three of them to the rest of the teachers and lament the fact that there were not more men working in this field.

According to one of our men, many of the female teachers seemed surprised at the success of our center’s project (whether due to the topic or the fact that the men had done it, I’m not sure). Is this because even some of our colleagues don’t believe that men can have that nurturing rapport with children? I don’t know, but I was extremely proud of them, especially since this was the first time either one of them had worked on a large scale project.

On a side note, one of those teachers was actually our cook (he also happens to be my husband). He has shared his artistic ability by doing lessons with the school-age group and wants to do more with the younger children. He spends as much time outside of the kitchen working with the kids as he does in the kitchen cooking. My boss has been so impressed with his interactions with the children that she has asked him to be a school-age teacher! He is thrilled with the idea of being able to "make a difference" with the children and work with them all of the time. I will miss his cooking at work, but am happy to have a new convert to the field of teaching!

Great story & I’m glad you shared it. I’d love to meet either of those women. One of the perks of living close to UIUC I suppose.

I’m not sure if it’s is why you chose that story, but the word ’project’ has nothing to do with the project approach & everything to do with our uni piling more workload onto us at the most integral stage of our degree.

Lilian Katz and Leila Gandini speak at my center about every other year. It’s open to the whole region and we usually have about 400 in attendance. Usually about 25-30% male teachers. In the crappy chain-store schools, it is mostly female teachers. But in the higher quality schools, there is a much higher percentage of men.

Nope, didn’t choose it because of your "project", just because it was an extremely recent example of what you were talking about. Just a weird coincidence that we used the same word to mean different things....English is funny that way....