My Year of MMEET

MMEET has primarily fulfilled two purposes for our group this year. The first purpose was as a support group for men working in or preparing to enter a predominantly feminine field, elementary school teaching. The other was to provide discussions about gender that men rarely have.

Aside from the normal frustrations of teaching in public schools, our group was able to discuss issues and concerns that pertained almost exclusively to be a man in a woman-dominated profession. Many of us work with few men, if any. It makes for a lonely existence in our schools or places of work. There's a culture in our schools in which we never quite feel comfortable no matter how enlightened or modern we may be.

One issue that came up time and time again but never received as much "treatment" as maybe it should was the idea of a male elementary teacher being perceived as gay or sexual predator. Often, the two concepts were confused for one another. Although this was addressed, I don't feel it was given the resolutions we need to be able to comfortably talk about and resolve. Instead, there's this sense of anger or embarrassment that any of us could even be confused for homosexual or as a molester. We all seemed to establish that we were neither without really getting to the center of the issue, why it upset us so much, or why it held so much validity for both the community and even ourselves.

A topic that I have never heard enough of since moving to Missouri schools and especially not in our MMEET group was the idea of teaching as a secondary profession, particularly the roots of that idea in gender bias. Frankly, public schools and their teachers are not valued monetarily. I feel there is an exact correlation with the perception that it is "women's work" despite the fact that we, as men, do this work and that it has a wide-reaching effect over all our students, including boys. Other professions that require as much education as teaching are compensated more than teachers. Many professions have significant pay raises as well as professional advancement without any of these things tied to the whim of the voters.

Some things about which we did converse in MMEET were issues of gender. Gender, like race, is rarely discussed outside of a college course on the subject or without primarily being about a marginalized group. Gender applies to both primary genders...as well as all those variations in between. We spoke ad nauseum about how gender roles affect men and boys in education and life in general. This was a powerful exercise for so many men that have not had gender studies courses or thought of gender as only applying to women.

The only problem with these discussions was the inability of the group to move beyond dualities. In other words, the conversations revolved around the popular ideas of men are from Mars, women are from Venus. We were stuck on how men and women are different. We defined one as being the opposite and completely different from the other. This binary existed in our talks despite the evidence that we nurtured children or cried when emotional. We really need to get to the root of these ideas and figure out how to move beyond the dualities of men and women.

Of course, I found similar ideas of gender roles and characteristics in the artifacts I collected. Fifth graders were asked to write about what they thought a made a man and/or woman. At first, I saw no real trend, then I realized the students were relying on similar dualities to identify men and women. One was often described by explaining what the other was not. For example, a man could be described as lacking the maturity of a woman instead of describing a man's maturity on its own or what made a man immature. And despite similar evidence that contradicted their opinions on gender, the students primarily stuck to cliches and stereotypes.

I hope to bring my findings together in a multimedia presentation in the coming days that will better express this point. Look for it to be posted on this blog.

Overall, I feel the discussions were informative for all involved. I'd like to see everyone return next year and to add a few new members maybe to help move our conversations forward. I enjoyed meeting everyone and hearing their unique stories and perspectives on issues I have grown too complacent.

That was my year of MMEET.