It’s just after lunchtime at Smyrna High School and seven seniors, all young men, are sitting around a table in an otherwise empty classroom, save for their teacher, Genny Willis. The students aren’t rehashing last weekend’s football game, although the starting quarterback, Me’Kenzie Square-Ward, sits among them. Nor are they talking about their social plans or the latest video game craze.
The boys, all aspiring educators and interns in local K-12 schools, are swapping classroom stories and teaching strategies. Willis—who heads up the Teacher Academy, part of Education (one of the school’s six state-approved career pathways)—asks each of the students to discuss a “fun struggle” they’ve experienced in the classroom.
Me’Kenzie, who’s interning in a 4th grade classroom, shares his experience working with a student who has learning challenges. “I had to learn that you have to be really really patient with her, because she sometimes shuts down,” he said. “My para [paraprofessional] told me, ‘put it to her from her point of view’, so that’s what I did. After that, we were good. That was a fun struggle.”
His classmate, Warren Coates, an intern in a 1st grade classroom, points to his experience being paired one-on-one with a distraught student. Nothing seemed to work to appease the little boy until Warren did a back flip.
“That’s all it took. It calmed him down,” the 17-year-old said with a grin.
Like most of the other male students gathered at the table, Warren hadn’t initially considered a teaching career. But with the support of teachers like Willis, he’s now planning to teach high school social studies and coach wrestling.
“A lot of it involves us seeing potential in these guys and consistently chirping in their ear: ‘Hey, you’re going to be great at this,’ or, ‘I can see a future for you in this,’” Willis said. “I said to him, ‘You need to take my classes. You’d be a great teacher.’”
Men make up less than a quarter of the teaching workforce, so having seven boys—five of whom are students of color—excited about a teaching career is a win for teachers like Willis, who works hard to attract male students to the school’s education career pathway. It’s the highest number of male students the program has had to date; typically, about four boys serve as education interns.
Too few men, especially men of color, in the classroom
Nationally, though, there’s a long way to go. The overall share of male teachers heading up the nation’s K-12 classrooms has declined in the last three decades, from 30 percent in 1987 to 23 percent in 2022, the most recent year of federal data available.
Most male teachers in K-12 public schools work at the secondary level. In the 2020-21 school year, men made up 36 percent of the teaching staff in the nation’s secondary public schools, compared to just 11 percent at the elementary level and fewer than 3 percent of all preschool and kindergarten teachers, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Black men make up just 1.3 percent of the overall public school teaching workforce.
The low number of male teachers in K-12 classrooms perpetuates the cycle: Not seeing men at the front of the classroom makes boys less likely to consider becoming educators themselves.
As Willis points out, in her experience, a boy isn’t likely to think of pursuing a career in teaching unless a respected adult—such as a teacher—suggests it. That could be because he doesn’t see many teachers who look like him.
It also could be because he’s internalized assumptions that teaching—like many caring professions in health and education—is a “female” profession. Elementary and middle school teachers, psychologists, and social workers top the list of HEAL (health, education, administration, and literacy) professions, and they’ve each seen a decline in male employees since the 1980s.
Another potential reason why boys don’t want to go into teaching: the stigma of low wages. In one global survey of 15-year-old boys in 49 countries about their future career plans, respondents from countries where teacher salaries are higher were more likely to consider a teaching career. Whether that’s because of the pay itself, or the degree of respect conferred on the profession as evidenced by salary, remains uncertain—but the two reasons are likely entangled.
What is clear is this: As the number of male teachers in K-12 classrooms has dwindled, so, too, has male students’ overall academic achievement, education attainment, and engagement in school.
Whether there’s a direct cause-and-effect link between these two trends is probably impossible to prove. But some experts believe that bringing more male teachers into K-12 classrooms would help reverse boys’ general declining engagement and performance in school.
“We need to recruit hundreds of thousands more male teachers,” said Richard V. Reeves, a Brookings Institute scholar, in his TED talk How to Solve the Education Crisis for Boys and Men.
Male teachers, Reeves said, tend to be more sensitive to challenges that boys face in the classroom, such as the difficulty of sitting still for periods of time. He also pointed out that having a male teacher in a subject like English/language arts may help boys see themselves as readers.
More broadly, Reeves believes boys benefit by having a positive male role model in the class, especially when they lack one at home. More than 20 percent of children live in a household with no adult man present, according to recent U.S. Census data.
Research does prove a “role model” effect, in which students identify positively with teachers who share similar aspects of their identity, such as gender or race. Evidence on how male teachers affect their students’ academic performance is, however, inconclusive.
Black boys in particular benefit from a role model
The role model effect appears to be particularly strong for Black male students who, statistically, are the least likely group of boys to have a teacher whose race reflects their own.
In a landmark 2017 study tracking 100,000 Black students from 3rd through 12th grade in North Carolina public schools, researchers from Johns Hopkins University found that having at least one Black teacher in 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade reduced the students’ likelihood of dropping out of school. The effect was strongest for Black boys from persistently low-income homes: Their probability of dropping out of school fell by 39 percent and their likelihood of considering college rose by 29 percent when they had just one Black teacher in those elementary grades.
Findings like these drive advocates like Julius E. Davis, who is trying to change the statistics around Black male teachers.
As the founding director of the Center for Research and Mentoring of Black Male Students and Teachers at Maryland’s Bowie State University, a historically Black university, Davis leads efforts to recruit, prepare, and support Black male educators to enter and thrive in the teaching profession. The initiative, funded with an inaugural grant in 2023 from the U.S. Department of Education, takes a multi-faceted approach that involves recruitment, mentorship, and certification pathways of aspiring Black male teachers.
Not only does the pipeline of Black male teachers need to be addressed from several angles, but recruitment efforts should start early, Davis said.
“We found that attempting to recruit Black male students [into the profession] in high school was too late,” he said.
It is rare for anyone to ask Black teenage boys to consider teaching, Davis said. Nor are Black male high school students likely to consider the career option on their own.
“We found that Black students had such bad experiences in their classrooms that [teaching] was the one profession they didn’t consider,” he said. “But many of them who are considering becoming teachers want to change that dynamic for other students. They want to make the educational experience better for them.”
Negative school experiences start early for many Black boys, who make up around 10 percent of enrollment but 34 percent of all suspensions in preschool.
White boys also receive disproportionately high rates of punishment in preschool, but not to the same extent as their Black male peers. Throughout their K-12 education, Black, Latino, and white boys continue to be punished at disproportionate rates.
Is gender stereotyping by teachers to blame?
Some experts suggest that “gender stereotyping” by teachers could be to blame for boys’ high rates of disciplinary measures.
“When a class is headed by a woman, boys are more likely to be seen as disruptive, while girls are less likely to be seen as either disruptive or inattentive,” wrote Thomas S. Dee, an American economist who examined results from a federal study in 1988 that collected test scores and questionnaire responses from more than 20,000 8th graders and their teachers. Although these statistics represent decades-old teacher perceptions, new data show they haven’t changed much.
An October 2024 EdWeek Research Center survey found similar results nearly three decades after Dee’s report. A nationally representative sample of teachers shared their observations related to girls’ and boys’ classroom behavior, engagement, and motivation.
Forty-three percent of teachers surveyed agreed that boys in their classes “often” had trouble sitting still for extended periods of time; just 16 percent of teachers said the same about girls. Overall, a considerable number of teachers reported that both girls and boys “sometimes” have trouble sitting still.
Thirty-four percent of the teachers surveyed said the female students they taught “almost always” appear more focused and engaged than the male students. Only 2 percent of respondents said the opposite.
Male teachers say the work is fulfilling
Anecdotally, male teachers tend to report a high level of satisfaction with their career choice, using phrases like “daily gratification” and “professional fulfillment.”
David Buskirk, a kindergarten teacher in Frostburg, Md., is one of them. And he can’t understand why he’s in the minority.
“Being a teacher is something I have always dreamed about doing, and I am so fortunate to live out this dream daily at Beall Elementary School,” said Buskirk, the 2024-25 Allegany County Teacher of the Year who’s been teaching for 15 years. “It’s just staggering to even think that I’m the only male kindergarten teacher in my county.”
Buskirk, who teaches in a rural district where about 44 percent of students come from low-income households, said he’s fairly confident that he is the only adult man in many of his students’ lives who models an interest in reading.
This matters because compared to girls, boys, on average, score lower on reading proficiency assessments and are less likely to read for pleasure. Buskirk is aware of the statistics. But in his class, the statistics look different. He said both boys and girls are reading above grade level by the end of the year—with no gender gap.
Shannon Ralston, the principal at Beall Elementary, describes Buskirk as calm, compassionate, and an “exemplary role model” for all students—boys in particular.
“A lot of young students here don’t have male figures in their lives, or positive role models, that are males,” she said. “Mr. Buskirk provides that, especially to the boys who don’t have it, or are maybe seeking male role models to emulate.”
Buskirk, she said, shows boys that men can not only be teachers, but caregivers, too.
Will these young men become teachers?
Back at Smyrna High School, the seven male education interns are wrapping up their class period and reflecting on how they became interested in the teaching profession.
Warren, who has wrestled since he was a young boy, got a taste of leadership when he started to help coach youth wrestling in 8th grade. When he got to Smyrna, he formed a strong relationship with his wrestling coach, who also teaches at the high school. It wasn’t until then that he realized he, too, could someday be a teacher and coach.
“The reason I’m on this path is because of some of the teachers I’ve had,” he said. “I want to be that person for somebody else.”
This story is part of a special reporting project exploring why boys, overall, are doing worse in school than girls—and what can be done to reverse the trend.
Why school isn’t working for many boys: Teachers report in a new survey that boys are less motivated and focused than their female counterparts.
The data are clear: Girls, on average, find more success at school than boys. Explore key data points highlighting these disparities.
Reimagining what schools can look like: Find out how four schools get boys excited about learning.
Student-teacher relationships matter: The key to inspiring boys in the classroom is a strong student-teacher relationship, experts say. Here’s how to make it work.
Why boys don’t want to become teachers: Boys would benefit from more male role models in the classroom. Here’s what schools can do about it.
A downloadable tip sheet: Boys are relational learners, experts say. Here are eight key strategies on how to reach them.
