Male educators a rarity in elementary classrooms

Article here. Excerpt:

'But there aren’t very many male elementary school teachers in the Grand Forks area or in the field as a whole, a trend in place for decades.

Many educators would like to see more of a balance. For young boys who don’t have a father figure, male instructors can provide a perspective that reaches beyond the books, they said.

Of 12 elementary schools in the Grand Forks Public School District, there are 15 men teaching kindergarten through fifth grade classes, which are the elementary grade levels here, according to the district.

Some elementary schools in Grand Forks don’t have male teachers at all.

Statewide, the number of male K-6 classroom teachers has grown from 436 to 451 in the past six years, according to the state Department of Public Instruction. During the same period, the number of female teachers grew from 2,685 to 2,857. The DPI does not break down the data by grade level.'