How old were you when you started teaching? I ask as I wanted to teach when I left school but life got in the way and I needed to start earning straight away, anyway fast forward 17 years and the business I work for is laying everyone off so I am thinking about going to University at the ripe old age of 35

I am getting a redundancy payment so uni would be pretty much paid for but I feel maybe I am getting to old to go to train when everyone else will more than likely be straight out of school. My sister is also a primary school teacher over here in New Zealand and she says they are desperate for male teachers to join the profession so getting a job at the end should be no problem.

It's what I always wanted to do but it's such a shift from what I do now.

enzed, at my uni in Australia I reckon 50% of the people doing primary school teaching were 30+

It honestly sounds like you molested her and when she told on you you smeared **** on the walls in the bathroom, blamed it on her and had her put into a mental institute.

Compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of the two opposing sides in the American Civil War.

I can't tell if your being serious or not, but the fact that you would even make that comment about molesting a kid offends me a great deal. I'm a pretty easy going person, but this is an issue that is a hot button for me.

It's a fear I have to deal with every day when I step into the classroom and I take measures to prevent even the smallest suspicion, as the op noted, like never being alone with any student. This is something a female teacher never has to worry about. It is that exact thinking that absolutely drives me bat**** crazy.

Male elementary teacher = pedophile or homosexual. Doesn't matter what m or my other male colleagues do in the classroom there are always people that think we are pedos. Its worse for the primary teachers. I've had strangers call me that for just telling them what I do for a living. News flash some males just care about kids and want to help them. That's it.

What are your thoughts on the feasibility of a khan academy like style of teaching being implemented in all classrooms? Particularly one in which it seems a relatively large percentage of students lack any real motivation.

http://www.khanacademy.org/

cliffs: It's basically a series of video lectures on all types of school subjects. If you watch the TED video under "talks and interviews" it gives you an idea of his goals. He essentially thinks the classroom teaching style should be flipped, assign video lectures as homework and have in class time be an interactive problem/Q&A type environment.

jzpiano, that was a really bad joke. I'm sorry.

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I was actually offered a job teaching kids to draw and declined because of those reasons. If one person seriously accused me of being a pedophile I don't know how I could cope with that.

Glad to hear that it was a joke. *Exhale* That's the thing with the internet it can be hard to tell sometimes especially around 2+2. Never sure when the level will come out.

Just one of those that is hard to take in my line of work. I hear comments like that all the time used casually and if the wrong person hears it or it gets taken the wrong way somebody could end up in jail or not ever get a job teaching. Very scary ****. There was a thread not to long ago about this issue and I had a very tough time reading it because of some of the comments the 2+2 crowd had.

As far as dealing with it in person. If somebody calls me that in person for whatever reason I have to walk away immediately or I'm going to do something I tell my students to never do. I don't mind having a discussion with people, but with people like that it never can be a discussion.

I won't rant on too much more, but it is obviously a very personal topic to me, so much so that I'm currently working on a dissertation about perceptions surrounding male elementary school teachers. I really wish our society would change regarding that issue especially since if you go back about to colonial times men were the dominant gender in the teacher profession. That eventually turned and now it is a female dominated profession. Males comprise only about 25% of the ~3 million teachers in the US. In secondary schools the split is around 50/50, elementary schools are 9% male and once you get to kindergarten/preschool your looking at 1-2%.

/end derail.

I was 28 when I started teaching. You are never too old too start - I know people who were in their 50s their first year teaching.

The North had more soldiers and better supply lines.

The South had more racists and better leaders.

I refuse to spend more than 30 seconds answering your stupid question.

You are 100% right jzp. This is not a subject to ever even joke about. Male high school teachers face similar problems - people always think there is a chance we are only there to molest teenage girls. Accusations like that are like yelling bomb in an airport - it's not at all funny and should not be tolerated whatsoever.

I have a teacher friend (not at my school) who loves khanacademy. He has yet to really implement it successfully though. I can't see this working for kids who lack motivation, because you need to be self motivated to watch the videos on your own for hw. I think it's a cool idea and could be incorporated as part of a curriculum, but there are still a lot of flaws to be worked out.

I do not think it is appropriate for all classrooms. It could be successful in specific cases, but I don't see it being used across the board.

Sounds like a fascinating dissertation topic. What kind of research are you conducting? How do you plan on presenting your findings? I would love to hear more about. You can pm if you don't want to share in public. Also - what uni are you working at? And how do you find time/energy to work on a dissertation while teaching full time? I guess I could find the time, but not the energy. I'm really tired after a day/week of teaching. But I'm also a pretty lazy person....