I'm a pretty typical guy, despite my line of work. This means that I am not organized, and I am not artsy. All teachers need to be organized, and Pre-k teachers need to be artsy. I work around these two obstacles daily. My assistant is both organized AND artsy. For this I am grateful.
As I've said before, I'm a pretty typical guy, despite my line of work. That being said, I am MORE than capable of peeling wallpaper off of the walls in a bathroom. Naturally, I'm self-concious about this issue. So, with that explained, let me explain the restroom situation at my school. We have ONE lounge restroom, with ONE toilet in it. We have two boys' rooms, with ONE adult toilet between the two of them. We also have two girls' rooms in which i do not enter. So, I have a total of TWO toilets in the entire school that I can use. One of those toilets is shared with like 96 women. The other is in the boys' restroom, but during the school day teachers are constantly taking their classes to the restroom, so it's not safe either. If I really need to use the restroom, I try to wait until classes let out. This way I know that teachers aren't going to walk in on me. Unfortunately, the female janitor in charge of cleaning the restrooms usually comes in shortly after school lets out, so I'm never really safe. Yes. This is a disadvantage. I'm expecting to develop intestinal problems any day now.
On a more serious note, being a male teaching this age group has one very frustrating disadvantage. People who do not know me often question my desire to teach. People often expect the worst from a man who surrounds himself with children. I'll be the first to admit, I WOULD BE SUSPICIOUS if my pre-k child had a man for a teacher. It's a natural worry, and I do all that I can to make parents feel at ease. I don't take the girls to the restroom, I don't take any child to the restroom alone, I stay on the computer during naptime away from the sleeping kids, etc. etc. Although I would never do anything to a child, I still do what I can to assure my parents. Fortunately, I've been blessed to have understanding parents who've been willing to let their children stay in my class, and I believe they're happy with the results. My classroom next year will include two younger siblings of past students of mine.
It's hard to keep a low profile. I'm a minority times three at my school. I'm one of two men out of about 100 employees. I'm white, while only around 20% of our staff is white. Finally, I'm under the age of 30, which means I'm one of only 6 or 7 employees this young (in fact, I'm the 2nd youngest teacher on campus, even after five years here). What does this mean? It means everybody notices me. Say I get special permission to leave early from the principal. What happens? People notice. Say I order a pizza and have the delivery driver meet me at the back door. What happens? People notice. Say I drink a coke to wake up a bit before class starts, and then have to run to the restroom at 9:30 and then again at 11:00. People notice. When I'm absent, people notice. When I get irritated at something somebody says at a meeting, people notice. Sometimes you just want to lay low. Fortunately enough, I can be a bit of an attention-hog, so it usually doesn't bother me too much.
I get asked to move things. A lot. Of course I don't mind helping, but you still get tired of lifting this shelf and putting it here, or that shelf and putting it there. Several times a year I'm asked to move something heavy, and I can honestly say I don't mind. I'd be lying, however, if I didn't admit to dreading our teacher workdays a little bit.
So, as you can see, it's not always easy being a man in a woman's world. Tomorrow I'll list a few of the advantages to doing what I do.
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