Dr. Matt Finch knows fear. He has taken a class of first graders to the beach.
This was previously published at Role/Reboot.
You think you know fear?
I was only knee-deep in icy seawater, but that was enough. Beside me, a half-dozen anxious Moms formed a loose human chain. We were trying to cordon off a horde of 6-year-olds, cheerfully running amok at the water’s edge. My eyes flicked around the shoreline, trying to keep track of each and every child. I’d been teaching for less than a year and the safety of these happy, heedless kids was my responsibility.
You think you know fear? Try taking a class of first graders to the beach.
It’s hardly charging into a burning building, or wrestling a gunman to the ground, but teaching elementary school requires you to manage fear every day.
Fear of the kids getting lost or injured on trips like our outing to the beach.
Fear of losing control when it’s recess, it’s raining outside, and the sports hall is full of hyperactive students, bawling and brawling.
Fear of letting down young learners at a critical phase in their education.
I became a schoolteacher almost by accident, stumbling into the job through community work for university and non-profit schemes. It surprised me that I had an elementary educator’s knack for responsive, nurturing care.
Teacher training seemed to flash by. Suddenly I found myself in the classroom, a 6-foot-tall guy with a Ph.D. surrounded by 5-year-olds. I worked in the British equivalent of the projects: an urban neighborhood where 80% of the kids didn’t speak English at home. I thrived on the challenge, but it took supreme commitment.
Teaching infants has long been seen as women’s work. Very few men ever take on these roles. In my first school the only other male staff member was the janitor. In my second, there was just one other guy who was a teacher. Buddies in IT, or finance, or even university departments would often ask, “How do you cope with such a…feminine workplace?” I was under no illusions about the macho nature of my work.
Last month, I was in Manhattan’s Midtown Comics with Professor Mark D. White, a relationship writer, scholar, and comic book aficionado. I thought I’d grown out of superhero comics some time ago, but Mark insisted I check out the latest edition of a series called Daredevil. I was expecting the usual square-jawed heroic posturing, but instead I found a story that subtly criticized comic-book bravado.
The hero of Daredevil is Matt Murdock, a blind New Yorker who uses his “radar sense” and martial skills to fight crime as a vigilante. (They made a movie of it with Ben Affleck, but the less said about that the better).
In the comic Mark showed me, a bus crash leaves Daredevil stranded in a snowy wilderness with eight blind schoolkids. There’s no real antagonist—except for the elements and the hero’s own character flaws.
Writer Mark Waid uses the crash, and the challenge of leading the kids, to remind us just how heroic the everyday business of childcare is. The costumed crimefighter quickly realizes there’s no bad guys for him to trounce—just a group of frightened students gradually freezing to death. Our hero loses his cool, scares the children, and then fails to rally them with a pep talk pitched over their heads.
Anyone who has ever stood in front of a class of 6-year-olds, dealing with tears and turmoil, will understand the challenges our hero is being put through—challenges that are faced every morning by countless educators around the world, most of them women.
But, just as teachers can create a passion for learning in their students, Daredevil’s abortive struggle to save his young charges inspires the children’s own courage and ingenuity.
It is they who save the injured hero from the winter storm. As they do, one of the students innocently tells “the Man without Fear”: “Don’t be afraid, Mr. Murdock.”
The comic is a subtle reminder of just how hard it is to work with kids, but it also shows us the rewards of successfully inspiring young learners—and dares to do so in a “boys’ own” comic book better known for urban vigilantism.
Elementary education demands caring, creativity, and inspiration. It’s one of the most exciting challenges in schools today. Those schools need a diverse teaching body that provides good role models, reflecting society’s entire range of ethnicity, social background, and gender. That means, among other things, more guys in the elementary classroom.
Can men be without fear, and step up to the challenge?
Dr. Matt Finch is a writer and international educational consultant. Find out more at www.matthewfinch.me/about.
Check out the rest of our “Men and Heroism” section.
The “Men and Heroism” section was run and edited by Dave Kaiser.
—Photo andertoons/Flickr
About Role/Reboot
My son is in 2nd grade. I had an experience with a male educator (called Mr. B) that demonstrates WHY male elementary teachers are so rare. I have not told Mr B’s story before because I believe that individual discrimination is not evidence of systemic discrimination (I wish feminists would understand this). However, recently Mr B’s story spilled into the local news and that makes it fair game.
I met Mr B during “meet the teacher” night, at my son’s 2nd grade elementary school. No, my son does not have a male 2nd grade teacher! That would take a miracle, given that there are no male teachers. My son’s teacher is a ditzy snowflake who compels her students (among other things) to pull their own ears and consume vast amounts of water because she belongs to a cult who practice extreme water consumption and ligament stretching to increase the size of their brains. Given these stellar educational credentials, you will not be surprised to learn that her class of 7 year olds was distracted and moving around restlessly during her “meet the teacher” lecture. My wife was across the hall in a different classroom (she volunteers as an English teacher/translator and she was translating for a Korean mother). The Korean child and my son decided to run outside to the playground to look for a bakugan toy that they lost during the school day. The two boys were gone before any of us could politely excuse ourselves to chase after them.
Unfortunately for my son and his friend, during the evening the playground doors only open outwards. Once they were outside they could not get back in. Forty-five minutes later the school had made two loudspeaker announcements asking the missing boys to identify themselves, and my wife and I were in a flat out panic (my son had never disappeared or misbehaved before). The Korean mother was equally desperate, and my wife was doing her best to translate while also worried about her own child. I was running around like a lunatic, opening classroom doors with one hand and holding our 8 month old baby in the other.
In other words, we needed help.
Most of you will not be surprised to learn that not ONE of the female teachers volunteered to help find the missing boys. Instead, the women disappeared into the teacher lounge, presumably to drink water and pull each others ears (at least the ear pulling was fully justified). Except for Mr B. His commitment to the children did not begin or end with his pay-check, and he was searching as intensely as we were. Cool and professional, he knew where to look much better than desperate parents ever could. When I saw him he looked like an angel, holding each boy by the hand. I apologized and thanked him. He was gracious and compassionate.
Those of you who are parents understand that minor dramas like this are unavoidably episodic in the lives of our children. Most of the times they have no lasting consequences (if the parents have good cardiac health). I remember considering the tragic absence of strong positive male role models in our K-12 public schools, but I did not think of Mr B as a significant MRM issue. At the time, he was not a significant MRM issue. Until Thursday of last week, when my son ran into my arms and breathlessly cried “daddy, the police came to school and took Mr B to jail!”
My wife and I are very involved in our communities, so it did not take long to find out what happened. Mr B is in the middle of a contested divorce. He also had the effrontery to petition the court for shared physical custody. Predictably, domestic violence charges materialized. Unexpectedly, the school Precinct was eagerly complicit. The theatrical work place arrest in the presence of the children was orchestrated to maximize the professional and personal damage to Mr B’s reputation. It becomes easier and easier for me to understand why male teachers feel as unwelcome in our public schools as male students do.
The next day, we received an official message from the school, and it confirmed what we had learned through the grapevine:
‘The Precinct is aware of the allegations against Mr B and of his arrest. The charges against Mr B are domestic and occurred outside of school hours. No crimes were committed on school grounds, and none of the allegations against Mr B involve students … the Precinct will evaluate the circumstances of these allegations, and until the facts are fully known, Mr B will not be permitted to return to work … the Precinct is taking the arrest of Mr B, and the charges against him, very seriously.’
Crafty little letter. It mentions Mr B seven times (including in parts not shown above). They want to make sure every parent remembers his name. Obviously, none of the children will forget. Mr B’s future as an educator is finished.
To be clear, I do not know if Mr B is guilty or not. Neither does the school precinct. As of this writing, he has not been convicted of any crime. He has not even been indicted. And yet he has lost his most valuable tangible financial asset — more valuable than his savings and more valuable than his homestead. He has lost his professional credibility and the capacity to earn a living.
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury”
“Nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb”
“Nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”
“Nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”
How is it that we, as a society, have completely lost sight of the wisdom embodied in these words? One phone call. That is all that it takes. Whoosh! Everything, absolutely everything, is gone.
Today, I hope and pray (against the odds) that Mr B is guilty. I hope and pray that his wife did not point her “feminist finger of death” as a courtroom tactic. I hope and pray that she did not point her “feminist finger of death” for revenge. I hope and pray that it is a massive coincidence that his arrest comes just days after he dared to ask a court to treat him like a father, and not an ATM machine.
I hope and pray for these things because I know to a certainty that if Mr B is innocent, the life of the man who saved my son is gone forever. And there is nothing that I can do to save him back.
Note: To protect the identity of Mr B, certain details of the story have been changed. Also, the wording of the Precinct news release has been changed slightly to make google searches ineffective and/or inconclusive. Mr B has been through enough, and I do not want to add to his problems.