Fifth-grade teacher Kevin Hahn joins us Tuesday.
Posted by Mike Tiernan
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Will Norton and Kevin Hahn have become what they never had themselves: male elementary classroom teachers. In grade school, "my only male teacher was the principal who was filling in as the PE teacher until somebody else came along," said Hahn, 32, a fifth-grade teacher at Francis Marion Intermediate School in Marion. Neither Hahn nor Norton, 25, who teaches second grade at Wilson Middle School in Cedar Rapids, see their jobs as masculine or feminine. Both said they get support from friends, family and colleagues at school, and being in the minority isn't a problem.
Both Cedar Rapids men are in a minority nationwide, where the percentage of male teachers overall is at a 40-year low. It has dropped from 32.5 percent in 1970 to an estimated 24.1 percent in 2007, the National Education Association says. The trend is similar for Iowa. About one in 10 elementary school teachers in Iowa is a man, the Iowa Department of Education says. The percentage has been dwindling slightly in recent years, from 10.34 percent in 2001-02 to 9.6 percent in 2006-07. Jim Pedersen, Iowa City human resources director, said, "My gut says that for some of our kids lack that positive male role model in their lives, if we have a quality male teacher, there's going to be a positive impact on student achievement."