Men in Pink Collars: Interviews with America’s Smallest—and Newest—Working Minority

Introduction

I suppose every book is a type of memoir. This book certainly is. Though I have never had any of the pink-collar occupations explored within these pages, throughout my professional life, I have often taken on jobs, roles, that seem, to some, more suited for a woman than a man. Hence, as such, throughout my career, as a man working on or within so-called women’s issues or in women’s roles, I have faced a degree of confusion (and, granted, being named Cary doesn’t help), awkwardness, surprise and, once or twice, even a bit of hostility.

(Many years ago, a female co-worker once informed me that I could not properly do my job because of the matter of my gender; it was not, of course, lost on me that had I said she couldn’t do her job because she was a woman, I would have immediately been labeled sexist, among other things.)

Hence, as these things often do, these oft-repeated instances got me to thinking…

While over the years we have seen innumerable books and articles about the experiences of women who take on traditionally male occupations like police officers, architects, truck drivers, or pilots, among others, there’s been far less investigation into the other side of this gender coin. What happens when men pursue careers in predominately female occupations, what about these men in pink collars? What experiences do they have? What obstacles do they face? What challenges—on the job and off—do they encounter?

I decided to find out.

If this work has a template, it was supplied by the great Studs Terkel’s Working.¹ The famous oral historian’s best-known work was published in 1974. It’s a collection of transcribed interviews, covering just about every modern occupation and the men and women who work in them. Working set the standard, and the level of candor, for people talking about what they do for a living and how it fits within not only the societal realm but also how it affects and reflects the human spirit.

Since it was not his focus, though, there is little in Terkel’s seven-hundred-sixty-two-page work about the experiences of those who break gender barriers in their choice of profession, be it women taking on traditionally male occupations or vice versa.

Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, there does exist a great deal of literature on the topic at least in terms of women entering traditionally male fields. But, in contrast, there has been little attention paid to the phenomenon of men who break occupational gender barriers.

The greatest amount of scholarship done in this area has been the work of Christine L. Williams. Williams is a professor of sociology and currently teaches at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author or editor of three books on this topic: Gender Differences at Work: Women and Men in Nontraditional Occupations (University of California, 1991); Doing ‘Women’s Work’: Men in Nontraditional Occupations (Sage, 1993); and Still a Man’s World: Men Who Do Women’s Work (University of California, 1995).² Williams’s work, as both editor and author, combines statistical analysis, a literature review, surveying, and one-on-one interviewing with both men and women in gender-busting jobs.

For her 1995 book, there were four primary pink-collar jobs she focused on: male nurses, male librarians, male social workers, and male teachers, teaching in the elementary grades. Williams’s efforts are superlative, her findings thought-provoking, and reading her work helped inform many of the questions I ended up asking my subjects.

Though she has somewhat now broken with the concept, one of Williams’ early observations was something this named the glass escalator³ effect related to men in pink-collar jobs. This is a phenomenon, unique to men in pink-collar fields, where they are often promoted at a far faster rate than—and sometimes even over—that of their female counterparts.

This work of mine hopes to build on Williams’ scholarship and to broaden the range of occupations examined as well as to update. Though in the past few years, we have started to redefine gender and what it means to be male, female, and other, traditions and traditional thought is hard to burst free from. Hence, even today, a myriad of questions exists about men when they do women’s work.

Though many men, when asked about their entry into pink-collar professions, will give the response that they just fell into it, that simplicity can’t be the case. Obtaining these jobs usually requires some sort of advanced degree or study. So why, then, do men pursue these careers when they know that they will often demand extended, and sometimes costly, education and then bring with them not only unexceptional wages, but also stigma, a plethora of stereotypes, and possibly even ridicule?

Additionally, there are other questions: Were they always supported in their career choice by family, friends, or partners? Have they ever been discriminated against in their jobs due to their gender? How are they treated by their (assumedly) mostly female co-workers? How are they treated by the men they work with? Are there advantages to being a man in a field dominated by women? How do they deal with societal assumptions and stereotypes in the work that they have chosen to do?

Further, what has changed for men and their pink-collar jobs in the last twenty-five years? (This would be especially interesting as, in the past couple of decades, men in pink collars have exponentially grown. For example: in 1970, 2.7% of nurses were men, as of 2021, it is 12%.)⁴

Of course, no discussion of men in pink collars can transpire without acknowledging the elephant in the room—the matter of sexual preference.

It seems to be a default assumption that men working in pink-collar professions are gay. This is an assumption that is almost entirely one-sided; when we hear of women who become doctors or become lawyers, they are not usually surmised as lesbians.

Granted, it’s quite possible that a disproportional number of men in pink-collar fields may be homosexual—leading to this stereotype in the first place. For example, it is estimated that at least 50% of current male flight attendants are gay.⁵ So this begs various questions: Why do gay men seem to gravitate toward pink-collar occupations? Does being gay in these gay professions bring with it its own set of issues? Do gay men feel like they are selling out by not pursuing more manly careers?

This demands another set of questions: What about straight men in pink-collar careers? How does the gay stereotype affect them?

Historically speaking, almost every job we now view as traditionally female was once overwhelmingly staffed by men. For example, though women early on entered the field of air hostess, the first flight attendants were male. Called stewards, their roles were a carryover from the jobs young men filled on the national railroads.⁶ Similarly, from ancient times all the way up to the late 1800s, assisting doctors and the primary care of patients was the domain of men.⁷

Many factors eventually led to these occupations being recategorized as female in nature. And, typically, once they became labeled pink-collar, they tended to stay that way—sometimes aggressively so. In fact, once these jobs were solidified as largely female specializations, it was often difficult for men to enter them again.

Cases in point: Florence Nightingale was not a fan of men in the field. In fact, many of the schools founded on her theories made a point of NOT admitting men.⁸ Nightingale said once, ‘[M]en have no place in nursing except where physical strength is needed.’⁹ The American Nurses Association, formed in 1896, did not allow men to join their group until 1930.¹⁰

For decades, even the US military barred men from nursing; a ban that endured until 1955.¹¹

Then as late as 1979, Joe Hogan, a male registered nurse, was denied enrollment at the School of Nursing at Mississippi University for Women due to his gender. After being turned down, Hogan filed a discrimination suit. In 1982, Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan was argued before the US Supreme Court with the court ruling in Hogan’s favor.¹²

Along those same lines, though airline stewards were prevalent onboard planes throughout the 1930s, their numbers decreased at the start of World War II. After the war, men never fully returned to those same capacities. In fact, by 1958, both Pan Am and Eastern Airlines had policies against hiring men as flight attendants as the companies worked to cultivate a cadre of young, attractive, and single women to appeal to their mostly male customer base.¹³

It too, eventually, took a lawsuit to de-discriminate the skies. In 1964, Celio Diaz, a married father of two, tried to join Pan Am as a flight attendant, but his proposal was rejected due to his gender. Like Hogan before him, Diaz filed suit. In 1971, in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, the case of Diaz v. Pan Am was decided in Diaz’s favor.¹⁴

Today, for men to break into some of these primarily female fields, though it may not take a court order, there remains a variety of enduring obstacles.

Thanks to the work of the aforementioned Dr. Williams, four of the occupations to focus on for this work were easy to determine: nurse, teacher, social worker, and librarian. Even twenty-five years after her initial studies, these professions remain predominantly female and decidedly feminine in the eyes of many.

Establishing the other jobs to investigate took some statistical and literary review and it, sometimes, offered some surprises. Before it, I never realized how divided along gender lines professions like social work were or how ancillary professional male dancers (of various types) could be treated.

I will not claim that every pink-collar profession is represented here and I don’t contend that are all represented equally; there are far more male nurses in the US than there are male romance novelists, for example.

Obviously, this is a work that is completely based on interviews. In the end, over eighty men were spoken to. Interview participants were completely volunteer. That the process was purely voluntary brings with it a certain number of issues/questions. Did these men agree to be interviewed because they were among the happiest in their profession? Or were these men anxious to talk because of various grievances they held?

This then leads us to an even larger set of issues.

Conducting personal interviews for scientific or social research is inherently flawed. Everything about the interviewer, interviewee, and their surroundings has the ability to skew the responses one gets. For example, would the fact that I am a man interviewing other men bring with it a level of candor that not be the case if a woman was interviewing them? Would I be viewed as a more trustworthy recipient? A more sympathetic ear?

Another factor: Where do these men work in terms of region of the country? The experience of the male nurse or male elementary school teacher in San Francisco or New York City will, no doubt, be different from the men who hold these jobs in the Bible Belt. To try to counter this, I purposely sought out subjects from as wide a geographic range as possible, though, it should be noted, that I had no quota in this regard, i.e., One from the East Coast, One from the West Coast, in terms of men to talk to.

Then there is a myriad of other issues. Race, of course, is one of them. Men of color who enter pink-collar professions face a series of challenges different than their white counterparts. Furthermore, age and the number of years in the profession would also affect the views and the responses of the subject.

But, that said, for a work that is about surmounting gender norms and addressing issues of discrimination, I felt it counterproductive to create categories—a quota system if you will—of how many white men versus how many black or men of color I interviewed. Further, I did not require a subject to have a minimum or maximum number of years on the job. Additionally, I applied no ratio in terms of how many straight men versus gay men were men were interviewed. I simply interviewed men who work in pink-collar jobs.

Do the men interviewed herein speak for ALL men in these professions, past and present? No. Do their comments probably have great universality among their male professional peers? Yes.

But even if they don’t, do they still have something interesting to say about the world of work but also about the role of gender within contemporary society? Definitely, they do.

In the Classroom

One has to go back to the early 1800s or before to find men dominating the field of early education. Women did not begin to make inroads into teaching until around the 1830s when the cause of young people getting formal educations began to take hold within the USA. At that time, a critical shortage of educators forced women to be hired. (Also aiding in women’s influx into the field was the fact that women could usually be hired and paid far less than their male counterparts.)¹

In a sort of quasi-self-fulfilling prophecy, then, as more women began to teach, teaching became more and more considered an appropriate women’s role. As teaching was also one of the few respectable careers then completely open to women, more and more women began to flood into the field. By 1900, it is estimated that nearly 70% of the nation’s teachers were female. By 1920, it was 90%.²

Later, largely after World War II when so many men gained college degrees via the GI Bill, male teachers began to return to teaching but they seldom aimed to teach in the lower grades. The supposed need for female-provided nurturance in the early grades excluded most men from pursuing teaching at those levels.

And this has remained the case; recent statistics show that in primary grades, 80% of all teachers are female.³

But in recent years there has been a new, coordinated attempt to bring more men into early education in order to create a more gender-balanced workforce. Still, men wanting to break into the field face a litany of hurdles and questions, some of them sadly typical (their sexuality) and some incredibly offensive (accusations of pedophilia). Additionally, they face questions about why they are doing women’s work or why they are not attempting to earn more.

Additionally, there are then those men at the other end of one’s educational journey. Since the early 1970s, the academic field of women’s studies, now more commonly called Gender Studies, has been part of colleges and universities. And, since that time—not surprisingly—its professorship has been female-dominated. (As has its enrollment.) But today, due in part perhaps to these departments’ rebranding, the number of individuals identifying as male teaching and sometimes heading up these programs is surprisingly high.

From Utah, Robert Carter, PhD, is forty-five years old and has served in the US Army and been a professional nurse and a professional nanny. For the past nineteen years, he has been a teacher in the primary grades at a public elementary school.

I got my teaching degree from Southern Utah University in 2005. My first year of teaching, I taught K-6 and that was up in Alaska in a really small community. But, other than that, I’ve either only taught first or second grade. That’s what I always wanted.

I’ve been teaching primary grades for nineteen years. I have a master’s, I have a doctorate. I like helping people learn. Even in college, I liked working with younger kids. As a nurse, I was always drawn to the kids…

I didn’t like nursing. In the Army, I went from being a combat engineer to a medic to a nurse. I enjoyed working with people. I was a labor delivery nurse for a while but I didn’t like it. I liked teaching.

I was the first person in my family to go to college. My family, growing up, they were in construction; they were chefs. They were in men-oriented fields. But I’m stubborn.

Still, they supported me. My dad was supportive. He loved the fact that I was doing this. In fact, my mother to this day goes, This’s my son. He teaches little kids. How awesome is that?

I still have an uncle who downplays me. He does not think that being a second-grade or first-grade teacher is worth doing.

I was once told that men can’t teach in the primary grades. It was when I had started my education; it was by a fellow nurse, actually. She said the brains of men don’t work that way.

I was the only guy in most of my education classes. In most classes, it was only me most of the time. Later, it was me and one other guy. My teachers were encouraging as were my fellow students… In fact, I ended up marrying one of them!

My first [teaching] job was in Alaska. When I returned to Utah after that one year, I was only being interviewed for the higher elementary levels, until one principal said, ‘Look, you’re not the right fit for this job but you are the right fit for this other school job. Let me call him right now.’ So, he called this principal over at the other school.

In the primary grades, when I took that job, I was one of two guys. When I left that school, about nine years ago, I was the only guy in the entire elementary. Now, I’m the only guy in my current school minus the principal…

I have to take precautions in my job. My classroom door is always open. Little kids have problems with their clothes sometimes, and if they do, I always take them to a female teacher and I’m always there with them but I’m looking away. But now, even women teachers nowadays, they too want another teacher with them.

Teachers are accepting of me. I’ve actually had more backlash from parents. I’ve had a few parents go, ‘There’s no way that my daughter’s going to be taught by a man.’ So, they have their child removed. There’s nothing that you can do about that.

My principal just looks at me and goes, ‘This has nothing to do with you. Don’t be offended.’ I’ve even had a few of those parents come back later and apologize to me.

It’s mainly moms who object. It’s lessening some now, only because I’ve been at the school for so long.

It’s much harder for men teaching in the primary grades. By far. It only takes one parent to say So-and-so molested my child and then that ruins a career and men are never allowed to teach again.

I am, sometimes, viewed with suspicion, of course. We’ve had students get injured because the teacher wasn’t watching them and it’s always Oh, it was Mr. Carter that did it. Because it’s me, Mr. Man, [he] can be more aggressive. But I’m not an aggressive person.

Fortunately, we have cameras all over the place.

Yes, I resent it. But I really can’t [defend myself]. But I appreciate that we have cameras. I appreciate that my principal looks at the cameras, going, ‘No, I saw everything you did. You’re fine.’

I don’t know how a guy could have been doing this thirty years ago, it would have been scary.

Teaching is hard. I will admit that right now. In fact, I would discourage people from going into teaching right now. It seems like we’re under a microscope, not only by our local governments but by state and federal governments.

Sometimes when I meet people and tell them what I do, I get questions: Do you really do that?. Once, I was doing a tour with American history teachers, and I was in Wyoming, [and] this one lady looks at me and goes, ‘You don’t look like a first-grade teacher.’

And that’s when my colleague goes, ‘What does a first-grade teacher look like?’

I think, sometimes, I get kids with behavioral issues but only because I’m strict. But they’re strict women in my school, too. [But] I’m strict because of my military background. I’m strict because of being a nurse; you have to be strict to be a nurse.

I do sometimes get told that this child needs a father figure and that’s why we’re putting her or him in my class. I’ve had parents ask for me for their child. In fact, I’ve had quite a few requests recently. But I think it’s more due to my reputation; I don’t think it’s about gender.

I do think men bring something to teaching in the primary grades. They bring a different view… You think about the primary grades, that it’s all cute stuff, but it’s also where we start bringing out interests and I’m always, Hey, there’s no reason why you cannot do this. Be it a girl or boy, I’m like, Let’s go! Let’s explore!.

Justin Plank is thirty-eight years old and lives in Bloomington, Indiana. He has been a third-grade teacher for five years.

Mostly, I have taught third grade.

Before I got this position, I was a long-term substitute for about a year. I did different assignments during various maternity leaves or people having to have surgery, and so I would be there for maybe a couple of months. Third grade was where I had the best experiences, and it happened to be what was open when I was applying. I’ve always preferred teaching in the primary.

I’m the only full-time male teacher here. Yeah, it is a bit unusual for a man to be teaching here…

I have a teaching degree—in elementary education—from Indiana State University. My student teaching was first grade for a quarter of the semester and then third grade. [They] were good experiences…

My first two years [of college], I had no idea what I wanted to do and felt the pressure from my parents to choose something. Of course, they were paying for it so I really needed to choose something and I went into elementary education. I was kind of just taking things that I was interested in. But there was something there, in teaching, for me. I just didn’t know what exactly. People always said, You’d be really good with kids. I feel like I’ve always got the same kind of reaction, even before I said that I wanted to be a teacher You’d be really good with little kids.

No one ever discouraged me from teaching in the lower grades. Men were the minority in the class. There were five.

When I graduated, well, here’s the thing… Going into it, I thought—my assumption was—I’m a male, I’m going to get a position because there’s a lack of us. But I don’t know if that worked to my advantage. It may have but the assumption that I made [was] a poor assumption on my part. I had a lack of experience.

I graduated in 2009 from Indiana State and I subbed, and I was a para in a special-ed room, but I got burned out. But I knew I needed to stay working with kids. So, I worked as an ABA [Applied Behavior Analysis] therapist with autistic kids. I worked in Terre Haute, then transferred here to Bloomington with that same company. Then I wanted to go back to teaching in school. I think I’m good at working with kids and I kind of felt I needed to get my foot back in the door. But I still had no experience really. I mean, I had ABA therapy and subbing experience, but it wasn’t experienced in this county which is what they wanted. I needed to build myself up here first.

Then I was hired in Bloomington.

[…]

There have been times where I’ve talked to parents—before I’ve had their kid in class—and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, they’ve never had a male teacher before.’ And a lot of times they say, ‘I think they’ll respond to you.’

Or our other teachers will say, ‘I think they’ll respond well to a male teacher. That’s something they need.’ Sometimes they really want a kid to have a male influence; a lot of kids are from broken homes.

The other third-grade teacher here, she’s been a teacher for twenty years—I mean, we both have our own ways of doing things, of course, but I would like to think that we still have similar styles… I have a calm demeanor. When [parents] first meet me before school starts, that’s something that they get to see, that I obviously have to do discipline, but I have a calmness, too.

I don’t think I treat any of my students differently. [But] I think I’m definitely more on my toes about things with girls.

And I feel I do get treated differently, probably, from students because I am a man…

One of my first experiences, when I was student teaching in first grade, my host teacher said, ‘Do not be alone with this child, they could ruin your career before it even starts.’ That’s always been my thing: not being alone with any students. I’ve always said to other male teachers, Join the union; that’s one of my biggest things as a male teacher. I need backup and it’s my insurance policy as a male teacher.

The only person who ever suggested that I try to move up was my dad. It’s like, well, for one, I don’t want to, and second, where I’m from, it’s a small town and you can only work so far up.

It’s interesting. Like I said, coming from a small town, my dad has always been, ‘Oh, you better get your hair cut,’ because I had my hair long for a while when I was younger, and then it was short, and then I grew it back out again. But I’ve always felt welcomed. When I started, there was somebody at the time working here [and] he had long blue hair, and I was like if he’s accepted, then I’m obviously fine.

And then my beard. I’m not making a statement; I just don’t really care to shave. There’s been times where I’ve thought about shaving and my wife’s like, ‘Don’t do that.’

Usually, when people meet me and I tell them I’m a third-grade teacher, it’s not negative or anything. Usually, it’s just, Huh, that’s cool.

Bill Mrkich is forty-five years old and lives in Las Vegas. He has been a teacher for twenty-six years, always in the primary grades.

This will be my twenty-sixth-year teaching. I did three years in California and then this is my twenty-second year here in Las Vegas. I’m teaching second grade now. I’m looping up with my kids; last year, I taught them first grade.

I went to college and I was starting my freshman year and I didn’t know what I was going to do; I just did electives and then I decided, let’s just go be a teacher. Just one year, I decided that was what I was going to do.

I always wanted to work in the primary grades. It’s just because that’s where kids need male teachers the most. When I think about K-5, a lot of the kids don’t have male role models. I’ve worked in Title I schools my whole life, so I’ve always been at low-income, at-risk schools. It’s fun. At that age, [kids] want to learn still and they want to be there.

I got my bachelor’s in Elementary Ed from the University of Montana. Then I got my masters from the University of Phoenix. Then, I got another master’s in Administration and Supervision from Phoenix.

When I was working on my bachelor’s, there were probably about ten males in a class of around fifty. It just depends if you’re going to a secondary elementary. Some of those guys were looking to be PE teachers.

When I got my degree, I did my student teaching in California, and before that ended, I had already signed a contract to teach there for my student teaching. I did my student teaching in first grade and then I stayed in first grade…

At that school, there were five of us teachers who were males out of, maybe, thirty teachers. The principal was male but the assistant principal was a female. I would say that the other male teachers and I sort of bonded together.

That early education is dominated by women never concerned me. What did worry me was: Am I always going to have more males than females in my classroom? Like is it going to be equal or is always going to be…am I gonna always have more behavioral [problem] kids? And, yes, that turned out to be the case. I did have a lot more boys. Even to this day, I have a lot more boys and I always question that.

I do like to make sure [my classes] are more or less even in the gender of students. It’s hard to have a whole group of either. I’ve had a whole bunch of girls and only five boys in my class too, but I’d much rather have half and half.

It did used to be that I had all the discipline problems. But the principal did point out that’s because I’m strict. I don’t play games. I’m fair but I’m not going to beat around the bush. It’s just this is how it is. Some people think that’s not elementary school but it needs to be done. And now it needs to be much more because of COVID. These kids are so far behind. Research is showing that it could take five, maybe six years, for kids to catch up.

I’ve never had problems with parents. I think parents know my reputation. So, a lot of parents want me to be their child’s teacher because of word-of-mouth. But, also, there are some parents that don’t want me because I’m male. They’d rather have someone that’s loving and caring. And I’m not saying I’m not loving and caring, it’s just, that if a kid breaks a rule, there is a consequence. I’m not like Here’s a sticker, don’t do it again.

But by the second week, third week, we have to get…let’s get this going. I don’t baby kids. In the real world, I always tell the kids, there’s not someone always there tying your shoes. With COVID being done, there is no more mommy and daddy. If you’re going back to school, you’re not going to have someone sitting there feeding you or babying you.

But no parent has ever said anything, at least not to my face [though] maybe to my administrator before.

Used to be that I was never in a classroom with my door closed ever. But, now, I know what the safety reasons and protocols are after the school shootings around the county. So, now, you’re supposed to have your door locked at all times. It’s kind of hard being a male teacher, now, because it’s like I don’t have anything to hide but you’re always [now] behind that closed door. Before, I always had my door open. It wasn’t wide open. I’d have it propped open just a little bit so people could see in or out. But now, unfortunately, that’s not the case; all doors have to be locked.

You have to be careful, especially these days. For example, you can do side hugs but not front hugs. And there’s a lot of fist bumping. That’s with COVID, too. That was a good thing. That’s our high five; you just have to be cautious.

And I work to make sure I treat all my students—boys and girls—the same way.

[…]

And, yes, I have to handle some of the discipline [cases] and I’m your Safety Committee for security reasons. That was not something I wanted but I couldn’t decline. It was an other duties as assigned situation. So, for that, even when I was a coach, I always had to have a radio on me. Even when I was teaching lessons, I had to have my radio on at all times, which was annoying. Because you’re supposed to be teaching…

If you walked in my classroom, [everything] is colorful, very elementary-ish. The only thing that is not is my Montana Grizzlies poster. Other than that, when you’re in this profession, kids don’t want to see that other stuff. It’s a kid’s environment.

I think that men do have a different perspective on things in teaching in the primary grades… Maybe that there are different ways the kids learn. They always said that boys learn differently and they do. You can talk to a lot of women teachers [and] they’d much rather have a classroom of girls; girls learn faster. And because of that, boys can get shortchanged in the lower grades, 100%. And having more male teachers is, partially, the cure for that.

I’m straight and I’ve never had anyone make assumptions about me. I work with some gay people in the lower elementary grades, maybe a handful. I know a lot of them have moved out of Clark County and went to live in Oregon. I know a couple of them had problems with parents questioning them…

When people meet me and find out I’m an elementary school teacher, they’re often like, Oh wow!, and then they thank me for doing it. So, they’re a little surprised but they’re happy about it. Even they know the need for more males down in the elementary level.

It’s kind of funny. I’ve had student teachers that are men, and it’s not easy. Some of them might think it’s an easy job. Then they have a real eye-opening.

I’ve tried to recruit [more men] but some of them don’t make it. It’s not for everybody. I would never say to anybody to do this job because we are not respected. We are not. I mean, this is the deal. This is not what it’s supposed to be. There’s no respect for educators. It’s where we are in the world right now.

But I do have an impact, I believe. At the end of the day, I can look back and say maybe I screwed a couple of things up but I can also say the kids are making a good choice…going to college and doing what they need to do.

I still talk to kids that were in my classes and that have graduated [and] they still reach out to me. So, I do have that impact. You know they say, ‘Thank you. And here’s an invitation to my wedding.’ This is where I’m at right now. I even have two girls that were in my class who are now teachers.

Though now an assistant principal at an elementary school, Harold Johnson, age thirty-seven, was a kindergarten and second-grade teacher for six years. He lives in South Carolina.

I wanted to be a teacher starting…since about my junior year in high school.

Freshman year, I thought I wanted to be a doctor. I took a biology honors class and didn’t do too well in it. Then, sophomore year, I took criminal justice classes. We watched a video and it showed a defendant in a courtroom pulling a gun and shooting the lawyer. I said, ‘I don’t want to take that risk.’ I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted to go. My mother then said, ‘Doctors help people, lawyers help people. Why not be a teacher who helps people?’ I was like, okay, that might be something.

In South Carolina, there’s early childhood education, elementary, and secondary education. I looked at it. Middle school age is one of the scariest ever for kids with hormones kicking in, so I didn’t want that. High school is mostly departmentalized and there was not one subject that I loved enough to teach all day. What was left was elementary and early childhood.

Again, in South Carolina, the elementary degree range is second grade to sixth grade. Sixth grade is middle school, so I didn’t even want that option. Early childhood was what was left. After I did more research, I thought about my experience in kindergarten and how curious five-year-olds are. I feel that’s the foundation where you learn everything else from. I was like, Hey, I can go in at an early age and make a bigger difference. So, at that point in time, I knew I wanted to teach kindergarten.

When I decided to teach, most of my female friends were like Oh and my guy friends were like, Why are you going to do that?. So, that was kind of a thing…

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I didn’t worry about being a man teaching those grades. I actually had a black male teacher when I was in kindergarten, so I knew it was possible.

In my high school, they offered an early childhood education class. But as I got through my coursework, I started to realize that it wasn’t common for men—it was me and twenty-three girls in class.

So, the first day, as we’re walking into class, the professor says, ‘Good morning. What are you doing here?’ That’s when I started realizing, Oh, okay. This is going to be different.

It was never a deterrent but it was something in the back of my head like, Okay, this is going to be a different journey. And the more I continued on that journey, I realized how different actually it was.

Yeah, being a male kindergarten teacher, not too many of us exist. Finally, I found some Facebook groups that I kind of reached out to and joined. So, my male friends, we can talk about sports and family, wife, kids, all that type of stuff, but I didn’t have any male teacher friends that I could talk to. So, now, anytime I hear about men in early childhood, I try to reach out and mentor them. I have two guys that I’m mentoring now. I just say, ‘Hey, if you need anything…’ I’ve walked that path. I know what it feels like. I know how lonely it can be.

My undergrad at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina, and graduated [with my master’s] from the University of South Carolina.

My freshman year, there were only three guys in the class and