Getting more men into teaching could help boys and young men
By Ryan Cho (he/him), teacher and author, Coquitlam
I’m a high school English teacher, and that — along with being one of a handful of people who can operate my school theatre’s sound board — affords me the pleasure and privilege of attending school and district-wide English events with relative frequency. This year, my school hosted our district’s Spoken Word Festival, which featured the best and brightest student poets and spoken word performers from across Coquitlam, Port Moody, and Port Coquitlam. As I sat in my padded chair behind the glowing lights and sliding faders of our sound board, I noticed a pattern so striking that I would have had to actively ignore it to miss: out of the 14 poets selected for the festival, 13 were girls and only 1 was a boy.
I noticed a similar pattern at our school’s English Department Awards ceremony a few months later. In every grade, the top English students were overwhelmingly (usually two-thirds) girls. For our graduating Grade 12 class, less than 25% of those recognized for excellence in English were boys. Our school publishes a book of student writing every year and out of the 25 writers included in the anthology, only 2 were male: 1 cis student and 1 trans student.
In almost every OECD country, boys are more likely to fall below basic proficiency levels — especially in reading and writing. (1)
What I noticed in my school and district has been observed by other teachers and academics over the last decade. In almost every OECD country, boys are more likely to fall below basic proficiency levels — especially in reading and writing. (1) In the average US school district, boys are about a grade level behind girls in literacy; boys are also 50% more likely than girls to fail in all three key school subjects: math, reading, and science. Boys also make up two-thirds of the lowest-performing students in high schools and less than one-third of the highest-performing ones. (2) In Canada, more boys (19%) fail to complete high school on time than girls (13%). (3)
The roots of these gendered learning gaps start in elementary school when children are young; literacy difficulties and school disengagement compound and make it difficult for young people to flourish in school when they get older.
Over my 20-year career supporting students in and out of the classroom, I’ve sponsored my school’s queer and feminism clubs, been involved with the teachers’ union at the local and provincial levels, am a founding member of two BIPOC teacher groups, and am a former co-chair of the BCTF Committee for Action on Social Justice. I write that to make clear that I see examining and addressing the ways boys and young men are underperforming and underrepresented in the education system as natural extensions of my previous work.
Something I’ve said in my feminist, antiracist, and queer-affirming work is that representation matters. The share of men who are teachers has declined over the last 30 years, from 30% to 23%, (4) resulting in fewer in-person masculine role models and male mentors in schools. The most recent BCTF membership survey in the 2024–2025 school year found 20.7% of respondents identify as men. Men are especially unlikely to teach young children: fewer than 3% of early childhood educators and Kindergarten teachers are men, compared to 20% in elementary and middle school. (5)
Increasing the number of male teachers — especially at primary levels — would positively affect the academic, social, and emotional success of boys and young men.
Data from the RAND institute reveals that high-income boys and young men are 30% more likely to have a male mentor to help them with schoolwork, relationships, and future plans compared to low-income ones. (6) Increasing the number of male elementary teachers would disproportionately help low-income boys by providing more access to nurturing male role models. I believe doing so would be a feminist act.
...the most effective way to counter Andrew Tate online, is to surround boys and young men with positive and caring male role models in real life.
There is concern right now about the impact of misogynistic influencers, and I want to suggest the most effective way to counter Andrew Tate online, is to surround boys and young men with positive and caring male role models in real life.
One obstacle to men becoming primary teachers is the presumption that men who wish to work with young children are predisposed to sexual predation. Queer and trans male teachers experience this more than straight and cis ones, though the stigma is common among men regardless of sexual orientation or trans status. (7) Normalizing the idea that people of all genders can and should work with children would help challenge and dismantle this stereotype and transgress patriarchal norms — for everyone.
The shortage of men in teaching is a gender-equity issue; however, when I raise the topic in teacher circles, some express concern that supporting more men to be elementary school teachers might result in fewer women as principals and vice-principals. Barriers to women in leadership exist and we should continue to work on them, but it is also worth noting that women make up the majority of principals and vice-principals in BC at 57%, (8) while the gender balance for students is closer to 50/50. With that said, gender equity is not a zero-sum game. We can recruit and retain more male primary teachers and reduce barriers to women’s leadership at the same time.
There is a teacher short-age, and we need 20,000 more teachers to enter the education system over the next 10 years. Attracting more men to the profession is one way to address this shortage and reduce pressure on women and non-binary teachers. It would be a win-win. We know the importance of ratios for counsellors and learning assistance teachers — it was a priority in our last round of collective bargaining. A similar principle applies to ratios for men, women, queer, and BIPOC people within the system.
There are concrete steps we can take to recruit more male teachers: hiring targets, mentorship and support programs, and targeted financial aid. We know this works — it’s the model we’ve used to successfully bring more women into STEM.
In 2023, the BCTF AGM debated a motion to address the increase in gender disparity in the teaching profession. That motion didn’t pass. Perhaps it is time to revisit the issue of attracting and recruiting more male teachers — specifically at the primary levels — not for the sake of the grown men who might fill those roles, but to better support the boys and young men who are growing up in our care.
About the author
Ryan Cho is the author of Brotherhood is a Constant Possibility: Asian Masculinity in a World Made for Whiteness, to be released September 2026.
1 M. Encinas-Martín & M. Cherian, Gender, Education and Skills: The Persistence of Gender Gaps in Education and Skills, OECD Publishing, 2023: doi.org/10.1787/34680dd5-en
2 R. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It, Brookings Institution Press, 2022.
3 Statistics Canada, “High school graduation rates in Canada, 2016/2017 to 2019/2020,” Government of Canada, 2022: www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/81-599-x/81-599-x2022002-eng.htm
4 R. Reeves, Missing misters: Gender diversity among teachers, American Institute for Boys and Men, 2024: aibm.org/research/missing-misters
5 R. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It, Brookings Institution Press, 2022.
6 R. Bozick & J. Wenger, The Limited Presence of Male Mentors in the Lives of Boys and Young Men, RAND, 2025: www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4451-1.html
7 C.A. Moss-Racusin & E.R. Johnson, “Backlash against male elementary educators,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 46(7), 379–393, 2016: doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12366
8 C. Kennedy, “Gender and the Superintendency,” Culture of Yes, 2021: cultureofyes.ca/2021/07/06/gender-and-the-superintendency
