What is the Male Teacher Effect?

TED is an organization that allows people to talk about anything and everything. From how to hack a Wii remote to use as a smart board to a remarkable story of a girl who had a double lung transplant and still sings opera dispite all the complications. The talks are motivating and informative at the same time. They are avaliable on iTunes if you would like to subscribe and I suggest listening to at least a couple. Anyways, a topic two days ago caught my eye. A woman Ali Carr-Chellman gave a speech about how the education needs to take a look at how boys are losing interest in school much earlier. Now me wanting to be a teacher and wanting to really help the guys who see biology as lame or as a waste of their time, this really struck me. One point of hers in particular was that there is a lack of male teachers in the classroom and how this is affecting the boys learning ability and confidence. Also, how the abundance of female teachers and the lack of males effects a young boys drive to learn in the classroom. The Male Teacher Effect is a term I created to describe this phenomena. Over the next posts I will go into what exactly turns an abnormally larger number of boys away from learning then girls and also how a positive male influence in the classroom from an early age can help to improve overall learning of young boys. I will also look at what steps can be taken and what steps are be taken to reengage young boys in learning and become life time learners.