When you walk in to your local school, how many male educators do you encounter?  There is a country-wide shortage of male teachers at all levels.  Most school systems employ a few male teachers, mainly in P.E. positions or administration positions.  But where are all the male science and math teachers?  Where are the male English teachers?  Even in traditionally male-oriented subjects such as agriculture science and woodshop there are more and more female teachers filling the roles.  Now, don't get me wrong, I believe that a woman can teach just as well as a man, even in those historically male-dominated disciplines, but I wonder what happened to all the men? The American Teacher journal recently ran an article about this very topic.  According to their research, only about 4,000 of 103,000 member of NEA were men.  Shocked?  I am not shocked, disappointed maybe.  Our children spend an enormous amount of their formative years in school where they are lead, influenced, and encouraged.  If you have children you know that girls and boys are very different, respond very differently to male and female authority figures, and need different types of role models.  Unfortunately for the boys in our school systems, they are hard pressed to find adult male role models who can fill the duties of leading, influencing, and encouraging. I think our society is to blame for the male-shortage in schools.  We have feminized the classroom and the profession by defining a good teacher as someone who nurtures and tends to her students as if they were her children and although, I think those qualities may make some women good teachers, I believe that the male characteristics of respect, responsibility and self-sufficiency are equally important to the success of male teachers.  Teaching has been labeled as a female's profession which causes a lot of men to seek other careers that will carry more respect in our society.  Our students desperately need more male role models in the academic arena, especially given rising number of absentee fathers.  Our society needs to redefine teaching as a warrior's profession that seeks men who are tenacious, strong, uncompromising, intelligent, and dedicated.  We need to encourage young men to value their education and the impact that they can have on some else's.  We need more men in our schools.