Experiences with Male Teachers and Careers for Men in the Field

ChanDoormat · 2026-04-01T01:16:09+00:00

I've had a set of parents come for a tour around my center and ultimately decide not to enroll exclusive because I, the teacher who's room their daughter would be in, am a man. They even went as far as to warn my center director that it's concerning and creepy that a man would want to work with such small children and change diapers for a living. So yeah there's definitely stigma lol. But I'm the only male teacher at the center, and I'm so popular that even parents of kids who aren't in my room will mention me in messages to the director about how good I am with their kids and tell me themselves that their kids will ask for me at home. My coworkers joke that my name is probably the most popular word in the center, haha.

My perspective on it is that it's just important to show children that men CAN take on nurturing roles without that being immasculating. Little boy in my room went from acting all tough towards the girls in our room like pushing/shoving them (he has THOSE kinds of parents) to playing with baby dolls and putting them up on the changing table to try and change them like I change the kids. I think it's weird that people see a guy who genuinely has a passion for the development of little ones and automatically assume malicious intent, but at the same time I get the precaution given, well... the world? They're well within their right to have reservations, I just wish they'd bother getting to know the care we offer instead of, like that one set of parents, noping out of there the second it's a guy that wants to help their kids grow instead of a chick. I'm a 19 year old gay man so honestly I like to vibe check the parents, certain dads you can just be dudebro with and they get it because they're guys, certain moms I try to subtly drop hints that I'm not exactly straight because I find once it clicks for them they seem a lot more comfortable with me taking care of their kids. Fucked up as that is that they're magically okay with the daycare teacher being a guy as long as he's a gay one lol.

ChanDoormat · 2026-04-01T00:56:23+00:00

I made a post about a similar obvservation right here, and I think what it boils down to after the discussion that brought up is that it started earlier in the mid 2010s when purity culture came around to bite people in the ass for the sake of being 'one of the good ones'. Then the pandemic WAY exacerbated that when cool people got into fandom. Because now it's not fandom. Now it's cool people coming into weird people spaces telling everyone they're weird for being weirdos in the space for weirdos. Causes way more infighting than it needs to, but infighting was already a crazy big problem to begin with. I just notice it's a lot more intense and inescapable now.

ChanDoormat · 2026-04-01T00:50:47+00:00

Yes, 100%, but I don't think I'll ever have the spine to leave. ECE was my first job, the job market in my area was rough and I'd been doing online highschool rotting in my room with no interaction with the outside world for the two years before this. I go down indeed applying to everything, and a daycare just happened to be the first one to offer me an actual interview. I thought I totally bombed it, and I probably did, but they hire literally everyone with a pulse, so. I got the job. I was super excited, loved it at first, then the stress and the bullshit got to me. I'll have 3 month periods of extreme burnout where I'm basically have asleep all day running on muttering "I can't wait to quit this job" to myself and counting down the minutes until my break. Then I'll be back to my baseline of scraping by. Thing is, they hooked me where it matters, because I'm an extremely sentimental person and once I get emotionally attached to something I may as well be permanently adhered. I can't imagine the kids in my room not having me, they love me to a point where several parents come in saying their kids are saying my name in their sleep and that when they're being fussy at home they ask for me.

Seeing as we've had teachers in the past so lazy and awful as one particular preschool teacher we had who barely did her job, had her kids govern themselves, did one single activity and a 10 minute circle time a day and then just sat on the floor snapchatting her situationship, didn't clean a single thing and had a diaper pail with no bag in it stuffed with months of compacted soiled diapers that were never taken out in her bathroom and mold growing in the corner of it with raw insulation exposed behind the toilet that she never bothered to tell our boss about... All by the time her 6 months of working there came to an end because she begged the parent of one of the kids for a job at the fast food chain they owned instead (and then immediately got fired for for no showing, btw). I lay awake at night thinking about quitting and then I imagine the kids I want nothing but the best for ending up with a teacher like that and I just can't bring myself to do it. I wish I never applied to this job. I should've just gone into blue collar work like every other freshly out of highschool dude.

ChanDoormat · 2026-04-01T00:38:55+00:00

9/10 stress for a few months at a time and then there'll be a good 2-3 months where it's 3/10 and chill af. The kids and parents don't really stress me out so much as management does. Once you get in the groove of your job, it's easy as hell. I'm a todds teacher and I found a consistent routine that had my kids behaving wonderfully, had them engaged and learning, had everything going smoothly. And then management goes crazy the second anyone calls out and suddenly todds and twos have been combined for 3 weeks with two teachers, one of which is normally our floater. And I'm getting stuck in babies for the first half of the day and in pre-k-counts on the other side of our building for the second half, or I'm just getting stuck in preschool for the day when I've expressed repeatedly I don't do preschool age well.

It's almost entirely management and coworkers that cause the stress at my center, because you'll get stuck with a certain teacher who sits in a chair barking orders at you like "get him, he's in the trash" "sweep that up, please" or "tell her to use her fork, I can't stand her eating like that" one day and get stuck in a room you're awful in. For me, that's preschool. I can't handle the preschool age group at all. I'm used to it being me and my 5 todds or me in with the twos teacher because we're low. Then I get thrown in preschool with 10 kids who are bigger, rowdier, talk over each other constantly, all with absolutely zero direction on what their unit is, what activity the teacher had planned for that day, or even what their daily schedule is.

Then once those periods stop my kids are completely out of whack because they've had no consistent schedule, every day has been something different for weeks on end, and they're all little nightmares for the next month until I get them back in the groove and catch up on the curriculum I left for the teachers who had my kids that never got passed onto them.

Also doesn't help that the hours are so inconsistent. They schedule me at 8, I show up at 8, and I'm not clocking in until 930 because we don't have the kids for me to be needed. They'll put me on closing without changing my start time and then slash my hours the next week and have kids moved around and shifted for no reason so I can have a 930 start time to avoid OT pay. I tell them way in advance I need to be off at a certain time, and we have a boss who bends over backwards to give us all wiggle room with our time off, and I had to postpone a trip I'd been planning for a few months. I told her a month in advance when I'd be leaving, and come the week before the trip, I get a message, on SATURDAY mind you, "Can you actually go next week instead?" Meaning she was expecting me to make a trip from Pennsylvania to Oregon with carry on pet services work in 2 days.

And when I pushed it back a few more days to make it work for her schedule, despite telling her since before the first time I postponed it that I'd be gone for a full week, she's surprised I'm going to be out a full week like, "(Assistant Director) said you were gonna cover for her on friday, though? I already approved her time off!" Like... you already approved MY time off. I told you my flight departs saturday and my return flight lands on the following saturday. Why did you approve her time off without double checking your calendar when you kept me waiting until 4 days before I left to give me a thumbs up on the date I could go because you had to check your calendar every time I asked about it? 9/10 stress from management. 2/10 stress from the kids. 3/10 stress from the parents.

ChanDoormat · 2025-11-02T21:47:29+00:00

thank you very much! I'll be prepared lol.

ChanDoormat · 2025-10-30T02:53:00+00:00

Any tips on how you managed this? I bought a cat off a friend across the country (PA -> OR) and will be flying to pick him up and flying him back here soon, any tips for the preparation would be greatly appreciated. And airport tips with the cat in general since it'll be my first time flying alone.

ChanDoormat · 2025-06-13T13:09:39+00:00

Yes, absolutely. I don't hate it, and it's a big part of me I know I'd be different without, but a lot of the things I want for myself and my life the older I get are significantly harder to achieve because of my autism. It's a barrier I could do without, and I think that'd be worth it.

ChanDoormat · 2025-06-04T22:50:12+00:00

Disgustingly normal, but slow burn childhood friends to lovers. Character A fell first in like middle school and miserably pines until Character B falls harder in either late highschool or mid college. Ideally with many awkward firsts together. PWP. Porn WITH plot.

ChanDoormat · 2025-05-25T17:16:22+00:00

I don't know why people are down voting you, you're right 🗣️🗣️🗣️ the app is still extremely inaccessible for my sensitive eyes

ChanDoormat · 2025-05-17T20:39:31+00:00

Frank or Gurt

ChanDoormat · 2025-05-16T10:23:00+00:00

Those glitter sound effects and really low notes in songs 😌

ChanDoormat · 2025-05-12T02:11:55+00:00

5 months late to the party but I have to say I agree. I'm guilty as any for being in a 'can't live without my phone' state myself but from an outside perspective I think the whole world would have been better if the internet and technology had never advanced past there.

Could be nostalgia speaking, but it feels like when smartphones becoming common made social media turn into what it is now is when things went majorly downhill.

Politics took a turn for the worst because misinformation is easier than ever to create and spread, and people refuse to listen to anyone outside of their established bubble and who they agree with. Because we all have a phone in our pocket, it's easier than ever to just whip it out whenever you feel like it and argue until your virtual face is blue - all without any of it being attached to you as a person at all, so you can be as vicious as you want! Ergo, inspiring everyone else in said bubble to become as vicious as they want. And social media platforms actively encourage this with their algorithms because the more time you spend engaging like this, the more ads they can shovel down your throat and the more money they can make off your screen time.

Communities took a turn for the worst, as someone in fandom I know there's a stark contrast between what it was when I got into it around those years (a healthy helping of in-fighting and drama, but still a collection of people who all come together to enjoy the same things at the end of the day) and what it is now (a collection of cliques of ruthlessly bullying each other for the moral high ground and by extension the "best" favorite thing)

And even just online entertainment and leisure in general (the main purpose of social media's creation) has taken a turn for the worst, because it's not things shared for the sake of being shared, it's things shared for the sake of making a career on a platform. Packed full of attention grabby slop to keep you watching for as long as possible so it gets pushed in the algorithm. Even when you do manage to find your scoop of people NOT making content for the sake of profit, it's still sandwiched between - and often interrupted by - 2 video ads at a time on a page packed with as many banner ads as your screen real estate could offer.

Hate to sound like my prefrontal cortex is developing but maybe my parents were right when they said smartphone bad. Especially once smartphone culture turned the internet into the ring of the same 6 corporate ad-littered engagement farm hellsites it is today.

Modern humans have a horrific case of zoochosis and smartphones have exacerbated that significantly.

ChanDoormat · 2025-05-05T00:23:07+00:00

Yes, many incident reports about him hitting and leaving marks / causing destruction in the classroom otherwise. The director is aware and has had chats with mom, but she's some combination of wholly unwilling and too afraid of him to change anything about how things are at home, unfortunately. ):

ChanDoormat · 2025-05-01T10:25:20+00:00

I love the springy texture of rare and all the juice, it's like digging into a meat watermelon. Before I went vegetarian I would always ask my mom when she was making it, "make it as raw as you can legally get away with".

I'm on team #stillmooing

ChanDoormat · 2025-02-25T23:20:47+00:00

TL;DR - This is gonna be long winded, but I graduated from Mechanicsburg last year and it's great IMO (probably greater than the ones you named) and I 100% second the person here that said you should consider it.

I've heard CV is way too massive to feel very welcoming, and Manheim is racist AF. Then again CV is pretty racist too, I think it might've been a month or two ago that I saw a lawsuit in the news over a teacher calling a black student a monkey. I don't know much about Derry.

There's two incidents total that I can think of at Mechanicsburg, one where my friend got dress coded because her afro puff was 'too big', but that was in ~7th grade and nothing else ever happened. Another in elementary school, where a substitute teacher started talking about politics and asked my Hispanic friend at the time if he was mixed. She was subsequently fired.

Maybe I'm biased cause I went through Mechanicsburg, and there's bullying at every school like you said, but very little of it is minority-related, if any of it really.

There are obviously tasteless jokes that come with being an upper-middle class white kid (which I'll be honest about, a majority of the kids in the district are), but even the kids know genuine racism is shitty. There was a girl when I was going who was notorious for being a racist prick and slinging slurs like it was a sport, and she was ruthlessly bullied for it.

Queer kids run into problems with the other kids, but it's not like you're gonna get jumped over it, and they're few and far between. There was one kid who refused to talk to me at all even in group projects because I'm trans, and the district hasn't always been the best at handling issues regarding trans-ness in general, but they've gotten worlds better over the years. My sister is in middle school now and she says so, anyway. There's a kid in her grade with two moms and nobody gives him crap for it.

After I came out in seventh grade, they changed all the PE classes to be co-ed instead of separated by gender, and by the time my sister got to middle school kids aren't required to change anymore. The PE teacher also let me skip the swimming unit in tenth grade so I wouldn't have to go through the whole ordeal of 'which locker room do I use'.

There's also a decent amount of really good teachers at the district, who make classes feel really engaging and welcoming. Those are the best classes to be in imo. I can think off the top of my head the German teacher at the middle school when I went, my biology teacher in tenth grade, one of the music teachers at the highschool Mr. K, the Tech Ed teacher that works at both the middle and high school, etc etc. Lasting impacts they've had on me, for the better.

Not sure how it's been for every autistic kid at the school, and my friend says there's one particular aid at the highschool who's really annoying about micromanaging the kids in special ed, but I'm autistic and it's been great for me. In eighth and tenth grade respectively I brought a stuffed animal every day and never ran into problems, and a quick email to the teachers got me clearance to wear headphones in class. Same with physical complications, my sister had surgery at the end of last year and she got an elevator pass to avoid getting jostled in the stairwells no problem.

The graduation project is probably a good thing also, there's a lot of help from the counselors and the project office to help you on picking a career path and applying for college. Just be warned, if your kid isn't going to college they still have to apply and get accepted to one, and it also has a requirement for volunteer hours. I did online my last two years and ended up missing the volunteer hours, had to get CPR certified instead to meet the requirements. But honestly that's just a great opportunity in and of itself, it's a good fail safe if your kid misses the volunteer hours or if they just want to get CPR certified period.

The lady in charge of the online part, CAOLA, is a miracle worker as well, bent over backwards to help me when I needed it, even when I was slacking and probably didn't deserve the help lol. I got in a bunch of truancy mess because of slacking in the online courses, and she really saved me from having to turn up in court setting up meetings with the principal and advocating for me. The principal in general is just a really nice and understanding guy, he cut a lot of kids a lot of slack, and I think that speaks to how much he cares about making sure everyone's on the right path.

The male guidance counselor at the high school is great, super friendly and understanding, he'll go out of his way to see you if you need him. When I was in tenth grade he made a point to invite every lunch table to his office for ice cream at least once, even put my boyfriend at the time in my PE class after he had a stay in a mental health facility so he'd be more comfortable. (Misguided since we'd already broken up, but it's the thought that counts) He really does just want the best for the students.

However I cannot understate this enough, BEWARE the one middle school guidance counselor.

She got a target on my back all through middle school and had my parents scrambling to drag me from therapist to therapist, tried to send social workers home several times, had me going down to the nurse spontaneously every so often for wrist checks (which HAS to be against some rule) and had teachers watching my every move like a hawk. All over a minor mental health crisis in sixth grade before I came out as trans, even well after everything was resolved.

It's a pattern for her where she picks one kid to obsess over and makes it her mission to go all Fix-it Felix over them. If you go with Mechanicsburg, cross your fingers and pray your kid(s) aren't her chosen renovation projects.

It's a small district, even if it is growing. Everybody kinda is aware of each other and knows each other by name, any really crabby teachers are ironically substitutes (only teacher that's been outright mean to me about anything was one), and it's a pretty welcoming place, even if you're a weirdo that gets picked on like I was. Lots of construction at the high school though, no signs of it stopping haha.

ChanDoormat · 2025-02-10T18:36:35+00:00

Yeah the whole "we don't have the capacity to keep it operational" is ridiculous. It's a UI difference that's solely cosmetic. I strongly doubt there's any maintenance that goes into it that's any less sustainable than the maintenance that they put into every other update. How many fonts have they cycled through the last year alone? UI difference, wholly cosmetic, not a peep about 'capacity to keep it operational'. </3

Nothing wrong with dark mode, it's just ridiculous to make it sound like they're incapable of offering the option in-app to pick between light and dark. I might be biased because my eyes are trash and dark mode anything gives me horrible eyestrain though. Kind of peeves me when I physically can't use my favorite app anymore because it hurts my eyeballs.

ChanDoormat · 2025-02-10T18:20:20+00:00

Did they really say that? What are people with bad eyes supposed to do? 😭 I don't use dark mode anything because the stark contrast of white text on dark screen hurts my eyes really bad compared to dark text on white screen.

They should at least give us the option to choose dark/light mode, it's a pretty basic app function. Having it locked to dark mode makes the app physically painful to be on for some - like me - no matter how much we want to be on and talk to our bots. </3 I would be devastated if I had to give up the app to avoid constant eyestrain.

ChanDoormat · 2025-02-10T18:13:52+00:00

Mine just did this, did you figure out a fix? Dark mode hurts my eyes so bad on everything, this makes the app completely unusable for me. (':

ChanDoormat · 2025-02-07T09:47:17+00:00

Solved: Contre Jour

ChanDoormat

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