Drinking beer with the masters
All over the country, meet-ups are taking place to interest and retain men in primary education. “Do you think that the image of that one pathetic man among all those women in the teacher's room should be different? Then arrange that.”
Yes, they have also started laser tagging, the masters of the Opspoor school board. And they sometimes drink as men among themselves. At the schools, this often results in reactions such as: "You will definitely be drinking beer with the men again?"
Coen Schans, supra-school coordinator of education and IT at Opspoor can laugh about that. “It's what we do. We do go to the pub now and then and then it's okay to talk about football for an hour. But in the end it is also about education. Beautiful conversations arise in a relaxed atmosphere."
In Purmerend and the surrounding area, about fifteen to twenty male teachers have been forming Opspoor Meestert! for the past three years, a network that is in contact via Microsoft Teams and that wants to contribute to more gender diversity in education. And Opspoor is not unique in this. Masters from different school boards also come together in Rotterdam, Haarlem, Groningen, Arnhem and Amsterdam.
Over time, more and more men joined, until we asked ourselves the question: what do we want?
About six years ago, the Boor Foundation took the initiative in Rotterdam to bring masters together. Mark van Zoest, a group 5 teacher at primary school De Schalm in the Rotterdam district of Katendrecht, was also present at the first drink. “There was laughter, discussion and a bit of grumbling,” he says. “Over time, more and more men joined in, until we asked ourselves: what are we really? What do we want?”
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The name Meestert was conceived and with it an equally Rotterdam vision. “That is: don't talk but polish”, says Van Zoest. Because the framing he knows all too well. “That you can't make a career in education, for example. That you earn a meager salary. And that is why it is not interesting for men to work there.” Against that image, the teachers of Rotterdam Meestert! to do something.
“Is the image of work pressure and no growth opportunities correct? Aren't we already getting paid fairly well? Are there not now opportunities to negotiate? Especially if you are ambitious, you are spoiled for choice because of the teacher shortage. That has to be disseminated. And more importantly, what can we do ourselves to change that image? Do you think that the image of that one pathetic man among all those women in the teachers' lounge should be changed? Then arrange that.”
Master and a half
An initiative of the Rotterdam Mastert is the project 'Mother and a half'. Van Zoest gave in one working day a week to volunteer in the groups of fellow masters from the Meestert network (the Rotterdam Whatsapp group has about 65 people). He thinks along about other ways of administration, about solutions for dealing with difficult behavior and he gets ideas for his own educational practice.
Coen Schans is education and IT coordinator at Opspoor public education. "It's nice to spar with other men when you work in a team with mainly women."
Naming that there is such a thing as a male gaze is sensitive
In this way, masters know that they are really there, colleagues who can think along with a 'masculine view'. “Some people have been sitting in their classrooms with the door closed for decades. While you win so much when you open your door and look into each other's kitchen.”
It is sensitive to say that there is such a thing as a male gaze, Schans knows. “Of course one approach is not better than the other. And women don't necessarily cope with typical boy behavior less well. The point is that it can be nice to spar with other men if you work in a team with mainly women. Just so you know: I do have men around me to whom I can present something from my group.”
Professional pride
The Arnhem master network has ten to fifteen active men. Some actions involve twenty to twenty-five men. “We do everything”, says Nol Heinen, teacher of group 8 at the Abacus. “From drinking a beer together in the pub, to organizing a children's book evening in collaboration with the children's bookshop to talk about youth literature.”
Absolute spearhead: promoting professional pride. “By dropping a drop here and there, we want that professional pride to become a huge oil slick that spreads,” he says. The goal: to convince boys that there is also a place for them in education.
Important in this respect is the collaboration with the teacher training college of the Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen, where masters are present on every open day to make secondary school students enthusiastic about the profession.
Being able to tell sixteen and seventeen year olds about what it's really like to be in front of a class gives me energy
“We get the energy to be at such an open day on our Saturday off, from the contact with each other, from the group. But also from what we do: radiate that we are proud of our profession. Being able to tell sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds about what it's really like to be in front of a class gives me energy. I often say: 'John, just come and see what we're doing.' Because then they can form their own image.”
At the beginning of the academic year, the masters also give a lecture to all first-year masters in training, in which they talk about the profession, their passion.
Fresh
“Recently someone asked what we have achieved with Meestert, what the yields are,” says the Rotterdam master Van Zoest. "I do not know. I don't know what we have contributed to a better male-female ratio. But at least something is moving. We throw pebbles.”
His group 5 also benefits from this. “As opposed to patiently watching things go the way they go, because those people are also there in education, I do the things that keep me fresh. We talk to each other, which keeps me inspired. And that's very healthy for my group. That they have a master who keeps his world great.”
From the Rotterdam master network, Meestert! a foundation that supports masters who want to unite to contribute to a more balanced male-female ratio in education. “Put simply, it is a community, a WhatsApp group with masters, lateral entrants, students and other men who work in education,” says Edwin Borger. “One community has sixty members, the other maybe sixteen. In such a group, any man from education can ask questions. A student who gets stuck with a study assignment, a lateral entrant who is looking for a school where he can attend for a few days, a teacher who is looking for help in dealing with certain behavior in his group.” The initiators of the men's network were inspired by the documentary Schorem. Borger: “It follows male hairdressers who wanted to change the image of their profession and who ultimately put the profession of barber back on the map. This method really appealed to us. Masters! belongs to masters. If masters take up their craft themselves and determine their fate in it, then something can really change.”
Would you like more information, or form a local network? Go to mastert.nl.
