ROGERS — Men who teach are a minority in elementary classrooms.
Seven percent of the elementary teachers in Rogers are men. Some elementary schools, such as Bonnie Grimes Elementary School, have several men teaching classes; others have one. Sometimes one of those men is a physical education coach who works at more than one school.
Elementary schools need teachers who are men, said Grimes Principal Debra Lewis. Many of her students are missing the influence of a man who is a positive role model.
As a child, that was Ryan Quintana.
“A lot of people didn’t think I’d finish high school,” said Quintana, a fifth-grade teacher at Grimes.
The bracelets Quintana wears represent his past and his future. On his right wrist plastic letters spell his nickname, “Rook,” and the address to his childhood apartment in New Mexico.
On his left wrist is a silicone wristband that reads “Teach from the heart,” surrounded by bracelets with a string of letters representing the first names of the children he teaches. He never takes them off.
Looking at his students, he sees reflections of the boy he was, raised by a single mom without a lot of money. He never thought he’d be a dad to so many at such a young age.
When he was a senior in high school, a teacher named Dexter Hawkins challenged him to go to college.
“College is for rich, smart people and I’m none of those,” Quintana remembers telling him.
Hawkins told him if he could make it as boy from the streets of New Jersey, then Quintana had no excuse. That is a lesson Quintana hopes to pass on.
“I want to prove to people that no matter where you’re from, rich or poor, you can make it. Anything is possible,” he said.
His teaching license is for kindergarten through eighth grade. Quintana teaches fifth grade, and science students rotate through his classroom.Middle school children are at a turning point, but he likes elementary school because those children are new to everything, he said. “Life is hard,” he tells students. “Work through it.”
“Being a guy, a lot of these boys look up to me,” Quintana said.
A balance of men and women is useful in schools, said Michele Linch, executive director of the Arkansas State Teachers Association.
“As far as learning, a good teacher is a good teacher,” Linch said.
Last year, Linch was teaching at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Arkansas Tech University in Russellville. She watched male students pick middle school and high school certifications because that would allow them to teach what they love: English, history and math.
“In the elementary, they are just scarce,” Linch said.
The Rogers district receives more applications from women than men, said Roger Hill, assistant superintendent for human resources.
“We don’t think that’s really different for Rogers than any other part of the state or the nation,” he said.
Teaching isn’t really thought of as a “masculine” job, said Rodney Fulton, a fifth-grade teacher at Russell D. Jones Elementary School, but he doesn’t see himself as a minority.
“It’s like something we don’t even think about,” he said.
His first job in education was as a high school guidance counselor in 1973.
In his 40s, he went back to school and became certified in elementary education. He became the first man to teach kindergarten in Rogers after his principal asked if he would take the class for a year.
He taught kindergarten for eight years. Fulton has since taught every elementary grade. Elementary education allows him to watch children discover, he said.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 12/25/2012