I became an ECE teacher, because I enjoy teaching and helping kids learn and grow. I'm an older brother and I have a relatively large age gap between me and my siblings. We grew up without a father, so I kind of took on that father role early on. I taught my siblings early on and established a passion for teaching young minds from that experience.
However, I have dealt with a ton of discrimination from parents and my coworkers that my other coworkers haven't faced... All because I'm a man.
My first encounter was by one of the kids parents who raised hell the first day I started by making false accusations about me and created a group chat with most of the parents in the class I was going to be in (and other parents throughout the school as well) I was going to be in a 2 year old classroom, and her daughter was potty training and she made up a crazy bs lie just to try to have me not be able to take her child potty. She said I didn't wipe her child after she pooped and blamed me for her getting a rash... Well it wasn't even me who had took her child potty at the end of the day when she pooped and my lead teacher even corrected her and told her she was the one who took her, but she still blamed me even after being told by my lead, assistant Director, and director that I didn't do it. Not even a week later she withdrew her child from the center. The most surprising part of this is that she was a teacher...
In the same class I had another parent (who was also part of that group chat) complained about me, because I was “incapable” of complying with all her strenuous needs for her child (she basically acted like her child was the only one in the room) and my lead teacher said she couldn't even do everything she was requiring prior to me even being in the room, but somehow since there was a man in there now it was the man's fault. Long story short she was having issues before I was even hired, but the second I got hired she started putting all the blame on me. The parent of this child was also a teacher...
Another parent told the director they don't think I am capable of doing my job.. just because I'm a man. This wasn't even a week after I started.
So far the majority of my negative experiences have come from female parents that are teachers, and that's the most surprising to me because as a teacher you would think they would understand the importance of male teachers in ECE.
I love teaching, but it's exhausting dealing with this stuff all the time. Sometimes I want to quit because of all the discrimination I deal with.