‘We’re one of the hidden gems’
Teacher didn’t see others like him. Now, he’s packing the school with role models.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Michael Hayes grew up in rural Georgia in the mid-1970s with one beef: few of his elementary school teachers looked like him.
“My dad would tell me, ‘you can complain about it or do something about it,” Hayes said.
Decades later, he did. Hayes is a fifth grade, multi-lingual teacher at Hidden Valley Elementary. The school sits on Snow White Lane in Charlotte, and it’s where the 51-yearold Hayes started Men Count — a program that calls on men to volunteer in the school. While he can’t change the professional pipeline by himself, he’s doing his best to get more male representation in classrooms.
“There is an under representation of men in our profession,” Hayes said. “Children need to see people who look like them. They need that exposure.”
Every three months, more than 40 men from around Charlotte — businessmen, city officials, police officers, educators and others — go into Hidden Valley and help kindergarten children cut out shapes, read to second graders, eat lunch with first graders or are recess buddies.
“They come in and spend time with the children,” Hayes said. “And both the men and the children love it.”
Fewer male educators in elementary schools
Hayes, a teacher at Hidden Valley for the past 17 years, attended Grambling State University in Louisiana and graduated with a degree in elementary education.
But the profession first found him when he was in the fifth grade.
“I remember when I would get finished with my work, my teacher would let me go work with the first graders at my school,” Hayes said. “I loved it. I knew right then I wanted to be a teacher.”
His chosen path was an answer to a national concern: the number of male educators, particularly at the elementary school level, lags behind female educators. Educationnc, an education-focused news and research organization, reported last year male educators in North Carolina elementary schools remained within the range of 9% to 10% over a 50-year period starting in 1975.
About 76% of all public school teachers were female and 24% were male, the most recent data shows, with a lower percentage of male teachers at the elementary school level (11%) than at the secondary school level (36%), according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Hidden Valley has a student population of 948. Of the student body, 67% is Hispanic and 32% is Black. There are about 100 staff members. Of those, 13% are male.
“We’ve actually increased the number of men,” said Principal Daniel Gray, who is in his fourth year at Hidden Valley.
“Men Count is helping, too, because some of our students are coming in without any male influence in their lives. When you have a model in front of you that looks like you, there’s that potential of that student saying, ‘I want to be him. That’s the kind of man I want to be.’ ”
‘Pack the building’
Men Count is exactly what Hayes envisioned a few years ago: a program
students at Hidden Valley love and one men don’t say “no” to.
Most of the men are from outside of the community and all walks of life, including an inventor, insurance salesman and University of North Carolina Charlotte educator. They come in for a day each quarter and buddy up with a student,
but Gray and Hayes want to grow the program so it’s monthly and girls and boys get to work with a volunteer.
“We want 948 folks,” Hayes said. “We could never have too many. We want to pack the building.”
Hayes and Gray say Men Count is not only boosting their students and inspiring
them, but the group of male volunteers is connecting the entire Charlotte community to Hidden Valley Elementary. It’s opened doors to partnerships across the city and helped defuse negative stereotypes of gangs and drugs that lingered around Hidden Valley in the ’90s.
“Men Count is helping
lift that dark cloud,” Gray said. “Hidden Valley is truly a community school. Families here believe the school belongs to them.”
The community deserves to be represented the right way, Hayes said.
“We’re one of the hidden gems,” Hayes said. “Now people are getting to come in and see that.”