Welcome to MMEET

The profound lack of men teachers — especially at the elementary level — remains a systemic problem in American culture, as well as in others, including China, Australia, India, and the United Kingdom*.

The Mizzou Men for Excellence in Elementary Education program, founded at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is dedicated to helping highly-motivated, articulate, skilled, compassionate men teachers succeed in the teaching of elementary school students. This is especially important, because only 9% of all of America’s elementary teachers are male.

This problem affects how males and females develop and how they interact with each other and their own children, influencing their personal and career decisions and the success they experience throughout their lives. Many people have identified the lack of male teachers as a problem, yet few institutions have addressed it like the University of Missouri–Columbia has, through the MMEET program:

MMEET participants learn through rich discussion, through the experience and advice of veteran men teachers; through selected research publications and informative web sites, videos, and other media; through experimenting with your own classes; through writing, reflecting, and sharing; and through interacting with like-minded individuals.

Graduates aim to serve as models for boys and men alike, who, for whatever reasons, never considered or may have quickly dismissed the idea that men can be superb teachers of young children, while also serving as much-needed male role models.

This program represents an alternative approach to defining what and who men and teachers are. This program represents an alternative approach within a culture that too often perpetuates the notion that boys and men should be silent, overly-active, aggressive, non-cooperative, non-collaborative, non-readers, and non-writers.

Please read about the program's first year in Ed Life's Boys Can Cry and in Newsweek's Come Back Mr. Chips. 

Welcome to this innovative, unique program and best wishes,
Roy F. Fox, PhD
Director and Founder, MMEET