The parents didn’t send their kids because there was a male teacher! Scoffing at the absurdity, my disgruntled father strolled into the house, booming with another story to share from his after-school program. As an elementary educator, he fills up our conversations at the dinner table about his daily interactions with the students and their parents; my usual routine consists of quiet nods and smiles. But this particular story got me curious. Thinking back to my own elementary days, I tried to remember my previous male classroom teachers and could only name one. Perhaps this is an anomaly! But, devoured by wonder, I later scoured Google for answers and encountered a shocking statistic: men only represent about ten percent of elementary school teachers nationwide. Only. Ten … Little is known about the effect of gendered traits on perceptions of male elementary educators. This paper presents the results of two experiments to fill this void. Experiment 1 explored the influence of gendered traits and teacher gender on perceptions of elementary educators. Participants (N = 246) were randomly assigned to view websites that varied gendered traits (communal, neutral, agentic) and teacher gender. When choosing a teacher for their child, individuals preferred either neutral or communal teachers to agentic teachers …

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• Psychology