A group of seven fifth-graders clambered around the lunch table at Talbott Springs Elementary School in Columbia, eagerly awaiting their chance to arm-wrestle parent Mark Scott.
"Look at these guns," Scott jokingly taunted the students as he pointed at his bicep.
Starting with his 10-year-old son, Jonathan, Scott gave each one of the students an opportunity to take a shot, with no success. The kids didn't mind. And Scott loved every minute of it.
Scott has been coming to the school once a month on Mondays, his day off from work, as part of the Watch DOGS (Dads of Great Students) program, which encourages fathers or adult males to spend the day at school, where they do everything from assisting teachers with lessons to eating lunch with students.
It's one of an increasing number of programs in Howard County and across the state that are bringing men into the classroom, helping overcome a traditional bias about gender roles in schools and exposing children to a wider range of role models and mentors.
"We have a huge issue with the availability of males in the classroom at the elementary and middle school," said state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick.
A program like Watch DOGS "doesn't just benefit young men, it also benefits young women," Grasmick said. "Many of them are growing up in households without positive male role models."
Joyce L. Epstein, director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at the Johns Hopkins University, has seen a major push to increase the male presence in schools in the eight years she has been able to track such data.
"People really want to increase involvement and make it helpful for students," she said. "It's not involvement for involvement's sake."
Last year in Baltimore, city schools chief Andr?s Alonso challenged the community to produce 500 volunteers to work in the school system after several high-profile violent incidents occurred in and around Baltimore schools. More than 1,400 people expressed interest in volunteering. Of those, 500 passed the screening process; 40 percent of the volunteers were male.
In Anne Arundel County, the second annual African-American Young Men's Conference was held last month at Broadneck High School in Annapolis. More than 30 men ran seminars for the students that addressed financial literacy, health and fitness, and applying for college financial aid. The conference was run by the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, which has provided mentoring at a number of schools in the county. African-American fraternities have traditionally had a strong presence in working with students in the region and across the nation.
