Not one of Peyton Bayless's third graders raised a hand on the first day of school when he asked a simple question. “How many of you have had a teacher who's a boy?” A student who had just transferred from another district told him flat out that he'd never had a male teacher in his life.

"I think it immediately strikes that there is a difference here," Bayless said. For the first week, some of his students called him Ms. Bayless out of habit, unsure quite what to make of the new arrangement. Others reached out to touch the hair on his arm, something a mentor warned him to expect. "You will notice so many little things," that mentor, veteran third-grade teacher Mr. McGee, told him before the school year began. A number of kids wanted hugs right away, Bayless suspects, because they don't have a man around at home. Others seemed more reserved for the first week or two as they adjusted to something unfamiliar.

For students who had never had a male classroom teacher, most of these eight and nine-year-olds, hearing a male voice from the front of a classroom is only part of what makes Bayless's first year memorable. A Benton native who attended Benton schools from kindergarten through high school, he headed to Southern Illinois University planning to design buildings, not teach in one. Architecture lasted a single semester. "Didn't love it as much as I thought I did," he said. He drifted toward engineering before volunteering with the Benton football program tipped the scales. "That's kind of when it clicked," he said. "Coaching is basically teaching. I really enjoy this."

Choosing education at SIU meant an extra semester of school, time he resented in the moment but he would do it the exact same way again because it gave him a valuable perspective. After graduating from SIU, virtually every day was spent substituting across nearly every grade in the district, from kindergarten through middle school. Peyton would tell everybody who wants to teach to take the time to substitute, and it might help figure out which grade is a good fit. By the time a third grade position opened, he already understood the routines. By the time he signed a contract, he’d already learned bathroom break schedules, which teaching strategies worked, and more.

Third grade, he decided, sits in a sweet spot. Younger students still need their shoes tied and can't quite keep pace with a joke. Older ones, he found while student teaching a fifth grade classroom in West Frankfort, start talking back. "They're right in that sweet spot," he said of his current students, old enough to reason and laugh along, young enough to still want to please him.

Football remains close to Bayless's life outside the classroom. He's an assistant varsity coach at Benton High School, a volunteer coach for middle school basketball, and new this year, helping with junior high track. Coaching alongside John Cook, who once coached him in basketball himself, has been a particular joy. "I get to be back in the room with people who coached me," he said, "just listening and learning from people who are smarter than I am."

Bayless credits much of his path to people who never left, from his current mentor Olivia Jones to former teachers like his fourth-grade instructor who now teaches kindergarten down the hall. He hopes to give some of that back. Someday, he'd like to become Benton's head football coach, a goal the program's current head coach knows about and has encouraged as he helps Bayless learn more about what goes into leading a program.

For now, Bayless is content building something simpler: a classroom where being the first man some of his students have ever learned from feels less like a novelty and more like just another Tuesday. "This place has given me everything," he said of his hometown. Sticking around to return the favor, one third grader at a time, suits him just fine.