Teaching became a female job around the early 1900s, but I don't remember why now... I need to find it again.

I once had a male teacher when I was 12 or something like that, he managed to engage both male and female students with pure awesomeness.

Also when male students had a problem, this teacher was the automatic go-to one.

Later during the end years of the school, I went to a elite one focused to get people into university no matter what (yet in my year 90% failed, while all previous years they had a 90% of success, and the only change is that on my year affirmative action went into effect), then I had balanced male and female teachers, usually the male teachers were way more popular (sometimes too much... ie: one of them got fired multiple times for having sex with female students, and then hired back because students demanded him back...), maybe because as you said, they tended to allow people do random shit (in fact, sometimes they joined the fray too, one teacher destroyed a lamp by accident after throwing a shoe across the room), but were also hard to crack down if needed (the sex with students teachers only once threw people out of the class in about 15 years of career, two female students that insisted in chatting REALLY LOUD and after it bothered him too much, he said: "Ugly near the fat, you two, out", after the news of that incident spread few people ever bothered in challenging him again, since it was quite clear he was ruthless if he wanted to).

What country are you from?

That's interesting. I went to primary school in Switzerland in the 90ies, and I only had male teachers. In fact, except for sewing classes, I only had male teachers all the way through high school.