Day 2: Racism & Homophobia

I got a chance to explain myself a little further with the vice principal today. My cooperating teacher took me to meet the principal during one of our breaks. The vice principal happened to be in her room when we stopped in. The principal asked where I intended on settling down after I finished my masters and I told her I owned a house in Syracuse and had family here and intended on staying. I think I was able to make it more clear that I don't live with my parents and am on my own. She also asked where I was going to school (as stated in the letter I mailed her a few weeks ago). I told her Sage, and then explained how I took 4 years off to make a documentary and decided to go back and finish this year. I passed the vice principal's office on my way to meet with her and noticed she had a lot of women's basketball posters in her office. We connected on that and I also told her where I went to undergrad after she asked me. She probably thinks I'm 27 now, instead of 18.

There is a student from Yemen in the first class of the day who has been in the United States for a year and two months. Today was his birthday, and no one in the class seemed to care or do anything for him so I had the class sing happy birthday to him. It made him smile! He speaks fairly good English and understands what I'm saying. I had asked him to throw something away and as he went to do it a girl in the class told the other students and I that he doesn't understand what were saying. She said that a few times. You can just tell that because he's from another country some students don't empathize with his situation, and use it as a weakness or part of him to target. I replied to her and told her he understood, and asked her to see how well he did since he was doing exactly what I asked. I'm trying out my first lesson of the placement with their class, and would like to do something focusing on art from his country.

A boy in a 4th grade class came up to me and told me two other boys called him gay. He seemed upset when he told me so I took him seriously and went over to the two boys and questioned them about it. They laughed and pretty much admitted it. I asked them if they even knew what being gay meant? I also told them the definition of gay meant happy. One boy said he knew what being gay meant and you could tell he thought it was something bad or worthy of insulting his classmate. I asked the other boy who was laughing if he had ever met a gay person. He laughed and said no. I told him I was gay and he looked shocked. The other boy said, "happy" and laughed. I let it be at that and just told them it could hurt people who are gay by using that word to insult someone else and told them not to do it again.

Things like this really upset me. They are hurtful to students who may be gay, as well as hurtful to students who aren't gay but are being attacked through anti-gay words. This use of language so freely creates a divide inside for people who are gay, amongst people who wouldn't lash out against gay people but now have distain for them because others are using language to describe them as an insult. Young children who have no idea what being gay means and have this be their first impression of it, hearing about it through a negative joke, sets the tone that there is something wrong with it and unless someone else is there to properly educate young children, having those thoughts from the age of 5 to 15 without any proper education really is hard to break after thinking that way for over ten years, during the years students are most developing. Many teachers or administrators in elementary schools don't want to discuss sexuality or these types of issues, but I strongly disagree with those ideals when the issues are being raised in such disrespectful ways by the kids. This is why I find it important for gay teachers to be open and comfortable about it. I just got married a few months ago to a woman and although I am completely fine with it, you feel certain restrictions with young kids about not saying things like I'm gay, or my wife. It will be interesting for me to figure out how to navigate through elementary school as a gay person.

The last class of the day is 8th graders. Before the class began one of the students told my cooperating teacher that a boy sitting next to him called his dad a lesbian. I chuckled inside and said to myself that's impossible. My cooperating teacher made it clear to them that insults weren't to be a part of the class and that it's not her job to teach them what's appropriate or not that they should know by now what is. Later she laughed and verbalized my earlier thoughts I had with myself.