Day 9: Omar's Art & Lesson Rejected

Friday January 27th and Saturday January 28th Blog

Omar came in early before class started and showed me his collage. He had about ten images on it and a big smile on his face. I told him it was beautiful. All the images had such a peacefulness and beauty and emotion. He said, "It's good Mrs?" I told him it was very good and that I loved it. I showed it to his class when they got there. Most of the students in his class were almost done with their collage they were making for one another. Omar's is especially good. Even my cooperating teacher was impressed and asked me if he did that on his own. There is a girl in class that can translate things to him if he doesn't understand what I'm saying. I randomly had them pick each other's names and he got tied to her in this project so that worked out well. For the new boy in the class I matched him up with someone that was already done and had the handouts ready for him before he got to class. Again he got mostly caught up with everyone.

The 8th grade class, one of the boys named Muhammad called someone else in the class a faggot (35) fairly loud. The cooperating teacher and I both her it and she went over to ask what happened. He said he called him that because he called him a bitch. It wasn't addressed like don't put people down using that language or anything about gay, it was more just like don't say bitch or faggot or don't say something back to him if he says anything. A spanish speaking kid was somehow involved but the teacher had to communicate to him in Spanish and I didn't really get what was being said.

So far 35 homophobic comments in 9 days made in my placement so far.

Saturday's Blog

I wanted to get ahead on my lessons this weekend now that I have a sense of what the rest of my placement is going to look like so I spent 11 hours today writing lessons from 8:30 AM to 7:30 PM. I wrote 3 kindergarten lessons and 5 8th grade lessons and planned on writing about 10 more until I got an email back from my cooperating teacher.

I sent her the lessons, all 8 of them. One was to create a car design from matchbox toy cars and give the car a new paint job of your designing. I was going to show a short clip from fagbug and show how i designed the vinyl wrap and how I have my own toy car that got produced.

My cooperating teacher replied to my email of sending 8 lessons - letting her know I liked one for kindergarten in particular and asking a question about one of them regarding money or a comment of the odds of being able to afford the materials, and all I got back was:

----You don't have my permission to show the movie, therefore you need to come up with a new lesson to replace the car one.----

Pretty much the coldest, rudest response possible considering. I feel like this environment is forcing me to be in the closet, to hide that I'm gay, to not allow the students to have access to my knowledge and experience. 

I took a break for a few hours because this situation is really starting to upset me. Gay teachers being forced to be in the closet, and the pressure to do so, the fear that administrators have is what enforces people both adults and students to remain homophobic and in turn hate crimes happen and people spend years hating themselves for feeling invisible and like it is so wrong to be gay. The education system is holding onto that idea and reinforcing it on a daily basis. I feel like I'm in jail hearing all these kids say anti gay remarks but not being allowed to be in a position to tell them I'm gay, which in turn makes them obviously have some understanding and accountability and a real life encounter to challenge whatever stereotypes they've heard or learned. 

I am not going to closet myself or not do what I deem appropriate. If a student says they hate gay people or calls someone a faggot I have no problem telling them I am gay and am not going to tolerate that type of language in the classroom. 

I was under the understanding that my cooperating teacher and I had an agreement on this but based on her email today, I really don't want to be there anymore. I don't want to be her friend or share anything about myself with her anymore. 

The lesson had .1 % about my car and it could've been easily taken out, but she didn't even want me to do that, she wanted me to just replace it entirely with something else, which I am not going to do. I took the part about the movie out and if the conversation comes up about it again I will just say it's out and there is nothing wrong with the lesson. I think because she knows some students know about my car and she knows the vice principal isn't a fan she just wants to prevent me from doing anything that allows the students to bring it up. 

I feel I am being discriminated against. When my wife Sonya and I got married we got married in Vermont because before NYS passed the law to get married here we asked if we could get married at Boldt Castle and the person who was in charge of booking the weddings told us only one other gay couple ever tried and they denied it and they'd deny us too and said we could write a proposal for him to take to the board but that they'd deny it. I asked if straight couples had to put in a proposal to get married there? Obviously they don't. 

People obviously don't know who they are messing with when they do things like this. Anyway we sent a letter and a proposal and like four months later it got approved. I tour all around the country and have a huge audience that I share this type of thing with and have a million things backing me up so that I don't feel in the wrong and have no problem exposing people for what they are doing wrong. 

Saying I have to get permission from the principal to be out as gay at my job is ridiculous. It's like saying I have to write a special proposal to get married at a venue that no one else has to do that to get in. It's like asking a married woman, who's married to a man, to talk to the principal about it to see if she can inform her students she's married to a man. If you reverse the situation you realize how absurd it is. It is discrimination. 

I am sick of this placement and incredibly uncomfortable and feel I am being treated unfairly. Again if any other educator or teacher happened to be a filmmaker, like the guy from Super Size Me. I'm sure if he was teaching kids, he'd do a lesson on his own film and teach students what he specializes in. That would be welcome for his students to know he's a famous filmmaker. For that not to be welcome at this school is absolutely absurd. I've spoke at 138 schools around the country. It's funny that the one I'm in absolutely refuses to let me speak on it. As if there is something wrong with it. I've done so many good things and have so many good things to share and enlighten the kids about. It is ridiculous.


Also all of my lessons thus far my cooperating teacher has written only negative things or things to change, nothing positive on any of them. It's really not the approach I would take being overly critical of every single thing. I am a different person and may do some things differently and that isn't necessarily a bad thing.