Gay Teachers – thinking about quitting?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely not. No.

I am a role model for my students. I'm openly out. I have three kids. I have been teaching for 17 years. I live for this job and the students.

Are you my husband?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely not. No.

I am a role model for my students. I'm openly out. I have three kids. I have been teaching for 17 years. I live for this job and the students.

Are you my husband?

I'm a woman, but I'm happy if your husband can be this person for students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My advice would be to do your job and not talk about your personal life. In fact, that's the advice for ALL teachers. I'm not sure why my kid's gay language teacher insists on saying things like, "That was a gay thing to say." Sexuality has no place in the classroom because it is irrelevant to the task at hand. Doubtful you will be accused of grooming anyone if you keep your personal life private. Again, that goes for all teachers, not just gay ones.

So just to be clear, their straight teachers must also never reference their husband or wife, have no personal photos in their classroom and not wear a wedding band, correct? Because, you know, “sexuality has no place in the classroom because it is irrelevant to the task at hand.”

Just making sure we’re clear.

What does a wedding band have to do with sexual orientation? Nice reach.

It advertises that the teacher has sex. And many would say that's personal. So no wedding bands allowed.

[Anonymous]

This is the most insane thread. Good teacher connect with their students. Good teachers often connect with their students by sharing about their lives. Teachers expect students to share personal anecdotes as part of writing instruction. As models, teachers share perusal anecdotes. Why should teachers not be allowed to represent themselves completely? Sharing about your personal life is not imposing your beliefs on anyone. Sharing that you went to the beach with your partner and your kids doesn't mean your students need to grow up to have a partner or to have children. Good teachers know how to share within acceptable boundaries. Good teachers, we need you! Please continue to be yourselves in school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My advice would be to do your job and not talk about your personal life. In fact, that's the advice for ALL teachers. I'm not sure why my kid's gay language teacher insists on saying things like, "That was a gay thing to say." Sexuality has no place in the classroom because it is irrelevant to the task at hand. Doubtful you will be accused of grooming anyone if you keep your personal life private. Again, that goes for all teachers, not just gay ones.

So, no teachers should ever mention their partners/spouses?

The only time I ever knew about a teachers spouse in school was if they worked in the same school, then you knew they were married. That’s where the information ended. Teachers didn’t talk about anything personal ever. It should have stayed that way and we wouldn’t be in this predicament. They also didn’t discuss gender, sexuality, religion, skin color, income, or current events unless it was a class specifically designed for that like a class on current events or finance. Teachers didn’t discuss anything personal regarding the students with the students such as puberty, birth control, abortion, who was dating whom or anything else kids go through. They listened and alerted the guidance counselor to anything suspect but never talked to students about it or talked to each other in front of students. Meetings were rarely handled by the teacher unless it was a note home, you were dealt with by the principal or guidance counselor. This is called professionalism and needs to be there for various reasons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is the most insane thread. Good teacher connect with their students. Good teachers often connect with their students by sharing about their lives. Teachers expect students to share personal anecdotes as part of writing instruction. As models, teachers share perusal anecdotes. Why should teachers not be allowed to represent themselves completely? Sharing about your personal life is not imposing your beliefs on anyone. Sharing that you went to the beach with your partner and your kids doesn't mean your students need to grow up to have a partner or to have children. Good teachers know how to share within acceptable boundaries. Good teachers, we need you! Please continue to be yourselves in school.

You can provide examples without using yourself as the example

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My advice would be to do your job and not talk about your personal life. In fact, that's the advice for ALL teachers. I'm not sure why my kid's gay language teacher insists on saying things like, "That was a gay thing to say." Sexuality has no place in the classroom because it is irrelevant to the task at hand. Doubtful you will be accused of grooming anyone if you keep your personal life private. Again, that goes for all teachers, not just gay ones.

So, no teachers should ever mention their partners/spouses?

The only time I ever knew about a teachers spouse in school was if they worked in the same school, then you knew they were married. That’s where the information ended. Teachers didn’t talk about anything personal ever. It should have stayed that way and we wouldn’t be in this predicament. They also didn’t discuss gender, sexuality, religion, skin color, income, or current events unless it was a class specifically designed for that like a class on current events or finance. Teachers didn’t discuss anything personal regarding the students with the students such as puberty, birth control, abortion, who was dating whom or anything else kids go through. They listened and alerted the guidance counselor to anything suspect but never talked to students about it or talked to each other in front of students. Meetings were rarely handled by the teacher unless it was a note home, you were dealt with by the principal or guidance counselor. This is called professionalism and needs to be there for various reasons.

Really? I went to RM in Rockville in the 90s. Our teachers talked about their families and even just people they were dating. I remember my history teacher telling us when she got engaged to her boyfriend - we even knew his name. It was normal.

Your example is as anecdotal as mine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I run a youth org and am gay. A number of staff are LGBTQ. We are located in a diverse small city in the northeast and honestly, I do not worry about being targeted for being gay. I think there has been a significant change in how we interact with youth over the past 10 years. Stuff that we considered normal a decade ago: a student and staff working in our office after hours, giving a young person a ride home, giving a student a gift card as a graduation gift. Now we have a handbook and all of those things are explicitly forbidden. I think maintaining really clear boundaries is important to keep youth safe (even if you would never approach a student sexually, having bad boundaries can normalize that behavior in ways that make young people vulnerable) and to maintain our professional reputations.

Does your school have written policies about how adults can and can't interact with you?

Those things have never been normal, it’s scary that they needed to write a manual to tell a teacher those things would be inappropriate but certainly glad it exists and we need more schools to have them and enforce them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My advice would be to do your job and not talk about your personal life. In fact, that's the advice for ALL teachers. I'm not sure why my kid's gay language teacher insists on saying things like, "That was a gay thing to say." Sexuality has no place in the classroom because it is irrelevant to the task at hand. Doubtful you will be accused of grooming anyone if you keep your personal life private. Again, that goes for all teachers, not just gay ones.

So, no teachers should ever mention their partners/spouses?

I cannot remember a time when a teacher mentioned or needed to mention their spouse. Good try on trying to push your agenda.

Are you kidding? Teachers reference their spouses ALL THE TIME. It’s totally normal, as it should be. THey are humans.

I can’t think of a single time any of my teachers or professors mentioned a spouse. My husband recalls this was very rare in his case. In any event, mentioning a spouse is fine. Still, teachers should keep their personal lives personal. That will limit any risk. Any male teacher needs to be especially careful. My husband taught for years and worked never to be alone with a student. He also had no cause to mention his personal life. If you truly want suggestions, these will help.

Sounds like our experiences were pretty different. I knew, generally, the marital status (and thus sexuality) of most of my teachers, at least in high school, based on passing things they said in class. It wasn’t a topic of deep discussion, and they weren’t sharing deep personal stories. They were just people living in the world, telling anecdotes to illustrate a point in class or even just making small talk.

The point is, they weren’t worried that referencing their spouse was going to get them accused of grooming children. That’s what OP and other teachers in some parts of the country are facing right now. And the idea that LGBTQ teachers will be fine and free of this sort of harassment and persecution if they just “keep their personal lives private” is absolute bad-faith BS.

Majority of parents don’t care about your sexuality, we want ALL teachers to keep their lives private and separate home from work regardless of their sexuality. My child doesn’t need to know about someone’s wedding day or vacation at the beach whether they’re gay or straight. We want teachers to focus more on teaching and maintain professional boundaries with children because they’re children and not everyone is comfortable with their children knowing certain things at certain ages. Because you don’t know what each family is comfortable with you keep it professional and just teach the curriculum. That’s it, no chit chat, no small talks about your weekend, no asking kids about their opinions on hot button topics or anything like that, just leave everything that isn’t part of the curriculum at the door. If kids have a problem you speak to the guidance counselor privately and they deal with it appropriately and privately. The gay community gets more heat for this topic because of young inexperienced teachers filming themselves and putting it on tiktok so it becomes blatantly obvious to parents that their children are not just being taught the curriculum anymore and they begin to question what else is being taught that they don’t know about. They then find out that the public education system is in disarray and very broken and just want answers that nobody can seem to give them. See LibsOfTikTok on Twitter

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My advice would be to do your job and not talk about your personal life. In fact, that's the advice for ALL teachers. I'm not sure why my kid's gay language teacher insists on saying things like, "That was a gay thing to say." Sexuality has no place in the classroom because it is irrelevant to the task at hand. Doubtful you will be accused of grooming anyone if you keep your personal life private. Again, that goes for all teachers, not just gay ones.

So just to be clear, their straight teachers must also never reference their husband or wife, have no personal photos in their classroom and not wear a wedding band, correct? Because, you know, “sexuality has no place in the classroom because it is irrelevant to the task at hand.”

Just making sure we’re clear.

Absolutely, minus the wedding ring that’s just silly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My advice would be to do your job and not talk about your personal life. In fact, that's the advice for ALL teachers. I'm not sure why my kid's gay language teacher insists on saying things like, "That was a gay thing to say." Sexuality has no place in the classroom because it is irrelevant to the task at hand. Doubtful you will be accused of grooming anyone if you keep your personal life private. Again, that goes for all teachers, not just gay ones.

So just to be clear, their straight teachers must also never reference their husband or wife, have no personal photos in their classroom and not wear a wedding band, correct? Because, you know, “sexuality has no place in the classroom because it is irrelevant to the task at hand.”

Just making sure we’re clear.

Teachers are not just teachers — they are role models, responsible, trusted adults kids can turn to if the need arises. I dislike this antiseptic notion of leaving your humanity at the schoolroom door. Thank you, teachers, for making sure students know who you really are.

Trusted adults you can turn to has limits , that’s what guidance counselor is for, a teachers main job is to teach. Sure they can be role models but that doesn’t mean a personal exchange of information between student and teacher

[Anonymous]

I remember a room mom creating a project to have our kindergartners make squares for a quilt for their teacher who was expecting. Our kids also had one middle school teacher (biology) who overshared about her IVF procedure in the context of a biology class.
But this idea that a teacher merely teaches and shouldn’t be viewed as a person is bizarre. My mom volunteers in an inner city school and if Mr. Johnson’s (fifth grade teacher) husband didn’t volunteer as a chaperone there would be no field trips. Should he be banned from doing so? Most of the kids parents work so there are never enough volunteers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I remember a room mom creating a project to have our kindergartners make squares for a quilt for their teacher who was expecting. Our kids also had one middle school teacher (biology) who overshared about her IVF procedure in the context of a biology class.
But this idea that a teacher merely teaches and shouldn’t be viewed as a person is bizarre. My mom volunteers in an inner city school and if Mr. Johnson’s (fifth grade teacher) husband didn’t volunteer as a chaperone there would be no field trips. Should he be banned from doing so? Most of the kids parents work so there are never enough volunteers.

Two people can be chaperones but you don’t need to announce that they’re married, kids figure it out and move on. Talking about it brings too many questions. That one teacher could have explained ivf without telling the class that she was going through that and kindergarteners Can make a quilt for their teacher without knowing it’s because the teacher is pregnant. I’ve worked in public and private school and private homes. In all situations I never told parents or children anything about my personal life other than one family that knew I assisted an elderly family member and that was only because of scheduling issues. They knew nothing beyond my resume and we kept chit chat to a minimum, weather, what’s for dinner, etc. The focus especially in homes always remained on the child and chit chat was maybe a minute when I first walked in the door. End of session chit chat was always focused around how the child did and progress or issues. I worked in some of these houses for hours weekly across several years and was able to keep my private life private. It’s not that difficult if you focus on the children. At school again I keep the focus on the children and the curriculum, I don’t discuss anything with children that I’m not certain their parents would be ok with and I don’t talk to adults about anything I wouldn’t want getting back to the children because we all know teachers gossip around children and children hear everything. Problems I’m unsure of I refer up the ladder and let them handle it. It doesn’t make me less of a person or less of a role model, in fact I think it teaches children that they don’t need to share everything with everyone. I know parents have been very appreciative of this because sometimes situations arise at home and you need to teach a child that they can’t talk about that during school the next day. Modeling things we do talk about helped them understand this better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My advice would be to do your job and not talk about your personal life. In fact, that's the advice for ALL teachers. I'm not sure why my kid's gay language teacher insists on saying things like, "That was a gay thing to say." Sexuality has no place in the classroom because it is irrelevant to the task at hand. Doubtful you will be accused of grooming anyone if you keep your personal life private. Again, that goes for all teachers, not just gay ones.

So just to be clear, their straight teachers must also never reference their husband or wife, have no personal photos in their classroom and not wear a wedding band, correct? Because, you know, “sexuality has no place in the classroom because it is irrelevant to the task at hand.”

Just making sure we’re clear.

Teachers are not just teachers — they are role models, responsible, trusted adults kids can turn to if the need arises. I dislike this antiseptic notion of leaving your humanity at the schoolroom door. Thank you, teachers, for making sure students know who you really are.

Me too. It’s really weirding me out that so many people here are saying teachers shouldn’t talk about their personal lives. That was certainly not my experience at all in school. We knew our teachers were real people with real lives. They talked about their lives and kids and sometimes spouses in the context of lessons and such. In 10th grade we were involved in our English teacher’s surprise proposal to his now wife! It was awesome and, in my opinion, normal and healthy.

[Anonymous]

No one cares if you are gay, but it doesn't mean you need to broadcast it every minute.