The way a teacher perceiv relatnal jtice—the feelg of beg treated equably and beg clud— their work ntext is central to unrstandg the negotiatn and enactment of teacher inty. For LGBTQ teachers, the gree to which they are out of the closet wh their stunts and lleagu leads to many possible out. The out, rangg om feelg like they need to live duplico liv to beg activist teachers that subvert the heteronormative assumptns schools and curricula, are studied here by examg the inty velopment of a group of gay teachers and their perceptns of the schools which they work. This article is based on a dissertatn study that theorized that the heteronormative nature of teacher tn is a limg factor for gay teachers’ abili to work and thrive school ntexts. The study clud pth se studi of four gay teachers and their journeys as gay men and teachers. The goal of the study was to answer the qutn: Do the enactment of gay teacher inty terpt heteronormativy schools? The study also sought to answer two ancillary qutns: (1) How do gay teachers negotiate gay teacher inty schools? and, (2) How do school ntexts impact gay teachers’ perceptns of inty-based motivatn and relatnal jtice? This article will foc on Peter Ryan’s (psdonym) se study, specifilly bee of s emblematic nature summarizg the tent and implitns of the overall study.
Contents:
- THE PLIGHT OF BEG A GAY TEACHER
- GAY TEACHERS SHOULDN’T HAVE TO HI WHO THEY ARE
- ‘I’M AAID TO RETURN TO THE CLASSROOM': A GAY TEACHER OF THE YEAR SPEAKS OUT
- UNRSTANDG INTY AND CONTEXT THE DEVELOPMENT OF GAY TEACHER INTY: PERCEPTNS AND REALI TEACHER EDUTN AND TEACHG
- BEG GAY AT SCHOOL REMAS DIFFICULT FOR TEACHERS
- COMG OUT CLASS: WHEN TEACHERS TELL STUNTS "I'M GAY"
- TEACHER: I WAS FIRED FOR BEG GAY. NOW IT CAN’T HAPPEN TO ANYONE ELSE
- ‘IT’S HAD A CHILLG EFFECT’: FLORIDA TEACHERS ANX ABOUT ‘DON’T SAY GAY’ BILL
THE PLIGHT OF BEG A GAY TEACHER
Whilst protected by equaly laws, lbian gay and bisexual (LGB) teachers have varyg experienc wh Uned Kgdom schools. Schools are predomantly heteronormative, moreover LGB has been posned as nflict wh disurs of childhood nocence. However, recently there is more expectatn of cln of diverse genr and sexuali. Although how this is enacted is nsistent wh and between schools. By drawg on terview data nducted 2020, this rearch analys the experienc of LGB teachers. Moreover, brgs together two bodi of lerature that do not often speak to each other—rearch that explor teacher inty and rearch that centers LGB teacher inty. Fdgs suggt there are monali between the bodi of rearch, for stance around the importance of ‘beg yourself’ and of teachers’ past experienc. However, there is special signifince for LGB teachers whose inti have historilly been nied schools, bee of their sexual inty. In addn, there is the expectatn unr neoliberalism of dividuals actng cln. As such, the LGB teacher may bee a pedagogil rource. None of this is equally available, although marketized notns of diversy place rponsibily onto the dividual. In their actns, the LGB teacher inty is always profsnal, personal and polil. * have a gay teacher *
After about a the classroom, he was named the bt tor Kentucky September 2021 -- but at the same time, he said, a small but vol mory his ral town Montgomery County went after, who is gay, told ABC News that he was sgled out for actually protectg LGBTQ kids his school and their fai, which ma him a said that earlier this year, a muny member who was postg about him on social media also repeatedly went to unty school board meetgs to report predatn and so-lled child "groomg" -- a term that has bee popular nservative circl for allegatns of adults sexually manipulatg said this person, who had not named him at the board meetgs but repeatedly referenced him by name onle, also "doxxed" him and some of his stunts on Facebook by sharg their private, acrdg to Carver, he and some stunts' parents asked Montgomery County Supertennt Dr. Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights Edutn bill -- which don't specifilly e the word "gay, " though broadly rtricts talk of sexualy and genr -- to law earlier this year rponse to "woke genr iology. "Joshua Block is a staff attorney wh the Natnal ACLU’s Lbian Gay Bisexual Transgenr & HIV "We need to be teachg them to read or wre, to add, to subtract, " he said -- addg that "the purpose of our schools is to te kids not to doctrate them.
GAY TEACHERS SHOULDN’T HAVE TO HI WHO THEY ARE
* have a gay teacher *
Before the bill was passed, some Democrats unsuccsfully attempted to make more specific -- rtrictg stctn on sexual activy rather than orientatn, for though many who spoke wh ABC News said they are disappoted the law's lack of clary, some gay teachers don't see an issue wh . Pancholy's Stonewall Honor-wng novel "The Bt at It" follows 12-year-old Rahul Kapoor, who is not only figurg out his cultural inty as an Indian-Amerin but is also jt begng to realize that he might be gay.
‘I’M AAID TO RETURN TO THE CLASSROOM': A GAY TEACHER OF THE YEAR SPEAKS OUT
A gay teacher Massachetts has e out to his first-gra class. Did he do the right thg? * have a gay teacher *
Before the cisn, which led that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay, lbian, and transgenr employe om discrimatn, LGBTQ teachers had no protectn and uld be paid ls, moted, spend, or fired bee of their sexual orientatn or genr inty.
In 1978, the state of California proposed a law—a ballot measure wily known as the Briggs Iniative—which would've prohibed openly gay and lbian teachers om workg the state’s public schools. In five stat—Indiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Virgia—gay people n get legally married but also legally fired by an employer for beg gay, a Washgton Post map shows.
In San Bernado, California, for example, a lbian teacher challenged her school district urt wh help om the Amerin Civil Liberti Unn, allegg that she was fired after attemptg to help the school’s Gay Straight Alliance chapter. "My stunts mostly e om Caribbean scent, where homosexualy is tradnally owned upon, " said Lamar Shambley, a sixth-gra math teacher New York who hasn’t e out to his stunts.
UNRSTANDG INTY AND CONTEXT THE DEVELOPMENT OF GAY TEACHER INTY: PERCEPTNS AND REALI TEACHER EDUTN AND TEACHG
Although the Amerin Psychologil Associatn and numero other rearch anizatns have nclud that homosexualy do not make someone more likely to sexually abe children, Conservative anizatns such the Fay Rearch Council and the Amerin College of Pediatricians—a group that requir s members to "hold te to the group's re beliefs of the tradnal fay un" before jog—argue that homosexualy is a threat to uld help expla why LGBT teachers who are married or mted relatnships sometim enjoy a level of legimacy and acceptance that sgle gay teachers often fail to secure. "But many LGBT teachers argue that nversatns about personal matters do happen classrooms all the time, that 's only bee society promot heterosexualy—vers homosexualy—as normal that discsns related to a teacher's sexual orientatn are kept out of class, of Teach for Ameri, agre that for herself and her lleagu, beg the closet wh an extra layer of work—and strs.
BEG GAY AT SCHOOL REMAS DIFFICULT FOR TEACHERS
Overall, the strs experienced by LGBT youth also put them at greater risk for mental health problems and substance e: A natnal study om 2008 found that lbian, gay, and bisexual youth are more than twice as likely to attempt suici as their heterosexual peers.
"If we ever want to get to a place where people aren’t beg killed for who they are, ’s important that stunts know people who are gay and are learng that difference isn’t herently threateng, " Lazar said. "Kids and teachers need to know that someone they know is gay, that ’s not a hypothetil, that this is about real people who they know, " Bunger said "Beg visible to the kds of kids—kids who make dangero cisns bee they’re aaid to talk—is ccial. For Damon Zuima, a former K–8 mic tor, was important for his stunts to know that he is gay and for his admistratn to be supportive of his cisn to share so openly wh his class.
COMG OUT CLASS: WHEN TEACHERS TELL STUNTS "I'M GAY"
Jonny Vriema, a physil tn teacher Jacksonville, Florida, who intifi as a gay Christian, fears that his sire to live out his fah and teach wh relig schools will create nflict. “This year I've been very openly out wh stunts, but a lot of that was motivated by my first year of teachg where I was tryg to bat issu of homophobia and transphobia. Most famoly the UK, this harmful rhetoric was prent Sectn 28 the 1988 Lol Government Act which stated, ‘a lol thory shall not … promote the teachg any mataed school of the acceptabily of homosexualy’ (Department of Edutn and Science.
TEACHER: I WAS FIRED FOR BEG GAY. NOW IT CAN’T HAPPEN TO ANYONE ELSE
Recent rearch by Rudoe (2018) furthers the ias by acknowledgg that many lbian and gay teachers have bee more fortable beg open wh their lleagu about their sexual inty, but not wh their stunts. ‘The kids were like, ‘oh, wow, wow, ’ you know, and then I'll be hont wh you like a lot of the kids kd of turned agast me … I would get ments like ‘fuck off, you lbian’ … so I went there [to the headteacher] and I basilly told her what happened and all she said to me was, ‘have you told them you're gay’ and I looked at her and I went, ‘do that matter’ and she said, ‘if you're gonna broadst that, then obvly you're gog to have to expect that’.
I feel ’s even more important bee I’m Indian and gay and so for me to shy away om that would be trimental to the overall kd of growth of people school who intify wh me on eher of those thgs. If a staff member feels fortable to be themselv and not to be embarrassed by the fact that they are gay, nrodiverse or whatever happens to be, then obvly that has a posive effect on the children. I like to thk that he probably wasn't super on-board wh gay people, he got to know me as a b of a weird teacher but kd of a nice kd of person, he found out later and I hope that that ma a posive impact on him rather than someone beg like, "Oh 's okay to be gay.
I put some pictur up and I jt said, ‘here is me when I was about 16 when I worked out that I was gay’ and then moved straight onto like Universy and this, that and the other. Schools n no longer jt socialize stunts to the so-lled mastream bee all sens of “normal” are beg qutned, and this is a good study on which this article is based sought to exame the experienc of gay teachers workg schools across the Uned Stat. In particular, I examed the inty negotiatn experienc of gay teachers orr to terme what they experience, how they velop their gay teacher inty, how school culture and learship impacts their motivatn at work, and what schools n do to support them.
‘IT’S HAD A CHILLG EFFECT’: FLORIDA TEACHERS ANX ABOUT ‘DON’T SAY GAY’ BILL
Further, the origal study examed how the teachers enact their inty through Cross’s [7] Multicultural Enactment-Transactnal Mol, by intifyg the strategi ed by the teachers when their gay teacher inti are nflict wh the normative nature of a school and by tailg how their gay teacher inty is socially nstcted the school environment. Ultimately, I answer the qutn of whether or not the enactment of gay inty n provi an avenue for teachers to terpt heteronormativy by examg the inty negotiatn procs and the impact of schoolg on inty-based motivatn [8] origal study posed that gay teachers who are not able to fully negotiate and enact a gay inty a school that is relatnally jt, are workg opprsive environments.
Emergent the lerature regardg gay and lbian teachers is the theme of livg a duplico life and the efforts that teachers put forth to keep separate the personal om the profsnal [10, 11, 12]. In examg the shared experienc of gay teachers, there is a signifint emphasis on the relief, thenticy, and richns of the teachers’ experienc wh the curriculum and wh their stunts as a rult of beg “out” the classroom. Logilly, then, an examatn of a teacher’s profsnal inty mt also be suated wh the school’s affect and pervasive effects of heteronormativy are a source of nsternatn and dissonance for many gay teachers, leadg to the ndns for the duplico life mentned above.