LGBT educators enjoy more openness and acceptance than ever before. But their gains have been fragile and uneven. And many still feel it’s safest to teach from the closet.
Sarah Anderson teaches middle school humanities and interdisciplinary studies at a place-based charter school in Portland, Ore. Originally from rural Vermont, Anderson has also taught nature studies to urban middle school students in the California Redwoods, career skills to at-risk youth on an educational farm in Vermont and Civics and Global Studies at an independent school in Maryland. She earned a bachelor’s degree in American Studies at Bard College and a masters in education in Integrated Learning from Antioch New England Graduate School.
Elisa Pollard teaches English and language arts an alternative school setting in North Carolina. For more than a decade, she has served on the State Superintendent's Ethic Advisory committee. As a single parent with two children of her own who have received free/reduced lunch, Pollard recognizes that students often don't come to school "ready to learn." She actively searches for literature and written material to meet her students where they are and to address their educational needs by way of their social issues.
This past February, our school abandoned the traditional Valentine’s Day love note exchange, opting instead to encourage school-wide participation in a new activity we called the “Valentine’s Day Apology Note Project.”
“Annolighting” (annotating and highlighting) shows students how to identify critical information in a text during close reading. Students learn to annotate text, highlight important facts and summarize what they have read to capture main ideas, concepts and details.
Some things that happen in school are just not right. It’s not right for a six-year old boy to be handcuffed and shackled to a chair by an armed security officer because he “acted up” in school.
I am in awe of young people. Today, for example, I read about a group of teens in Louisville, Ky. who continued to speak on LGBT issues. High school students from duPont Manual High School were censored for writing about gay issues, but they refused to let their voices be silenced. They decided to run an underground paper, The Red Pen, and won the annual Courage in Student Journalism Award.