Search

Growing up, no one told me that people shouldn’t be gay. My parents didn’t tell me I shouldn’t talk to kids whose parents were lesbian. My neighbors didn’t rant against the horrors of gay rights. Instead, all the people in my life encouraged me to live openly, to take people’s personalities and see the beauty in them, to smile at the adorable young couple clutching each other’s hands, no matter their gender. Love was love. I lived in a world blissfully ignorant about the cruelties of the “real world.”

The undercurrent affects my classroom. I can feel its tug and see its effects but can rarely locate the source or the exact flow. Cruel taunts and gossip are the culprits behind my students’ tears, stony faces—their anger and their fear. The ferociousness of the few vicious communications I have been privy to as a high school teacher caught me off guard. High school can be a shark tank and the blood flows with every passing class period, thanks in part to the popularity of online social media. I feel helpless to save the victims because I don’t even know who they are half the time.

Recently, after reading a story about a bike messenger in a big city to my kindergarteners, I asked the students if being a bike messenger was a job they might like. I also asked them to clarify why it would or would not be.

When election rhetoric threatened their district culture, this group of California teachers organized a “Teach In.”

Recently I suspended a seventh-grade boy for publicly calling his former girlfriend a “slut” and a “whore.” Our rules on slurs are clear. But as I learned again, talking about something in class doesn’t always affect student behavior, especially if the unwanted behavior isn’t corrected or condemned outside of the classroom.

When the news about the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School broke on Friday, we quickly issued some advice for teachers heading back to school on Monday.

When I announced the annual personal narrative assignment, my students groaned. Every year I get the same response. Most of my students would rather write fantasy or even research papers than compose a story about something real, but the state standard in Oregon requires the narrative.

Evidence from the Human Genome Project.

Breaking! The president of the Boy Scouts of America urges his organization to remove its ban on gay adult leaders.

We had a hard conversation at our department meeting today. San Bernardino: What should we say to our community?