Questioning

I wrote in my last blogpost about Section 28 and the impact it had on me growing up, but my teaching career thankfully began after that law had been lifted.  The schools I trained at were different from my own in lots of ways, but seeing openness about sexuality and gender in a school setting was one of the biggest surprises.  Gay and transgender kids were out, and while homophobia hadn’t exactly vanished, it was being challenged by teachers and, most hearteningly, often by the pupils themselves.

Back at the start of my career I still wasn’t sure, though, what the reaction would be to the kids finding out that I was gay.  What should I do if they asked?  Was I allowed to tell them the truth?  Would parents complain if I did?  Would I get hauled into the headteachers’ office, even?  In short, was my own sexuality an inappropriate topic for the classroom?

The answer, thankfully, was no.  I was lucky to be in a school that was actively trying to create a pro-LGTBQ+ environment at the time; we were visited by Stonewall during my NQT year, and it was because of this visit that I first ended up coming out to one of my classes.  The topic was raised a day before the visit in one of my Year 11 lessons, a bottom-set group back when our school still had such things, when one boy was telling the others that he was going to have to meet the delegate from Stonewall and that he was nervous about it.

“I might have to shake his hand,” he said.

“So?” asked one of the others.

“Well… you don’t know where it’s been.”

A worrying number of the others agreed with him.  I should probably have intervened at this point, but instead I decided to have my fun, stand back, and let this conversation carry on for a while.  Let them dig themselves a little hole.  Eventually one of the kids asked me what I would do if I had to meet a gay person, at which point I had to confess that it wouldn’t really bother me, given my own homosexuality.  Eyes widened.  There followed some consternation and disbelief.  I was told I was having them on, that I was lying, that I didn’t look gay.  One boy suggested I walk across the room, presumably so he could try to spot any tell-tale mincing that would decide the matter.  (I declined, obviously.)

The consequences of that decision to come out to those kids – made, really, on the spur of the moment – surprised me in several ways.  Firstly, I was shocked by how little impact it had on them.  Yes, there was the initial reaction, but after a few minutes they were back to being the same kids as before, treating me just as they’d done up until the point that I’d outed myself.  (I think I was expecting some kind of “backs to the wall, boys!” treatment – they weren’t above taking the piss in plenty of other ways – but the homophobia never came, at least not to my face.)

Secondly – and this was perhaps the biggest surprise – the news just didn’t spread.  If a teacher had come out when I was a pupil, it would have been around the school field and dining hall within the first few minutes of breaktime.  No kid beyond that class ever seemed to find out, though; when I came out to other classes later, it genuinely seemed to come as a surprise.  I hadn’t been the focus of any gossip, presumably because nobody particularly cared.  I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.

The one way in which things did change, though, is that I realised that I suddenly felt a lot more relaxed standing in front of that group.  I don’t think I’d been consciously aware of it, but I must have felt on some level that I had been hiding something that I’d been scared of them figuring out.  By bringing that thing out into the open, the fear vanished: there was a loosening of the muscles, I was less uptight, and I felt a new confidence in front of a class that had, up until that point, been really difficult.  They continued to be hard work, but I enjoyed teaching them more and my relationship with them improved noticeably from that point on.

I’ve since come out several times in the classroom, and although as the years have passed the more narrow-minded responses have thankfully faded, the pupils’ reactions have always followed a similar pattern – a brief initial surprise, maybe, followed by a reversion back to treating me just as they had done before.  My own confidence as their classroom teacher, though, has always taken a boost as a result.

At the risk of sounding like those hypothetical complaining parents for a moment, it is a little strange that my preference for what I do with my genitals has any bearing on how I relate to the students.  But then, this job is a form of extremely minor celebrity – as any teacher who has been spotted by a group of pupils in the middle of town will tell you. The kids are weirdly fascinated by our private lives.  There’s always going to be a prying about the people we are outside of the classroom, and these hormone-raddled little horn-dogs are always going to zero in on who we are coupled with (or might be).  I have so much sympathy for those LGBTQ+ teachers who, for whatever reason, have had to hide their queerness from their students; the Spanish inquisition has nothing on a handful of nosy teenagers.

I know how hard it is to come out, and I want to make it clear that don’t for a second judge anyone who chooses not to, whatever the context.  Once I had come out, though, I saw how important it was that someone had; when I talk about my sexuality with some kids, you can almost see in their faces the misconceptions breaking down.  And then there are the kids who are gay themselves, for whom the world around them can seem overwhelmingly straight at times, who look genuinely grateful that an adult they know is the same as they are (though for balance, I should add that I’ve seen gay kids who haven’t been so fond of me looking pretty disgusted that that adult should be me).

Unfair as it is, for an LGBTQ+ teacher, hiding who you are always risks being interpreted as a form of shame.  And in my case, there have been times when it has been exactly that; I mentioned in my last post how I’ve struggled with talking about my sexuality at times, and each time a class finds out I’m gay and doesn’t care, not only do I feel more relaxed around them but I also get a bit more comfortable in myself.  The teenage me who couldn’t come out at school can’t help but bask a little in the glow of acceptance that a much more accepting and open-minded generation than my own can offer.

I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts about this, particularly from LGBTQ+ teachers who have (or haven’t) opened up about their sexuality or gender identity with their pupils.  Thank you again to everyone who reads and shares these posts.  It’s very much appreciated!