Guest Post by Dana Salvador

**Dana is one of my dearest friends from college.  I asked her to do a guest post because, not only is she a great friend, but she is a brilliant writer.  When I read this post, I could only nod in agreement.  I hope my children have teachers as wonderful as she is.  Thank you, Dana!  Love you girl! **

A few years ago, a student came out to me in his journal. When I read his entry, I felt even more horrible for letting other things come up before I graded them. I found him in another classroom during my prep time, and we walked out to the grassy field away from the building so no one could interrupt or overhear our conversation.

I told him how honored I felt that he would tell me something so important. I explained that many of my friends are gay and that I used to be a part of the Gay-Straight Alliance at my old school.

In his journal he talked about how whenever he brought up anything about gay people to his mother—actors or actresses, something he’d seen in the news, a TV show—his mother told him how horrible “they” were. The student asked his mother—hypothetically, of course—what his mother would do if he were gay, and his mother told him she’d kick him out of the house. I asked if the student wanted to talk to the counselor about what he was feeling and about how he might eventually talk to his mother. We made an appointment.

But we also went back to my room where I had him rip out the journal entry and tear it up. I told him I wanted him to do this, not because he shouldn’t be proud, but because the journal wasn’t secure. I wanted him to have control over that information, and to be able to disclose the information when he was ready, not when another student (or his family) might intercept and read something he wasn’t ready to share with everyone. I’m still not sure if this was the right thing to do, but I wanted to be safe.

Coming out at any age is brave, but in middle school it must be terrifying. Usually, teachers or counselors are the first people students tell because oftentimes, parents aren’t ready for the information and friends aren’t mature enough or tolerant enough to be as supportive as when students are older.

No one teaches teachers how to handle these situations. There’s no manual. Luckily the student felt safe, saw my pink triangle signs and heard me correct students who use the word “gay” in a negative way. Our school does a good job including LGBT students in our bullying policy, and each teacher received several posters to display in the classroom for an anti-bullying campaign, which includes sexual orientation.

Because those signs are passed out to the entire faculty, I worry.  I think some faculty who aren’t LGBT friendly put them up, which is dangerous to students. At the beginning of the year when the posters were passed out, one teacher even asked the entire staff via email if the pink triangle and rainbow could be taken off her sign. Part of me was pissed. Seriously? But another part of me was like, “Just don’t put up the sign. Let the students ask questions why the other teachers have the posters in their rooms but you don’t. And then answer the question honestly: ‘I believe people should be discriminated against based on their sexual orientation, and I believe that not all people have rights.’”

Once you’re a teacher, you shouldn’t put your own hate-filled agenda onto the students, though some do. I suppose that’s what’s so appalling about Diana Medley—the special education teacher who championed to have students attend her church-sponsored “straight” prom, instead of their own inclusive prom and said that gay people “have no purpose in life.” What I dislike most about some people in hate-groups, because that’s what they are even if they call themselves “Christians” or “moralists” or “conservatives,”is they often defend themselves by saying, “You have to stand up for your beliefs.” Hitler stood up for his beliefs, but it didn’t make his beliefs correct. And your ‘beliefs’ might be equally toxic.

Controversy like this isn’t new in education. Women, people of color, and now LGBT people have all had to fight for opportunity, inclusion, and equality within the confines of education. What made me happy about both the incident with the teacher not wanting to include the pink triangle on her poster and the push for a “straight” prom is that it didn’t last long. Someone wrote an educated, thoughtful email back to my co-worker and ended the discussion. People promptly explained how ridiculous it would be to exclude students from a prom. Within a few days, the events were out of the ‘media.’

Yet, being LGBT is never ‘out of the media’ for my students who tend to hide, and wade through their confusion, and ask their teachers what they think about LGBT people, and worry about others knowing, and worry about what could happen if they acknowledged their crush in the regular gestures of affection for middle schoolers: a note, a stuffed bear, a box of candy. I like to think the “It Gets Better” campaign will work to save the lives of LGBT students in our schools.  I hope incidents like the ‘straight’ prom become fewer and fewer, and that someday, discrimination against the LGBT community and acts of intolerance will just be a disturbing passage in a history book.

What do you hope for?

Dana Salvador writes about being a teacher and mother of twin boys on her blog: danasalvador.wordpess.com. Her work has been featured in the North American Review, Fourth Genre, Water~Stone Review, Cold Mountain Review and is forthcoming in Red Rock Review.