Dealing with Homophobic Teachers
As a follow up to this post about talking with teens about LGBT issues, I thought people might be interested in reading the Family Equality Council’s take on How to Deal with A Homophobic Teacher. It’s all well and good to talk with your kids about issues they might be facing, but what happens when the person who’s supposed to be teaching them information and interesting subjects is discriminatory instead? The Family Equality Council’s answer has a lot of good information, but my favorite part is this:
However you define what is homophobic, documentation is key. If you sense homophobia in a teacher (or any other school official, for that matter), keep a log of when you sense the homophobia and why. Should you feel the need to address your concerns with a supervisor, you’re better off having a record to stand on.
It might seem weird to keep track of behavior of a teacher, but if there’s a history of slurs or exclusive practices, you’ll want to have a list so there’s a track of such things. Read the whole article - it’s good.
[tags] GLBT, GLBT families, homophobia [/tag]
February 21st, 2008 at 5:43 pm
This is actually relevant to something I’m currently involved in. I’m the president of my high school’s GSA, and next week myself and another member are going to go into a department meeting and do a brief presentation on how to deal with homophobia in the classroom. We’ve been brainstorming for a while on how teachers should react to different situations (mostly with comments like “That’s so gay” and the like) and what we should do if we should do if they encounter a less than supportive faculty member.
This and the other article, on dealing with teens, certainly give some interesting things to think about in that regard. Thanks for posting them. ^-^