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Q Parenting Archive
<< Back to List | Q Parenting - October 2006My partner teaches tenth-grade English at an inner-city high school. She was out to the staff, but with students she had always been deliberately fuzzy with her personal information. Getting pregnant meant things probably needed to get a little sharper.
Normally I expect people to come out, come out, wherever they are. Part of the problem is that my 83-year-old grandmother with an eighth-grade education joyfully attended my commitment ceremony. That seems to have skewed my expectations; if this old woman from a tiny town in South Dakota can see that being a ?mo is no big deal, then surely everyone can.
Spoken like a person who doesn?t spend a lot of time with 15 year olds.
So I fully supported Karyn?s not being out to students. And I didn?t ever want her to come out. Her union would step up for her, and her administrators were a good group, but I could not imagine what would happen to Karyn?or to the parent?if one self-righteous fundie parent intent on creating havoc confronted Karyn about being gay and teaching in a public school. A successful teaching career can be built upon being nobody?s big deal.
For one thing, we figured, it was none of the students? business. No straight teacher is going to give a student details about their love life, their housing arrangements, or their impending engagement / marriage / divorce. So any details of Karyn?s life were appropriately kept quiet.
And on one level, the kids don?t even care. You?ll probably never hear (thank God) about a school shooting at an inner-city high school, because these kids? lives tend not to revolve around school culture. They?re busy with jobs, with family, with obligations, with non-school-based endeavors with friends, like skateboarding and whatnot. It?s not the same in small towns and suburbs, where a lot of the social activities and civic pride are tied up with the school mascot. The football team is a huge deal in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. The football team is crap at Harding High in St. Paul, Minnesota.
On another level, the kids totally care, because even if they are pulled-in-seven-different-directions teenagers, they?re still teenagers. They still get a little freaked out when they run into their chem teacher at Target. They hide in the kitchen when their algebra teacher comes into the restaurant where they wait tables. And they will stare at the floor, giggle in the halls, and obsess about it with their BFF when they find out their English teacher is a lesbian.
So here is Karyn, who has always worn a band but answers No when asked if she?s married. The baby grows in her belly, and her clothes get tight. She slowly starts to show. She knows questions are going to start coming sooner or later, and she can either be honest with the students, or she can try to protect them from a truth that she knows won?t hurt them. Either way, the constant questions?or the dodging?can totally derail a class? focus.
Finally, about five months along, with ten minutes to kill at the end of third period (her favorite class), she just blurts it out one day. ?Okay, what?s wrong with you people? I?m totally starting to show, and you guys say nothing? What, you all think I?m just putting on a little weight??
The boys mumble at each other. Some of the girls freak. ?Oh,? they shriek, ?you?re pregnant? That?s so great! When are you due??
October 10, she tells them. She takes a deep breath. ?My partner and I are really excited,? she says, and delivers our standard joke: ?I got to have the first baby because I have better insurance. She?ll get to have the next baby.?
Half the room shuts down, half the room gasps, and by some weird math that only happens in rooms full of people, half the room takes it in stride. One student?s voice rises above the chaos. ?That?s great. My sister and her partner are talking about having kids. But I think they?re going to adopt.? Her neighbor turns and says, ?Your sister?s gay? Tina?? ?No. Charlene,? the first student says, and rolls her eyes.
Already the students are starting to normalize the news.
Another student, a giant of a basketball player with thighs as skinny as my wrists, says, ?So. Is the kid going to be black?? Karyn replies, ?Well, I?m not black, and my partner isn?t black. While biracial babies are unbelievably cute, and while it is really important to us to have cute kids, we figured the kid is going to have enough challenges just having two moms.? The kid nods wisely, ?Yeah, good thinking.?
?So, how do you pick a father?? asks a pasty blonde who has never spoken in class before?ever. Another asks, ?Do you really do it with a turkey baster??
It ends up beautifully. The students ask almost everything you can imagine, and Karyn tells me later how impressed she was at how respectful they were even in their ignorance. No, she tells one, this does not mean her baby is necessarily going to grow up to be gay. But thank you for asking. The news spreads quickly, and the students instinctively know how to pull off the cool?most either act like they already knew, or they act like they are not going to spend the next week obsessed with what their English teacher does with another woman, or what she did with a doctor five months ago.
The next day Karyn brought a photo of me and put it on her desk. And it was no big deal. | |
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