I’m an openly gay teacher – I am proud of who I am as a person and what I have achieved, but that is it… I am a person, gay isn’t everything about me yet I feel in the world in which we live where ‘That’s so Gay’ is used on a daily basis by our young people and young LGBT students are committing suicide because of who they are I honestly feel I have to ‘wave my flag’ so to speak.

I recently came across this on a website…

One of his teachers is a gay male and is very obvious with it. And I think that makes for a bad influnence in the schools where our children are learning. It is bad enough their peers are influencing them and we have to guard them against drugs, and unprotected pre-martial sex, but now we have to deal with gay teachers. They are at the age where they are very impressionable, and seeing this may have some effect on them. I want to hear from everyone on this topic, whether you agree with me or not.

to which one replied….

A gay teacher preaching gay tolerance should not be allowed within a school.

Should our young people (gay or straight or anything in between) not have role models to look up… role models that they see on a daily basis? Why do School officials feel the need to say that gay issues are ‘delicate’ topics – isn’t everything these days? Maybe we need to stop wrapping our young people up in cotton wool and let them experience the wonderful diversity we have in our country without being worried what the ‘parents will think’.

I am a gay teacher and I teach about acceptance for all… yet I feel It’s frowned upon… yet maybe a black teacher teaching about racism, or a disabled teacher teaching about difference or a Jewish teacher teaching about the Holocaust  shouldn’t be encouraged either?

I walk into a classroom and see a photo of a fellow teacher with their husband or wife… what if I put a photo of my partner and myself up? Would anything be said? Happen? Maybe i’m thinking the worst.

The issue we are facing is that it’s not the young people we teach accepting openly gay teachers, they see gay people on TV, in Magazines etc all the time… but it’s the thoughts of the parents and colleagues.

Harvey Milk said… ”I was raised by heteosexual parents, taught by heterosexual teachers, lived in a fiercely heterosexual society, so why am I homosexual?”

Stonewall Scotland says ‘Gay teachers and staff should be out wherever possible. It’s good to be able to talk to a gay teacher about gay stuff rather than talk to a heterosexual teacher because they have probably experienced bullying and coming out. But teachers don’t want to come out in school because it’s such a hostile environment.’

As teachers… we are all role models… and we all have the ability to make a difference!

So our senior school pupils are back from a weeks trip to New York, New York and what an amazing trip it was!

The week started by flying from Edinburgh to New York (via London) and arriving into the city that never sleeps at night. The pupils experienced the buzz of Times Square as they walked from their central hotel for a Chinese late dinner.

Waking up in the morning we made our way to Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island where the wind was icy and snow was still lying on the ground. Having met Ranger Joanna (Or Ranger Dan as we called her) we learnt about Lady Liberty and Liberty island. Ellis Island is always an amazing place and pupils spent some time being shown round and looking at the history of immigartion to the USA.

Our evening meal at Planet Hollywood was great with memorbella from Broadway Shows and Movies were around us… 44 students then ran round Times Square trying to complete a challenge that got them use to the area but asked them to get photographic evidence of all the tasks on the page (lots of photos of hotdogs, yellow taxi’s, poses and NYPD)

We left our hotel the following morning and took a wonder to Ground Zero, Wall Street and The Greenwhich village. Our evening meal was at Bubba Gumps (Famous from Forrest Gump) and then we spend Valentine Day evening on the 88th floor of the Empire State building… at hurricane force winds and ruining a few couples wedding proposals…

We took a lovely walk to the American Natural History Museum where the pupils spent the morning looking at the wonderful history of the nation we were visiting, including some famous faces from ‘Night at the Museum’. We took a peaceful walk through Central Park, seeing some famous film locations before heading to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. We then finished our day at Spiderman – The Musical (Turn off the Dark) and eh… well… visually stunning but I think we might have seen a Broadway Flop… the critics are still out on that one!

A packed day followed as we headed off to the United Nations Building and I for one was impressed at how good it was. We later went onto NBC studios and went on a guided tour of this iconic television building. After dinner back at the Empire State Building some of the group went to see the New York Knicks play in their home town, whilst others went onto shop at the worlds biggest department store… MACY’s.

The pupils had a free day for shopping on 5th Avenue before heading to Little Italy for dinner and then the group split and some went to do more sightseeing in Times Square whilst others went to see ‘American Idiot’ a Broadway Show by Greenday and some others went to see ‘Mamma Mia’ on Broadway.

Our final day was spent doing various things including some final shopping as well as a trip to the MOMA before we headed to the airport and flew home (via London)

PHEW… we were shattered but had an

Found this amazing article on BBC News re Arts in todays Curriculum… click HERE to read it

This article made me think about the impact of popular culture in our classrooms. Looking at the Sugababes inspirational video Ugly (below) or Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful (also below) or even Katy Perry’s latest song ‘Firework’ (also below) we are educated to believe in ourselves, who we are and respect those around us. Each video is about acceptance and tolerance and giving global citizenship issues an awareness. The art subjects… we rock…