How I came out to my students
hudsynyc is the pseudonym of a second-year high school ELA teacher in Brooklyn. If you’d like to submit an entry for the New Teacher Diaries, please email edwize@uft.org.Sixteen 14-year-old girls taught by one 28-year-old woman. It is my second year having an all-girls 9th-grade advisory class at my high school in Brooklyn. Advisory is a more informal class where students have the opportunity to build real relationships with each other and with their advisory teacher.
By the end of September, my group of girls knew many things about me: I am originally from the New Jersey suburbs. I have a cat and a dog. I play soccer every week. I am relaxed but like to get things moving and accomplished in the classroom. They knew I buy my jeans at American Eagle and that I am never without an iced coffee in the morning. What they didn’t know was that I am married to a woman.
Although our school does not yet have a gay-straight alliance or any LGBT staff members who are out to the students, gay or bisexual teenagers seem ordinary to many of our students, who speak freely about their own sexuality and that of their peers. We even have a transgender student who changed his name and now uses the boys’ bathroom and locker room (as per the DOE’s nondiscrimination policy and our principal’s unyielding support).
At the start of this year, I was out to only that group of 10th-grade girls who had been in my advisory class last year. Now I had a new group of 14-year-old girls who didn’t know. What would
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