LGBTQ, immigration issues cross paths in our nation’s public schools
By Saul Ramos, this is part of NEA’s series Voices of Pride: The LGBTQ Experience in Schools 50 Years After Stonewall.
For the LGBTQ+ students who are undocumented, refugees, or newly-arrived to this country, the president’s rhetoric about brick walls, detention centers, and incarceration inspires nothing but fear.
“Will I be deported?”
“Can I stay in school?
“What did I do wrong?”
“Are my parents safe here?”
These are just a sampling of questions I’m asked by the immigrant LGBTQ+ students I work with as a paraeducator at Burncoat High School in the Worcester Public School system in Massachusetts. The questions started hitting me the day after President Trump was elected. As I walked into our classroom, I could see the fear in the eyes of my students.
Like many in the nation on that cold November morning in 2016, they were asking, “What just happened?”
At a Gay Straight Alliance club meeting that afternoon, some students were in tears. Trump’s election and subsequent policies regarding immigrants, transgender youth, and transgender men and women in the military, for example, have caused much internal conflict for students who are at that unique intersection of marginalized identities.
Even though intersectionality is being more talked about these days, it is a life-or-death CONTINUE READING: LGBTQ, immigration issues cross paths in our nation's public schools - Education Votes
