The answer: no. Not even teachers think that it is enough to teach.
We have to meet about what we're going to teach.
We have to meet about how we're going to teach it.
We have to meet about if we're going to teach it.
Collaboration, deliberation, and listening all fill the hour before kids come in and the hours after they leave, as we all try to find the same page and be on it.
It was in such a meeting, that I made the decision to come out.
Third grade was learning about Alvin Ailey, sort of.
He was a gifted dancer and choreographer, whose story stands on its own, and sheds light on social issues of his time. Sort of.
It was decided, in that meeting, that for our purposes, Alvin would be an inspired black artist, but a very large aspect of his life would go unmentioned. It's not that we would lie. We just wouldn't say it out loud. Kids, probably wouldn't ask, so we wouldn't tell.
As one teacher in the room put it, "We taught them about Jackson Pollock, and he was really not a nice guy. We don't have to present every detail about Alvin Ailey. We can say that his 'partner' was just his dance partner. I know as a parent, I wouldn't want my children's teachers exposing them to that."
"That" was the famously known truth: Alvin Ailey was gay.
I sat there, not surprised. But, not comfortable. I wondered how much of that would have been said around me, if she knew more about me.
How could I explain a part of me only evident in my presentation? My life looked liked hers, with a husband and beloved children.
That meeting was just the latest in a series of before and after-school shows where I had a front row seat to a colleague's disgust with an integral part of who I am.
My silence was beginning to feel deceptive. Complicit.
Alvin Ailey could be edited, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I mentioned the as-of-yet unmentionable.
In print and out loud: queer.
Proud.
to be continued
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