Gerri August,Safe places-reflection

 More so then the other articles we have read thus far into class, this weeks article really exposed me to a new perspective, as the topic of the LGBT community is something that people try to avoid talking about especially in the school setting. I remember the first time I was exposed to a gay couple was when I was in high school and these two girls were kissing in the hall. I remember staring out of curiosity because it was something I wasn’t exposed to before. I found this article really interesting and it gave a powerful message on why we need to integrate LGBT into society.

To help break down the article I used the reflection questions and thought about experiences in my own life and other articles that we have looked at. So for this weeks blog post I thought I would share some of my answers to the reflection questions.

1.)  What messages did you receive about the LGBT community when you were in school? Which messages were explicit, which were implied?

We talked a lot about privilege in class, and one of the privileges that gives you all the power is being heterosexual, so that is the “norm”. This goes back to SCWAAMP. I think teachers just assume that everyone is straight and they try and avoid talking about same sex couples. Until reading this article it didn’t come to my mind just how unrecognized the LGBT community was. One of the after school clubs at my high school was LGBT, but it was barley recognized. In the morning announcements, there would be updates for every other club but never anything about the LGBT club. It also never got a page in the high school year book. Although there was a club for the LGBT community it went unrecognized by everyone else. Like in the article how students had to hide their sexuality from their professors.

2.)  As an educator, can you identify opportunities to incorporate LGBT voices into your curriculum? What would you need to take this step?

This article, as well as the Aria article showed me how teachers play a big role in influencing students about their choices. It was shown in the Aria article when his teacher came to his house to tell his parents him to speak English and then again shown in this article when a Spanish professor marked an answer wrong because it wasn’t masculine form and also the professor who ignored a student. Do educators have the right to ignore them, do you think they even know they are doing it? I don’t like how these students are getting bullied by their peers and in a way their teachers too.  My friend showed me about this article here which was about a teacher who told a student who was being bullied to “act less gay”. This made me mad as a future intended educator! As an educator I definatley want to incorporate LGBT voices. I liked the ideas the article gave about using different books and as a teacher I would talk about it positively! Especially little kids they have questions about people with two moms or two dads and especially during this time it should be acceptable to bring up in class. I would use props, like the flag and talk about differences in people.