"Mrs. Benchly explained a little more to me - the whole boys-liking-girls thing. I can't say I understood. Mrs. Benchly asked me if I'd noticed that marriages were mostly made up of men and women... Now Mrs. Benchly was telling me something much bigger. Some sort of silly global conspiracy.
'But that's not how I feel,' I protested. ...'How I feel is what's right...right?'
'For you, yes,' Mrs. Benchly told me. 'What you feel is absolutely right for you. Always remember that.'"
As a future teacher, this passage really caught my eye. It forced me to think about the realities of the future and that I will probably be asked plenty of questions that are difficult to answer or explain. I especially like the last line of the passage in which Paul's teacher encourages him and shows him true acceptance in her classroom.
While I do not consider myself to be homophobic, I do realize that I need to educate myself a lot more on many cultural issues, including LGBT, to be an accepting, respectful teacher who will offer my students every opportunity possible. As teachers, we must realize that we help shape the lives and mentalities of the students in our classrooms, whether we intend to or not. We must be more than teachers for every individual student - we must be mentors and a support system.
To close, I offer a quote from the McLean article, Out of the Closet and Onto the Bookshelves, that accompanied this week's novel that really drives home the point of this post: "Heterosexual teachers need to deal with their own homophobia before they can help heterosexual students deal with theirs, and certainly before they can help build the self-esteem of their gay and lesbian students." (McLean, 195)
2 comments:
I found your post to be very interesting and I wanted to comment on it because I have some of the same ideas as you do on the issues of LGBT. Just as you did, I found the exact same quote to stick out to me. I thought that it was strange that a teacher would write something like that on a students report card. I think that it is important to educate students on cultural issues and I agree that we are the ones, as teachers, who must be there to offer our advice and our support. This quote was important to the book because Paul had been able to think about what his teacher had said and realize that he was gay.
I also agree that we must be our students mentors and support system as you had said. I think that it is important for students to feel safe in the environment of your classroom and for them to knowt that they can approach you with any issues they need to. We must be there for them in those times that they need us.
I think that what the teacher said to Paul about it being right for him was good and suportive of an accepting and nurturing environment.
However, I wonder what you thought of the teacher being the one to initiate the topic by putting in his report card that he was for sure gay. This to me seemed completely rude and inappropriate for the teacher. I feel like if Paul initiated the conversation, then it would be okay, but I have a really hard time seeing how it is okay for the teacher to be the one to put in his official record that he is gay. It especially bothered me that the teacher would put that on his report card. I do not really see what Paul being gay had to do with his performance in the classroom.
Did anyone else think this was strange or inappropriate???
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