Hey y’all again…this is another excerpt from the almost-finished zine. This follows the previous entry chronologically. Love, ives
October 3. The silencing has already begun.
I have been brash and outspoken with my supervisors. My supervising teacher as well as my clinical faculty from BC are well-aware of my opinions. They applaud and appreciate my politics, my sense of social justice, my approach to discipline; they work with me on these things, and they allow me to take up quite a bit of space in meetings sorting through all of the different data and philosophical abstractions about my students and my teaching. What they aren’t aware of, though, is my internal struggle of my sexuality, my gender. My realness.
Some people have asked me, "Why does it matter if you are out or not to your students?" This seems to be some sort of professional question, alongside whether or not I talk about my weekend plans or what movies I like. My students can obviously already see that I’m "cool," though; they know it. They make sly references to Little Wing and tell me that they say, "yeah, we’ll see you on Myspace, Ms Schlegel." We are figuring each other out. As a teacher, I am sending barely perceptible semaphore, but they receive the more obvious ones first.
I live my life in the spirit of insurrection, of transgression, and of border-crossing of all kinds; when I come into the classroom to teach, I feel that this spirit is apparant to them even subtly. Teaching requires, for me, then, a very delicate balance of teaching students to cross those boundaries, and also policing those boundaries.
It is easy for me to understand policing professional boundaries, and keeping "personal" details private. But I have a harder time being "in the closet," both as a queer and as a genderqueer, because it requires work that I am not invested in doing. On the other hand, I am not necessarily safe in my environment to be "out." I am still being supervised as a student teacher, I am not liscensed, and I am still a student at BC. In my mind, I am larger than life /Freddy Mercury/etc, but to those who would exploit my weaknesses there are many things that I have to aggressively maintain as a secret.
So yesterday, in the teacher’s lounge, I was sitting with 3 other student teachers from BC — an entirely new crop of frothily-dressed girls, but a group with whom I get along and appreciate more than the girls at the other school. To my other side were the tenured teachers eating jell-o out of Tupperwares and drinking zero-calorie soda pop. I felt submerged in a sea of heteronormativity. When I feel this way at my school, I remind myself that I exist in many places besides this one, and that I am myself no matter what. I sometimes touch the edge of my chest binder, or adjust my feet in such a way that I can hear the sound of my cowboy boots scrape across the floor. These things keep me glued to myself.
But somehow the conversation turned specific enough that I — in another uncensored moment — referenced someone that I had been seeing lately. They immediately asked me what "his" name was.
I opened my mouth, but then realized what was happening: we are having this conversation. And not just about a date, but about me and who I am ( /am not). The table was looking at me expectantly, and eyes looked over whole wheat bread sandwiches and mugs of tea: shining, bright, cooperative and friendly student teachers waiting to welcome me into their girly land, which they have no idea I don’t really belong in.
I was on the precipice of that choice. I could tell them I’m gay at this moment. It would only really — really — take 3 little letters strung together to clue them in, and then a hurried, rushed sentence to clarify it. I imagined myself doing it: I’d take a big breath, I’d say it and then I’d tell them, "Well, you know, this is just who I date and this is just who I am, so don’t tell the students because this doesn’t go beyond this teachers’ lounge."
And then I looked around at the teachers and faculty. The administrative assistant who I’ve heard talking about the dress and makeup of other teachers. The math teacher who calls the students "idiots" and "losers" behind their backs. The BPS central office dudes in a suit hunched over a spreadsheet in the back. Could I trust anybody in this room to not tell anybody else if they overheard this?
And even if they weren’t there and the student teachers didn’t tell anybody — once that’s out, would it mean the end of the coffee chats in the reading lounge or the shared resource book, or the laughing with each other in our clincal meetings. Would it mean the end of camraderie and the beginning of an exile, and exile which I socially can’t cope with?
I didn’t feel like I had a choice with what to say in response to what "his" name is. And –truthfully — to me, the gender pronouns that would place me to these girls on the straight side of things — is not inaccurate. Any pronoun is accurate, but to these girls, pronouns aren’t an appetizer platter being offered forward with the promise of possibility that if you don’t like the shrimp puff you can always get the bruschetta on the next round. To them,pronouns are prix-fixe, you break it you buy it, buyer beware.
Could I have said anything different in this context? I played along, and then went into the staff bathroom off the cafeteria. And opened up an instructional supply catalog, and cried for 10 minutes straight.
later
During government class, my supervising teacher, who co-teaches this particular class with me, was leading a lesson on debate and discussion skills. Student pairs had just shared their thoughts on immigration, which had, of course, morphed into a discussion on personal freedoms and "hot button" issues. Someone asked the teacher what she thought, personally, and she replied that she didn’t want to tell people what she personally thought because she didnt’ want to influence the discussion. I agreed and felt releived that I wouldn’t have to share my own opinions with the students.
Suddenly, though, she took her glasses off and laid them on the table with a sigh. "You know," she said tiredly. "I"m a hippie about a lot of things, but I can be very conservative about other things." The students went silent, rapt with the slow revelation of a teacher’s personal and political thoughts. "I am very conservative," she went on, "about things like having babies out of wedlock, or living together out of wedlock…"
When I think about this part of her spiel now, I can hear the sound of a ticking clock, although I know that I didn’t realize then what was about to come next, or how many minutes of blissful innocence I had left in the classroom.
"And I don’t support," she said, "People of the same sex having children."
One student yanked his head up off the desk and looked at her quizzically. Another student who had been waiting with his hand raised put his hand down. She had everybody’s attention in that room, but I couldn’t tell if they agreed or disagreed. Something told me that they themselves disagreed.
Of course she didn’t move on or take attendance a second time or snap down the projector screen or something dramatic like that. She kept talking, listing all of the certain "conditions" that would be "okay" for gay people to adopt children. Like, say, if someone died, and their gay sister had to adopt the child. Like, say…a bunch of white noise blanked out by my own horror.
I swiveled my chair back around to my desk, feeling sick and nauseous. I looked at all of my students, my students who know me and have said that they like me and are working harder and harder for me as the semester goes on. I silently drilled little mental telegrams into their heads with the ferociousness of my thoughts: "Don’t let me down, kids. Speak up. Use your voice." I had a wierd feeling that they could say something to disagree with her, to express their thoughts, to express the tolerance that all the corny magazines tell them to express but that they actually do anyway in their actions and niceness. I wanted my students, with their swagger and bravado, to tell her that she was wrong. With the same nasty and rude demeanor that they sometimes tell me that they didn’t do their work because they didn’t feel like it, I wanted them to tell her that she was wrong.
The authority of the teacher hung in the room like the picture of the gallows still on the board from the French Revolution lesson earlier in the morning. My students stayed silent. I stayed silent. I turned around to my desk, and started composing a note in my little teacher plan book.
"Dear Ivy. I am so sorry. I did the best I could. You know the truth, and it will speak louder than the silence in this room. Love, Ivy, Ivan, Ivanovich, Iveroo Ives MacIverson." I wanted to run, I wanted to leave, I wanted to cry, I wanted to lay down on the floor under the table and sob, but all I could do was write myself a note, pin it to the inside of my teacher sweater, smile at my cooperating teacher and supervisor, smile at my students, and get back up there and start on another lesson.
