—From a high school teacher in Maine, who is also the faculty adviser for the GSACan I just tell you my quick end of the year “It Gets Better” story? We had a few incredibly disrespectful seniors holler out “fag” at an end of the year awards assembly last week when a few of my openly gay show choir kids received awards. I was incredibly discouraged and disappointed as I felt like we’d come so far as a school community this year.
I went to talk to the senior advisors and principal about the incident and got a little support, but mostly got the “they’re graduating tomorrow, what can we do?” response. When I returned to chat with the Show Choir about the incident, two of our straight football team-show choir boys had already taken it upon themselves to confront the two seniors who used the explitive and set them straight about how hurtful that sort of thing is and how wrong they were. The two seniors backed right down.
All of that is kind of wonderful, but the really amazing thing is that at the beginning of the year the two football/show choir guys were part of the group calling people fags, but after a year of getting to know people and working together with all kinds of people, they have changed their ways, and will openly talk about how much Alex (one of the openly gay kids) means to them as a friend and that they would take a bullet for him. It does get better… even in high school.
It Gets Better Project
« itgetsbetter.org
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