Just last week there was another one. You know--one of those heartwarming stories about somebody proposing marriage to a teacher in her classroom. This time it was in Dover, New York. A third grade teacher's boyfriend not only proposed in the classroom, but enlisted the students to help out by holding the proposal signage.
These crop up regularly; sometimes there's touching video and the whole school is in on it. And then there are really good ones where both halves of the couple are teachers (this one made it all the way to US magazine and ABC News). And here's one that involved a video, a kindergarten class, and a whole school assembly:
I have always had thoughts about these things. For one, a public proposal is only for people who are already 100% certain of the answer. For another, as someone on Marriage #2, I wonder about the weird factor for young students who remember being part of the proposal for a marriage that later crashed and burned.
But mostly I think this can be part of the general category of Living Your Teacher Life In Public. I think it's generally useful for students to see adults-other-than-their-parents navigating life stuff. As with everything in education, there's the matter of balance; if every Monday class period starts with an account of the weekend's dating, or your every rough day at home turns into a rough day for your students, that's too much. But family photos on the desk, brief mentions of Cool Things That Happened (like the baby walked yesterday)--things that are the classroom equivalent of having students discover that you actually buy groceries at the store--these not only help you relate to students human to human, but also help them see more examples of how normal adult humans cope with life. Put another way, the first step of a relationship is to show up, and you can't show up if your own life is a deep secret. I didn't propose in front of my students, but I told them I was engaged, because if you have any kind of real human relationship with other humans, even a professional relationship, then you share major events that require them to shift their picture of normal you.
(There is a whole other chapter that goes with teaching in a small town, where people will already Know Things and fill in the blanks, so it's in your own best interests to provide accurate information yourself. That also saves you moments like the time I noted a tv actress was attractive and a student said, "Ha ha--what would Mrs. Greene say about that" and another student said, "He's divorced, you dummy.")
These are all the thoughts I used to have when I came across one of these stories. Now I have other thoughts.
Thoughts like, if this we a same-gender couple, in some states the teacher would lose their job and be subject to being sued by parents. If bills like the one proposed in Tennessee were passed, a same-gender couple that was legally married and legally had a child could not even put a family picture on their desk for fear of violating the ban of any materials that “promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender issues or lifestyles."
Don't Say Gay laws like those being supported in Kansas and Florida and Tennessee and South Carolina and heaven knows where else since the last time I looked-- these are, for teachers, Don't Be Gay laws. To simply be in the room while being both LGBTQ and normal would qualify as "normalizing" and therefore illegal behavior.
It's important to remember that these kinds of laws are not about having some sort of vague philosophical impact-- they are about requiring LGBTQ teachers and students to keep their lives in a sealed box, requiring them to keep part of themselves hidden and to keep unexpressed parts of the lives that we straights get to blurt out anytime we feel like it. Simple stuff like referring to a partner by a pronoun would have the potential to disrupt your entire career.
These are dumb, dehumanizing laws that would threaten the lives of students and teachers, and while it's not the worst thing about them, they would also throw a serious obstacle in the way of teachers being able to do their jobs.
The next time you see a touching story about a teacher classroom marriage proposal, or even just notice a nice family picture on a teacher's desk, ask yourself if you think that should be illegal for certain people.
In the building where I used to teach, two of the teachers (a man and a woman) were a couple. They chose an apartment 30 miles away, in another town, so 'nobody would know' they were living together (except their fellow staff members)--they could shop, go to a movie, etc. outside the usual realm of their students. When they were engaged, only their colleagues knew.
ReplyDeleteThey got married over the Fourth of July weekend. They had planned a family and she returned to school pregnant. She gave birth in early March, 8 months to the date of her wedding. I walked into the staff lounge and heard mothers asking how much the baby weighed, so they could determine whether the baby was premature--or conceived a couple of weeks prior to the wedding. This, by the way, was in 2005, not 1960.