The Gay/Lesbian Teacher As Role Model

Kenneth Pobo

Pointed at, whispered about, from one unknown country to another."

--MUTSUO TAKAHASHI

Many teachers, myself included, aren't comfortable with the idea of being a role model, someone to whom students (presumably) can look as they gain knowledge and learn to define themselves in and out of the classroom. What lessons are they learning when they look at me at the front of the room at 8:00 AM through last night's hangover or this morning's erased sleep? What can they tell about me at 11:00 AM when I waltz in and say--as if I were a favorite literary game-show host--"Can anyone tell me why April is a time for inventory in W. D. Snodgrass' poem?" A hand goes up and we're off and running.

Running is, in fact, how I spend much of my day. There he goes, our role model, with holes in his black socks and ugly shoes. I say a hello and move on.

And moving on is how I've spent much of my academic life. First there was undergraduate life--I was a geek-in-embryo for four years. Graduate school--an adolescent geek teaching my classes by day, coming out by night, slowly, half butterfly and half cocoon. Then I became an instructor, my Ph.D. a magic onion shedding its skinlike layers of "authority." And finally, a tenure-track job, the big goal, the closet where I sat with my onion and worried.

I was determined to stop moving, to find T. S. Eliot's still point in the turning world. I got tenure. The world still turned. The point disappeared. The closet remained.

I learned the rules of the game well: who to smile at even when I loathed them, what functions not to miss, how to finesse angry students out of complaints, how to paper over my mouth with forms and academic conference proposals.

While I was learning these things, what was I teaching my students? I teach former football players, big-hair women from New Jersey, and loads of suburbanites, often the first students ever to attend college in their families. Most distrust diversity of any kind. In Chester, Pennsylvania, where I teach, the students express fears about "Chesterites" (African Americans) coming over to "our" school and committing thefts, rapes, and murders. Evil is almost always "out there." It's "them," never "us."

For most of them, an openly gay teacher is not someone they expect to encounter. And, to some extent, why should they? If no teachers are truly "out," even if some are open secrets, the students will pretty much go with the presumption of heterosexuality--which they often equate with authority: the magic onion.

In a journalism class this semester, one of my few openly gay students posed this question to some of her classmates for an assignment on interviewing skills: would students accept an openly gay teacher? Most students reacted with hostility, fearing gay teachers--be they female or male--would hit on them or teach "pro-gay propaganda." One student responded, "I know there are gay and lesbian teachers here. I think they should be true to themselves and maybe a little of that would rub off on the students. Maybe it would make it easier on them, or harder, but when they hide in the closet it makes me think they hate themselves."

That student has a good point. Homosexual teachers know that, by and large, academic systems and structures reward the closet and punish the person kicking at its door. Many heterosexual teachers may feel, "Why make such an issue of my sexuality? It's nobody's business." Yet their wedding rings and casual remarks about a "husband" or "wife," in the classroom and out, suggest that sexuality in America is everybody's business, that institutionalized heterosexuality constantly makes an issue of sexuality.

Perhaps I am a role model in that I don't wear a wedding ring. Perhaps I am a role model not from the answers I can supply but from the questions I can raise.

The closet, though, is also a role model. Whenever a teacher feels shut up, censored, and believes that the result of not being shut up or censored is either violence or unemployment, he or she has essentially one option: silence. To protect themselves, some tightly closeted teachers censor their own syllabi and discussions--to the point of presenting inaccurate and homophobic information about the course material studied.

To avoid the suspicion of being gay, perhaps in a discussion of Walt Whitman, the Calamus poems and the homoeroticism which infuses all of Leaves of Grass are ignored. How many literature teachers--lesbian, gay, bisexual, or straight--teach Emily Dickinson as a frustrated straight woman wearing white and waiting for one of four male suitors to "rescue" her while she writes her marvelous and secret poems? Are arguments such as this posed by Adrienne Rich's investigation of Dickinson's sexuality figured into the discussion of Dickinson's work or just discreetly left out?

The closeted English teacher may be keeping the writers she or he is teaching --often with such passion and admiration--locked in the closet. When a writer's sexuality influences his or her works, can we leave such inquiry out of our presentations--at least at the college level--and still feel we are honestly grappling with the work? Or does a presentation that incorporates silence give students the impression that there are some questions better not asked about writing, some questions with which the role model is uncomfortable? By keeping gay-identified work out of the classroom, do we even give students a chance to ask questions? Aren't we enforcing a ban of silence on them as well?

Those of us who teach writing classes in high school or college know how dreadful it is to read narrative essays students have written. Essentially, they are about nothing: safe subjects, safe remarks. Most teachers would agree that reading an essay about how one young man won the big football game during his sophomore year or how one young woman found just the right belt for a sorority function does not inspire one to dig right in. Sometimes I wonder, though, whether we often receive safe essays because our teaching is safe; as teachers, we're not willing to be vulnerable, to speak openly. If the role model can speak only from the surface of her or his life, why should the student be expected to reach a deeper place?

Kicking open the academic closet door risks more than potential violence and job loss; it also risks having more intelligent and interesting classes. After we've taught the same material many times over for several years, it is easy for us to forget our own initial wonder and surprise at how writers have treated all elements of life. Last semester in a poetry-writing class, we were reviewing one of Allen Ginsberg's most audacious homoerotic poems. A nineteen-year-old woman raised her hand and said, "I didn't know people could write about these things." So much has been kept from them by homophobic anthologists and teachers.

The fact is, students do not live in Allen Bloom's sainted 1950s, when schools were supposedly orderly and a lot of questions never got asked. Today, many students come from difficult family situations. Many--whether they are able to articulate it yet--are beginning to deal with gender and identity questions. If we make the classroom a place where these issues are minimized, what message does that send? Does it say the very thing most English teachers are most saddened by: the oft-heard remark, "But literature just doesn't matter to me." Maybe for some students literature seems archaic and uninteresting because we limit the questions and the scope of the inquiry.

Raising questions often leads to conflict, which can be beneficial in the classroom provided the teacher has made his or her classroom conducive to doing so: a meditation point where conflicting views can be examined and discussed without proselytizing or evading. Sometimes those questions find their way up and down the hallways--and perhaps into administrative offices.

In his 1985 autobiography, Socrates, Plato, and Guys Like Me, Eric Rofes writes of his decision to teach as an openly gay man, even if it means losing his job as a sixth-grade teacher. The school's administration would have kept Rofes as a teacher had he only remained secretive. It was his openness that caused fear among the trustees, his employers. Perhaps for those trustees, being a good role model means lying to allow others the luxury of napping in their prejudices. For Rofes, this was too much to ask of him.

It also means that gay teachers must take the survivalist approach to teaching. Rofes says he became two Erics: "I had my `teacher Eric' and my `gay Eric' and the two were kept fully separated." The message from this kind of role modeling is that getting an education means getting a stronger mask. Even if the students never realize these two people exist in their instructor, they nevertheless receive the message: the lies of omission often speak the loudest.

Some students could gain much by knowing openly gay teachers. In some cases it may be a matter of life and death. The isolation many teenagers and young adults feel as they confront their own sexuality can be crippling and lead to suicide. These young people are dying of silence. In Sue McConnell-Celi's 1993 book, Twenty-first Century Challenge: Lesbians and Gays in Education, Virginia Ramey Mollenkott remembers her days as a closeted teacher: "Being in the closet took a great toll emotionally, especially when I recognized that certain of my students were lesbian or gay, yet was not able to be frank with them about my orientation."

It is frightening to think that maybe lives can be saved if there is even one teacher to whom a student can speak. But the message of silence--that some subjects are not appropriate for discussion, that some books are not appropriate for reading--is what the student hears. A 1992 study by James T. Sears called "Educators, Homosexuality, and Homosexual Students: Are Personal Feelings Related to Professional Beliefs" concludes: "As a largely invisible part of the student body, gay, lesbian, and bisexual students have few allies outside the school to speak on their behalf." For some, death may be the only listener.

Students are not the only members of the academic community who need teachers who invite honesty, openness, and protection; other teachers need them, too. The tragic story of American literature scholar F. O. Matthiessen suggests the desperation many gay academics feel--not just in the classroom but in their own schools and faculty lounges. Matthiessen committed suicide on April 1, 1950. According to David Bergman in his 1991 book, Gaity Transfigured, "The extremely homophobic atmosphere in which Matthiessen worked probably contributed to his suicide." Matthiessen wanted to come out but knew that doing so would leave him vulnerable. As respected and well known as he was for his studies in literature, he was no match for the entrenched homophobia of academia.

In some ways, America has come some distance from 1950. Today, new titles on gay subject matter appear daily; yet relatively few of these texts make it into the classroom. This is despite the fact that issues which have a strong impact on the gay community, such as AIDS, also impact heterosexuals. Indeed, AIDS is now the number-one killer of American males between the ages of twenty-five and forty and the number-four killer of women in the same age group. This is a fact young people, who in a matter of years will find themselves in that age group, need to confront. Yet how many English teachers, gay or straight, feel comfortable teaching such AIDS-related plays as Larry Kramer's The Destiny of Me? Or how many teachers who include gay writers in their curriculum teach only works that in no way draw attention to gender and sexuality issues?

For a teacher to be a role model, students don't have to look up to or admire the teacher, but they shouldn't be allowed the luxury of lethargy, the safety of classes and books that leave them unchallenged and numb. If teachers fear controversy, don't students receive a message that school is really a place to parrot back what they think the teachers want to hear and nothing more?

Perhaps greater than the fears of how students will handle a gay teacher or subject area is the fear many teachers have of administrators who may prefer giving students the kind of "education" that keeps them docile. New teachers or those who are struggling for tenure have good reason to fear being perceived as different. Sometimes all it takes to lose a job is one powerful homophobe on one committee. Moreover, many schools don't have sexual-preference protection for teachers written into their bylaws. The gay teacher must ask him- or herself how much the job ultimately matters. Is one's identity worth a constant compromise?

In the 1990s, college tenure-track jobs are often difficult to get and easy to lose. Some teachers decide it is a compromise they can make. Others leave the profession, which is a tragedy since they are often bright, compassionate, and informed people--just the kind of teachers one would hope any school would be proud to have. Some teachers hang on until they receive tenure and then make a gradual transition to more openness. Or, like spies in enemy territory, they find a few trusted colleagues with whom they can be open and continue wearing the mask for everyone else. It's pathetic that so much energy must be wasted on these concerns.

Administrators and powerful faculty members could also benefit by knowing and having dialogue with gay teachers. This may be a significant kind of role modeling. Many straight teachers want to become more aware, more alert to issues of diversity on campus. If gay teachers remain silent and stuffed in the closet, how can such a dialogue occur?

The question of why a teacher remains in education is ongoing. The demands of the job change with each classroom and with each new year. Teaching is one field in which it is hard to keep absolutely stagnant because the teacher constantly works with individuals--people who sit before them at their desks with fears, curiosities, and yearnings. In that way, students, teachers, and administrators have common ground.

The gay teacher knows how it feels to be given inaccurate information about issues that are crucial to his or her identity, to be told not to ask certain questions or read certain texts, and how it feels to be isolated from one's peers. Perhaps this is why many gay people are drawn to the teaching profession: to bring truth where there are lies, books where only blank pages are presented, and inclusion where only isolation is known. If those are the values a student can see in his or her teacher, then surely that teacher is a terrific role model.

Chaucer's student in The Canterbury Tales "would gladly learn and gladly teach." Perhaps he was a gay student, a gay teacher. What made him happy was learning and sharing that knowledge with others--not for his ego's sake but because it was his nature to do so. He was raggedy, dressed badly, and lived in cramped quarters. But he loved what he did--and such a love cannot be faked or closeted. It would have made a profound impact on the lives of his students and fellow teachers. He remains a role model, unafraid to grapple with uncomfortable questions, ready to carve a safe space out of the chaos.

Kenneth Pobo is an associate professor of English at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. His essays and verse have been published frequently, and his latest release is the book of poetry, Cicadas in the Appletree (Palanquin Press, 1998).

COPYRIGHT 1999 American Humanist Association
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