Non-Normative Gender and Sexual Identities in Schools: - Schools Out

CG: {no}
AM: …but, when another member of staff talks about their partner, you know their
opposite sex partner then talk about your same sex partner and if there’s an occasion
where partners are being taken, take your partner, that kind of thing. But at the same time,
like you’ve said, I’d never force a teacher to come out…
CG: {no}
AM: …and there’s much disagreement amongst just my close, small group of friends ho
are teachers, who disagree about whether they should come out at work, some are some
aren’t.
CG: Right. And it’s very important that if a teacher does decide to come out, that they are
supported by the school staff. That they are supported by the head of the school in that as
well. Because if you haven’t got the support of the other staff and those around you then I
don’t see how you can be expected to be comfortable in that environment. So we
appreciate that it’s a very difficult thing for staff but we like to see it happen because it
can have such a positive effect.
AM: Yeah. Um, sticking with teachers. In my research so far, I’ve found many teachers
citing restrictions and lack of training and resources why the bullying is often not tackled.
Do you think this is a legitimate reason?
CG: Um, I think so and one thing we are always very mindful about is not blaming
teachers. Ur, we appreciate that teachers have an awful lot to do and whilst this might be
at the top of our agenda in our everyday work, tackling homophobia, homophobic
bullying, talking about LGBT issues in class isn’t necessarily at the top of a teachers
agenda. Teachers have targets to meet, there’s a lot of pressure on them to meet those and
often they don’t have time to do the pastoral side of things. There are of course teachers
who say well I’m not a social worker, I’m not really interested in these issues
And they don’t want to do it. But on the whole the teachers we speak to are um and
maybe they are quite self selecting, will call us up and say there is nothing in our school,
this is something I want to do, I don’t have the support of my department or my head
teacher, um you know is there anything you can do to help? And we say, we have a DVD
called Spell it Out, which is a 17 min teacher training DVD.
AM: Yes, I’ve seen it, yeah.
CG: For key stage 3 and 4 and we sent a copy of that to every single secondary school in
England and I speak to so many teachers who say I have never seen it in my school. So
there will be a lot of materials that go into schools which don’t get to the teachers and this
is why, especially with the um homophobic bullying guidance, having it um
commissioned as an online resource means you don’t have to, if there’s a copy in your
staff room or your head teachers office you don’t have to go and you know be the one
who gets that down off the self because you know your head teacher might think why are
they doing this you know its not part of our agenda, are they gay themselves? This might
affect your promotions, so to be able to access that online and that has a lot of practical
resources to use on the curriculum as well, is really really good. Um, in terms of