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

AM: Yeah.
SS: Because it’s you know not only around LGBT issues but other stuff of of there’s a
whole area of [//] material, thought and ideas which (sigh) have not been explicitly made
clear to staff that they are, that they can deal with it. Because it’s dodgy stuff…
AM: {yeah}
SS: …you know sitting there with, talking about, I mean it was very interesting I was
with with these primary school teachers who I was talking with with the other night,
some of whom were really resistant to stuff, but they’d been dealing with some really
complex stuff. Like, um a child had her mother die on her and we are dealing with it and
talking about it in circle time and all the rest of it and there were parents coming saying
we don’t want you talking about this child death, this mother’s death.
AM: Right.
SS: Cos it’s not fair on our kids to have to deal with death [//]
AM: Right.
SS: So, excuse me?! That has to be challenged and that has to be dealt with.
AM: Yeah. It’s a sad fact of life unfortunately.
SS: Well that’s right. But they were confident because they were very small staffed, they
could talk to their head on a daily basis that their head would you know sort them out and
work with them and all the rest of it. But in a big secondary school where you don’t get to
see your staff very often, all sorts of unwritten stuff starts happening, oh we cant do this,
we cant do that.
AM: Yeah.
SS: And can we do this and can we do that, well I don’t know, so I won’t do it and won’t
take the risk.
AM: Yeah.
SS: But you get to the point, which I’m sure I said to you before, you know there’s a
teacher who said to me just before Christmas you mean to say to me I can use the word
lesbian in the classroom?
AM: Yeah, I remember you saying.
SS: Because there isn’t, there hasn’t been an explicitness of how to deal with the stuff,
and when you know it is difficult. I mean, you know I wonder how much teachers had the
chance to sit in the staff room and discuss for an hour around how they were gonna deal
with stuff around after 9/11 and the bombs on the London tube.