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Coming out to My Students Was One the Best Things I’ve Done as a Teacher
I was forced out of the closet in a very public way, but looking back it’s the best thing that’s happened in my teaching career
I had decided that if my students directly asked me if I was gay I would simply tell them — but it didn’t happen like that. There had been rumours amongst the students that I was vaguely aware of and I had assumed that most of them had already guessed, but I’d always felt that this wasn’t enough. That I was somehow letting my students down by not being more open with them about my sexuality. After all, young people need to know that being gay is normal and isn’t a big deal, they need to know that their lives will go well and that the sky won’t fall when they open up about themselves, and, above all else, they need role models who they can look up to and emulate. But as I stood there on that stage with 200 young impressionable students staring at me I found myself saying, when asked, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I had let them down. Not only had I denied the truth, but I’d implicitly sent a signal to everyone in the room that being gay was something to be ashamed about.
It was the week after Donald Trump’s election and I’d decided to give a talk to the whole Sixth Form about…
