Transcript
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Teaching While Queer is a podcast for 2SLGBTQIA+ educational professionals to share their experiences in academia.
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Hi, I'm your host, Bryan Stanton, a theater pedagogue and educator in New York City, and my goal is to share stories from around the world from 2SLGBTQIA+ educators.
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I hope you enjoy Teaching While Queer.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Teaching While Queer.
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I am your host, Bryan Stanton.
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Today, I have the privilege of speaking with Brandon Box- Higdem.
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How are you doing, Brandon, Do you?
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mind taking a second and introducing yourself to the listeners at home.
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Absolutely.
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My name is Brandon Box- Higdem.
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I identify as he/ him, and I have been a teacher for about 15 years and involved in theater and education.
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Pretty much most of my life Came out in 1993 and have navigated these waters since then.
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I was outed in 1996, so not too far behind, was it 1996?
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It was 98.
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I'm just feeling like I'm older than I am.
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That happens and also, like I just want to apologize to those who are listening that this it's inadvertently turned into a lot of theater people.
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But guess what?
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You get connected to the people you get connected to through circles, and I'm a theater educator and there are a lot of theater educators in my circle.
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The good thing is we don't have to talk about theater.
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We'll dive right into what it means to be a queer educator.
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So let's take a journey back in time and talk about your experience as a queer student.
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So you came out in 1993, but did you have any inkling of your identity prior to that?
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Oh, absolutely Absolutely.
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And in fact, after I came out and started to kind of reflect even more, all of the all of the signs were there.
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You know, um, I uh, I graduated from high school in 1990 and uh was a product of uh parent parental divorce.
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I saw my sophomore year in high school and uh, lots and lots of suppression of feelings and all of that uh to kind of navigate.
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And so it wasn't until I actually kind of slowed down in 93 to just do you know one thing and try to do that well, rather than lots and lots of things, that all of a sudden these feelings started coming up.
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It was really interesting around that time period.
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One of the aspects of uh queer culture, in the ways that folks were trying to describe it uh, was this idea of dominant mother, absent father uh and my mom, my family life was on some levels that uh, my dad uh is, is a is a very strong presence in my life.
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But when I was a lot younger he was involved in the military, he was trying to find a the military.
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You know that was kind of hard to kind of navigate, and so that summer of 93, what I ended up doing was reaching out to my dad, who was living down here in Arkansas, and just saying, hey, I found this book, uh, and I want you to to read it because I would like to be able to talk to you about it.
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Uh, and and really and truthfully, my coming out story, uh, when my parents divorced they I was old enough that they gave me the opportunity to select who I would want to go live with, and because my mom was such a strong presence in my life and my dad and I were close, I guess I just felt a stronger emotional connection to my mom that I went with her.
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So, consequently, coming out, I never dreamed that my dad would be the first one like that.
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He was the first one.
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But my stepmom, pam, was this just phenomenal force, just high energy, vibrant, like everybody, just loved being around her.
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And she her sister, is gay and lives up in Seattle.
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And just seeing how my dad kind of navigated around Aunt Claudia, I knew that I probably needed to kind of broach this conversation with him first and it actually was really good.
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It turned out really really well and he helped me navigate.
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Coming out to my mom, my mom was not, it was not a good thing, it actually kind of went polar opposite to the way that I thought it would.
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However, you know we worked our way through it.
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I, you know, I just kept telling her listen.
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I am working my way through this coming out process and if you have questions, I may not know the answers, but I want you to feel comfortable enough to be able to ask them and then I can try to answer them as honestly as I can, or give me some time, and I think through that back and forth, uh way of doing things.
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Um, we finally worked our way through it and then we jump ahead.
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You know, uh, 15 years ago I started teaching and I moved down here to Arkansas to do that and, uh, met my husband actually online, and about seven or eight years later we got married at my mom's lake house in Minnesota, lakeside ceremony.
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And you know, it's just like this full circle of of the journey.
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I love that.
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I'm curious.
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You said you sent your dad a book.
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Do you recall what the title of the book was?
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I want to say it was like father, like son, something like that.
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It was very, it was very of the time period and of course I think they still talk about some of that stuff now.
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But I think they've also proven that it's.
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You know, there's there's no right or wrong way to do that, uh, in the coming out process, and who is gay and who isn't, and and all of those signature type things.
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Um, I think it's interesting because I think the parents.
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Generally parents will go to like a.
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Why like?
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Why?
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Why are you this way?
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Um.
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I think it's funny because, uh, in my own experience, I was asked whether or not I was abused, and I don't have any remembrance of being abused or whatnot.
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I just knew that I was always.
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I mean, I will say that I knew that I was always not exclusively interested in women, you know, or girls, um, but um, it's interesting, they go to the y.
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And it's funny for me now because my parents can actually joke about things which it took a long time for them to do.
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That right and and the the running joke for a while was yes um, I was gay because I watched mary poppins so much as a kid and it's like I.
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I ruined vhs, vhs after vhs watching Mary Poppins, and so that's it.
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That's why.
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So thank you, julie Andrews, for making me who I am today.
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Thank you, julie Andrews.
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Yes, yes, If you ever listen to this I love you.
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All right.
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So, thinking on that, you came out after high school, you came out well before you were an educator, and so how do you think your experience just as a queer person has kind of impacted your teaching?
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It is one of the things that I have never.
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I think in the last like three or four years I've really kind of honed my focus of making my classroom much more accessible than when I was in school, because I want my classroom to be a place that I never had.
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I think everything during the 80s and 90s was so shrouded in shame and guilt and the AIDS epidemic.
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And you know, in fact that's where that's immediately where my mom went.
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My mom, my mom's mind didn't go to the why my mom's mind went to oh my God, I'm too young to be able to lose my son to this cancerous, you know, whatever Cause she didn't use the word aids, um, and it took a number of conversations with her to be able to say listen, like just because I'm sharing this side of me with you does not mean that I'm promiscuous or I'm not going to be safe in this scary time, you know.
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But it also kind of defined.
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It defined that kind of parameter of the community, because there was a lot of fear, there was a lot of of of shame and guilt about things that we just don't talk about, and so to be here and be able to reflect back on that, the idea that it is night and day and that I am able to marry who I love, you know, uh, and in fact do it the day after the supreme court, you know, passed.
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It was pretty phenomenal, uh.
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We selected minnesota because was it was already approved, like gay marriage had already been passed?
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Uh and uh.
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And then it just so happened that the Supreme court passed it and the next day we got married, you know, uh.
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But but I also have that perspective to be able to bring to my classroom, to be able to bring uh to the students who are struggling.
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And the first couple of days I just say listen, my door is always open, you can come and talk to me.
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I may not necessarily know all of the answers.
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I may not necessarily be able to have to be able to keep everything that you share with me.
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If it's something that's really scary, like, I might able to keep everything that you share with me.
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If it's, if it's something that's really scary, like I might need to find somebody for you or I might have to report it or you know any of that kind of stuff.
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But but I also, you know, basically tell them I want you to know that that if that does happen, I'm going to still be right by you.
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I'm not going to just pass you off, and you know, because, um, everybody's coming out story is different, you know, um, and so I I just try to build my classroom as a, as a place where kids can feel safe to just be who they are.
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Um, you know, sometimes not to kind of bring back to theater and stuff but theater sometimes does that but to be able to feel that freedom of expression of who they are is powerful and something that I didn't have.
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And that's where I've, in the last couple of I've really embraced and kind of doubled down Absolutely.
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And I think there's one of the things that I love about being a theater educator and this is kind of timely, considering there was for, for those of you who are not theater people and maybe don't keep up with the headlines, we're recording this in December and over the last few months a school in Northern Texas has been targeted, um and really uh, had a lot of media because the administration decided that they had to cancel the musical because there were people playing roles that were not aligned with the gender on or the sex that was written on their birth certificate, and it specifically affected a transgender boy who played the male role.
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And what I find so great about theater is that it is a place where students can affirm themselves.
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I once had a transgender boy play Pinocchio and he ends the play saying I'm a real boy, I'm a real boy, I'm a real boy, right, and it's like Ooh, I said I didn't realize when I cast you that I was going to have this powerful moment that I absolutely loved, but like I did, and like it had me crying without realizing why, because I wasn't actively thinking about that I was putting the right person in the role and I think that it's the fun thing about what we get to do is that you can even just experiment with it, because I'm going to tell you what there are not enough men in theater programs for high school.
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So you know, the likelihood of a trans masculine student wanting to test out what it means to be masculine in a role in high school is is very likely because we're constantly asking women to play men on stage.
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Yeah, and the thing is is it's tied to theater history.
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I mean, if you're you know, we've got all of this craziness just kind of going on in school districts all over the country.
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But when you look at Shakespeare, I mean Shakespeare, all of the like Juliet, the original Juliet was a male whose voice hadn't changed yet.
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I mean it's you know, and yet they want you to be able to teach to curriculum standards and all of that and theater history.
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I mean it's like that's part of the curriculum you know.
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So it's like absolutely.
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I also find it fascinating because I mean shakespeare is being debated now, like romeo and julia can't be seen.
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Um, and like and like, uh, I don't know, bugs, uh, james and the giant peach.
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There were actors playing all of these different kind of characters and because they were playing characters that were not aligned with their gender, even though they were bugs, um, there was boycotts happening.
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It is a wild time, which leads me to my next kind of you uh mentioned that you are in arkansas, uh, and you have a not so lovely governor right now, and so I wanted to talk a little bit about what your experience is like as a queer educator in Arkansas, and do you find yourself dealing with a lot of anti-queer behavior?
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Yeah, you know, I've been thinking about this since I reached out to you and to how I was going to answer this, because I really, in my school district, I feel nurtured and it's a lot more calmer, I think, at some levels, in regards to politics, on some levels, even though politics right now is so turbulent.
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So I do feel very, very lucky to be in the school district that I am in, partly because, you know, in the last couple of years, our admin, all the way up to you know, superintendent, they have not been afraid to have the conversations.
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You know, we were talking a couple of years ago about a trans student who was in trans male, who was in a forensics squad, and they were trying to work their way through some district policies in regards to hotel stays and where this child would stay.
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And one of my dear friends, who's also a fellow colleague, uh, was just like what do I do?
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I mean?
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Like how do I navigate that?
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Because this child would be, would be mortified to know that they were going to have to be in a room with three girls, you know, um, and and one of our, one of our admin said well, we would just, we would just have to to do it.
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You know, and we're, and we probably would need to have that conversation with the parents.
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And and then, and then she kind of turned to me and said and how do you feel about that, brandon?
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And I and I looked at her and I said, well, you could have just outed them Like you literally could have just outed that child, and we've got to be so careful in that.
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And I think it really shook that administrator.
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You know, as we, as the conversation progressed, there were some tears, there was some things like that.
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You know that it was just like we, we've got to be better.
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And I even said to her, even in this conversation, she said this we were sitting in my classroom.
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I go, this is a safe place because I want this space to be what I didn't have, and that, you know, kind of a thing.
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I think it's different in other cities across our state.
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Uh, it's definitely different in cities across our country in regards to, uh, you know what was so jarring this year, uh, was the fact that the I mean our first week of school for us teachers is professional development and it is, you know, cram packed and the very first session was two hours of looking at all of the laws that had just been passed, that we have to follow, that we have to navigate through.
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A fourth of them are dealing with transgender students.
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And in my head I'm sitting here thinking these kids are going to either implode or they're going to commit suicide.
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Or does my goal need to be to protect these children from, you know, suicidal thoughts this year because of all of this, you know?
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And then in my head I'm also going what is happening?
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Like I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that we spent legislative time dealing with where someone can pee, rather than the fact that we have to do four mandatory active shooter drills in our schools every year and in fact, the next morning after legislative, you know, active shooter for another two and a half hours.
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And I was like, like when I was in school I never would have thought this, but it's like this is my life now.
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This is, you know, I think the priorities are askew.
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Priorities are so askew right now.
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I think people one of the things that I tell my speech kids, the people who have been so kind of undercurrent supremacist and all of that have been given an opportunity to be able to speak and that their voices are heard and equal folks that are trying to do good, and that, I think, has been has opened the door to all of this hatred of people who are different than you.
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You know, I consistently come back to the fact that you know, we are a country that is built on the separation of church and state, and we also are built on the foundation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and I feel like whatever that looks like needs to be what is embraced in this country.
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You know you're not necessarily going to agree with someone, but talking at someone and not listening to what's happening is a major issue.
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That I think we're not there yet.
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I mean, congress is not there yet as a clear statue of you know where they're at.
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I think people need to stop.
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I think they need to sit back, I think they need to listen to what they're being told from someone.
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The minute that they feel like they don't agree, I don't think I think they need to fight that urge to be like, yes, but I did, in trying to jump in and one up everybody and then have an honest conversation.
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You know, which is why I wanted to be here today is because I think I think it's important that people hear that, that you know, stop talking at each other.
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Take a moment, listen you.
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You don't have to agree, but you also, you know, can also know that, like you know, in the end my life is not your life.
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You know, we've got.
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We've got differences, and that's okay.
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We may be different nationalities, we may be different religions, we may be different sexualities, we may be different any of that kind of stuff and that I think what we've lost is recognizing that that's what makes the United States unique and gives it its power, and some of that power is being dictated rather than an open conversation.
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Absolutely.
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I think that you're spot on right there.
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There seems to be a definite lack of humanity and empathy, and I would be willing to say, critical thinking skills, which is another reason that I think that education is being targeted is because part of what we're supposed to teach children is to evaluate and think critically.
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And that's kind of why we're in the firing range is because we're teaching children that they need to kind of look, assess and make their own opinion and even though adults were supposedly taught this as children, it's kind of flown out the window.
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For this is what I believe and that's what matters, and that's it.
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So I think you're spot on.
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And and that breath, like we also were taught.
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I mean, I was taught I don't know if it's because I I was taking acting classes but I was taught about active listening skills and like taking a breath and listening to someone and and how to respond, and it's like yeah any of those skills that were kind of the skills that you actually get from school, that are relevant to life kind of, have fallen to the wayside.
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You know, one of the things, too, that that that I struggle with so hard is this, this use of the word indoctrination.
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I struggle so hard because I also sit back and I look at some of the choices that are being made, you know, in regards to, you know, religion in the schools and all of this kind of stuff.
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And, listen, I'm Christian and that was a major portion of my coming out, was dealing with the guilt of being raised Lutheran, and it was fire and brimstone during that time period, and that was also another reason why coming out to my dad was so important, because he helped me navigate.
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You know what the Bible says, what that, you know what that implies and how.
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You know how it can be interpreted.
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And I mean, listen, this man became.
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He went on to become a Methodist preacher.
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He's currently a Methodist preacher and he is fighting the good fight in regards to that split.
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But I have trouble when I'm sitting in a classroom and we have spent $500,000 or something like crazy amount of money like that for an 11 by 17 framed photo that has a picture of the flag and says in God, we trust that needs to go in every classroom and in my head.
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I'm sitting here thinking what does that say to our Muslim students?
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What does that say to our Hindu students?
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What do we y'all, what?
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What is happening?
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You know, and in regards to indoctrination, you know, I, I, I know, I know that there are parents in my school district that feel like I shouldn't talk about my life, feel like I shouldn't talk about my husband, feel like I shouldn't talk about you know, um, but it all comes back to for me, um, I, I've been watching some of the podcast and and, and one of the things that did resonate with me was this aspect of if a heterosexual, straight teacher is allowed to have their wedding photo in or pictures of their family in their classroom.
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I am, too, and I also don't shy away from the conversations of like, yeah, I had to, like come home last night and cook dinner.
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Like we do really random, boring things that are every day.
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Like it's not, you know, we're not this like abhorrence or or like abomination that we live in this.
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No, we have everyday lives Like we, you know it's, and, and I want my students to understand that that you know, I live my life, the same type of journey that everybody else does.
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You know, I just happen to love someone who's the same gender as me.
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I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier when we were discussing the AIDS epidemic and promiscuity.
00:28:04.612 --> 00:28:17.929
Like that was the immediate kind of direction that your mom took, and I think we're still dealing with that kind of backlash of like oh, queer people are just like sex crazed and it's all about queer sex.
00:28:17.929 --> 00:28:33.851
And it's wild to me because and this gets pointed out I interact with my guests a ton on social media and this gets pointed out a lot by my guests as they go through life and you know people are targeting them for various reasons or whatnot.
00:28:33.851 --> 00:28:47.455
It always comes down to someone thinking about queer sex more than queer people think about queer sex when really we're just like oh gosh, I have to go to the grocery store tonight and I am so exhausted after dinner I'm going straight to bed.
00:28:49.739 --> 00:29:00.218
um a typical life, because I mean, yes, it would be nice to just be like you know I'm gonna have sex all the time, but that's not how life works, like you know.
00:29:00.218 --> 00:29:02.561
Like fantastic, that's great.
00:29:02.561 --> 00:29:14.935
And and some people, some people on all sides of sexuality, do focus on, on sex, and that's not something against, you know, sex workers or people in the porn industry or anything like.
00:29:14.955 --> 00:29:21.585
That's a choice that they've made but like, your daily life is your daily life and no matter what you're doing, even if sex is your job, you still have to deal with.
00:29:21.585 --> 00:29:24.295
Daily life is your daily life and no matter what you're doing, even if sex is your job, you still have to deal with daily life stuff.
00:29:24.295 --> 00:29:27.624
And it's that part that I think people forget.
00:29:27.624 --> 00:29:34.942
Like we're just daily life.
00:29:34.942 --> 00:29:48.781
People who are married, there's definitely less stigmatization happening because it's like oh well, you're the normal one and my husband.
00:29:48.781 --> 00:29:52.605
I used to say that we were the palatable queer people because we were married with kids.
00:29:52.605 --> 00:29:55.162
So, like we were, we were okay.
00:29:55.162 --> 00:29:57.878
Yeah, we could be tolerated.
00:29:57.999 --> 00:29:58.299
Yeah.
00:30:00.486 --> 00:30:00.807
Me too.
00:30:01.215 --> 00:30:08.042
I hate that word too I was was like it's funny because I'm like, we're like acceptance and now we need to move beyond that even.
00:30:08.042 --> 00:30:11.558
But I'm glad that we're we're trying to get away from tolerance.
00:30:11.558 --> 00:30:15.227
It's like a sticky substance that just like won't let go.
00:30:15.227 --> 00:30:27.083
But I just think of like I don't know, I'm a comic book person, so like I think of like I don't know, I'm a comic book person, so like I think of Venom and how Venom is like sticky, the comic book character, and it's like Venom is tolerant.
00:30:27.234 --> 00:30:31.259
He just won't go away, but we're trying to move towards something else.
00:30:31.259 --> 00:30:34.188
Yeah yeah, I don't know.
00:30:34.188 --> 00:30:37.942
That's a little, you know, rundown of my like superhero life.
00:30:37.942 --> 00:30:38.943
There you go.
00:30:41.674 --> 00:30:41.957
There you go.
00:30:41.957 --> 00:30:43.423
You and my husband would get along really well.
00:30:44.857 --> 00:30:45.138
He loves.
00:30:45.179 --> 00:30:45.661
Nightcrawler.
00:30:45.661 --> 00:30:46.624
That's awesome.
00:30:46.624 --> 00:30:52.623
When we first started dating he complained so much.
00:30:52.623 --> 00:30:55.724
He was like I look at Funko Pops all the time.
00:30:55.724 --> 00:30:59.296
They've got all this random crap he goes.
00:30:59.296 --> 00:31:01.143
They never have a Nightcrawler.
00:31:02.315 --> 00:31:09.339
Then all of a sudden it started to take of oh good that route, so he's got him now but I'm not a little person and I know people who are.
00:31:09.339 --> 00:31:27.261
I just like I have trouble with clutter oh, okay okay, people have given me, like I have funko pop for, you know, marvel Marvel characters, I have Funko Pop for Schitt's Creek characters and whatnot, and I'm just and RuPaul's Drag Race.
00:31:28.316 --> 00:31:28.416
And.
00:31:28.457 --> 00:31:31.005
I'm like, okay, these are great and all.
00:31:31.005 --> 00:31:33.161
Where am I going to put them?
00:31:33.161 --> 00:31:36.001
It's just, I don't want to deal with the clutter.
00:31:36.343 --> 00:31:37.365
I'm anti-clutter.
00:31:37.365 --> 00:31:41.429
The Schitt's Creek Funko Pops are right over here on the shelf.
00:31:41.935 --> 00:31:46.767
It's funny because now that I have this shelf up here, I should probably put them there.
00:31:46.767 --> 00:31:52.880
There, you go Thinking about the current political kind of landscape.
00:31:52.880 --> 00:32:00.270
What advice would you give to a teacher who's just starting out, who's unsure, if they're even allowed to be themselves in a classroom?
00:32:03.015 --> 00:32:06.000
Yeah, you're going to kind of have to test those waters.
00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:17.511
When I first started, uh, I uh, I was in central Arkansas and, um, one of my dear mentors uh, really cautioned me.
00:32:17.511 --> 00:32:54.898
I'd lived for 12 years in Omaha, out and proud and working in the community, raising money for charity, doing all of these different artistic endeavors that I could raise money for in the Nebraska AIDS Project and all of that kind of stuff, and I kind of came into teaching as a roundabout way because I got my master's in theatrical directing and had traveled and all of that, uh, but I was working in retail as a visual manager to be able to pay the rent in Omaha and then living my life working in theater non-stop.
00:32:54.898 --> 00:33:27.041
And uh, one particular uh year, uh, I had a visit that was just had this like weird tone to it and I left the next day to come down to Arkansas for my little sister's wedding and my dad, dive, bombed me at the reception to this lady who worked for the Department of Ed down here for their nontraditional licensure program of Ed down here for their non-traditional licensure program, and that was in the beginning of February and everything just did this and I moved.
00:33:27.142 --> 00:33:32.298
July 4th weekend I met Justin two weeks later online.
00:33:32.298 --> 00:33:50.464
We started visiting you know all of that so it just started to kind of go that way, All that to be said, that it almost felt like I was having to go back into the closet after 12 years of being out and very, very proud of who I was as a person.
00:33:50.464 --> 00:33:54.137
Um, it was the good old boys club.
00:33:54.137 --> 00:33:54.558
It was.
00:33:54.558 --> 00:34:09.697
You know, all of this kind of stuff you don't want to, you don't want to boast too proudly, even know like one of one of my mentors even questioned one of the peace frogs rainbow peace frog stickers that I'd put on my car and she was like is that a gay?
00:34:09.757 --> 00:34:13.164
thing is that like what is, what is that?
00:34:13.164 --> 00:34:17.422
And I'm like, uh, it's a it's a frog with a.
00:34:17.443 --> 00:34:24.159
You know, I was like um piece, like she's like, oh, okay, okay, okay.
00:34:24.159 --> 00:34:32.070
So I would say, um, for that first year is so hard.
00:34:32.070 --> 00:34:38.344
Just because it's first year, you know, it's just you're gonna.
00:34:38.344 --> 00:34:42.920
Oh, my gosh, I don't ever want to go back to being a first year teacher ever again.
00:34:42.920 --> 00:34:44.324
Like it is so hard.
00:34:44.324 --> 00:34:54.108
Um, and I'm so thankful for all of the mentors that got me, you know, to year three, where I finally felt like I could breathe.
00:34:54.108 --> 00:35:04.364
You know, um, I think that the struggle for, for uh presence is real right now.
00:35:04.364 --> 00:35:09.590
I, I think our kids need it and deserve it.
00:35:09.590 --> 00:35:37.579
But you also have to be quite differently for a little while, until you figure out what course you're going to chart.
00:35:38.940 --> 00:35:55.505
I didn't really truthfully start to kind of talk about my personal life until probably about six or seven years into teaching, and that was when we were preparing for our wedding, you know.
00:35:55.505 --> 00:36:32.313
And so that's where, you know, we started to kind of open up and was allowed to be a little bit more, or not more, reserved in regards to discussing, you know, personal life, and so, I think, and then I left the school district there and came up here at northwest arkansas, and then it was just like, oh my gosh, like you know, we've got admin who introduced themselves and said, like this is, this is the day that I came out and this is, you know, there was a number of of folks that came up to me uh, that it felt, it felt more comfortable, like I had finally arrived.