A Teacher Blogs

S. Bear Bergman is a writer, activist, storyteller, and a publisher . He's celebrated for his creative efforts and living his life openly as a trans man. I've read some of his children's books and other writings, and I really enjoy his work. His writing can be funny and sweet, and it can also be edgy and irreverent. Bear wrote a lovely piece for HuffPo called, I Have Come to Indoctrinate Your Children Into My LGBTQ Agenda (And I'm Not a Bit Sorry) . And unless you are a person devoid of humour and imagination, you know that title is a playful bait-and-switch, along the lines of Harvey Milk's I want to recruit you speeches.  This is the indoctrination of which Bear wrote: I am here to tell you: All that time I said I wasn't indoctrinating anyone with my beliefs about gay and lesbian and bi and trans and queer people? That was a lie. All 25 years of my career as an LGBTQ activist, since the very first time as a 16-year-old I went and stood shaking a...

This blog continues an interesting dialogue that has begun with my eleventh-grade English teacher. Lou Iacobelli is a retired teacher, also a blogger and advocate for Catholic education and parents' rights. The discussion began when I posted, on March 15th, a response to two entries on his blog Everyday for Life Canada regarding a TDSB equity document focused on LGBTQ issues. I took umbrage with some of his assertions, posted, and linked my response to the comments section of his blog. An email exchange began. And here were are. Lou summarizes: In this post, I would like to respond to a recent entry by a teacher and a former student from my teaching days at De La Salle College here in Toronto. He says it was forty years ago. Where have all those years gone? But I digress. The entry is at "A Teacher Blogs" and tilted "The Sin of Omission." The author refers two of my posts: "The bottom line in the 'new' sex education curriculum:...

For the bulk of my career as an elementary educator, I was a teacher-librarian in the public schools. In my training as a teacher and librarian, combined with my previous work as a community college teacher in the nineties, I became very committed to equity and diversity. Simply put, in my belief, a school library ought to reflect the diversity of the school and community... and then some. Here's an example of what I mean, when I say, and then some. In all my years in elementary education, I have encountered one child whose family celebrated Kwanzaa .   One.   But just as I would have multiple books about Eid or Christmas or Diwali, I always made a concerted effort to have two or three titles about Kwanzaa on hand in the library. I didn't have them just in case in I ran across a child whose family celebrated the holiday; I also had them because children like to read about the lives of other children. Muslim kids sign out books about Easter. Hindu and Sikh kids re...