Exodus International - My Son's "Number One Teacher"

My husband and I reacted with concern and a lot of mixed emotions. This would be our son's first major trip away from home, to facilities we could not picture, with relatively unstructured time when there would be lots of informal conversations and interactions between teachers and students. To add to our concern, this teacher made a specific comment at a parent information night about how nice it was for the students to "get to know the teachers as human beings when the barriers of formality are down".

Our concerns were two-fold. First, we were concerned for the safety of our son and the other boys on the trip. We had no baseline on this man's character, and did not know whether he would be staying with the boys in their rooms. In our opinion, this would be as inappropriate as having a straight male teacher sleep in the same room as female students, because of the nature of sexual temptation.

Second, we were concerned that in the course of informal teacher-student conversations, this teacher might take the opportunity to promote the legitimacy of same-sex relationships and sexual behavior. In our view, this would be an inappropriate use of his influence with the children to undermine parental authority in the area of teaching moral values.

Twenty years earlier, when I worked in a child and adolescent clinic in another city, the single, male director of the clinic had propositioned a 15-year-old male client. The boy immediately told his father, who took steps to confront the director. The director left town that night and never returned. He had, however, been in a position of authority with many adolescent boys in the course of his work in that clinic. There is no way of knowing what other interactions may have taken place with other young male clients, and what confusion his behavior may have caused.

Initially my husband and I were annoyed that in choosing this teacher to oversee the trip, the principal "down-loaded" the onus for determining his suitability onto the parents. And because it is not "politically correct" to admit having concerns about a teacher's sexual orientation, we did not feel we would get a sympathetic hearing from her. She could do nothing anyway, because the man's sexual orientation would not be acceptable grounds for choosing another teacher to replace him. An additional problem for me was that when I tried on a couple of occasions to gently explore whether other parents of Grade 8 boys had any reservations about the supervision arrangements, they didn't seem to be concerned, and I felt alone.

I did have one friend whose son at a different school had gone on a similar school trip with a gay teacher in charge, and her suggestions were helpful. We enquired closely about the number of chaperones and the sleeping accommodations, and learned that teachers would sleep in one area of the building, students in another, and there would be a night watchman patrolling the halls.

With respect to the concern about informal conversations and influence, I asked the teacher for a meeting before I signed the consent for our son to go. I had other questions for him of a more practical nature, and then said that I needed reassurance from him on one point. I said that I had observed that he was making a public statement about his personal views by displaying rainbows on his car. I compared this to my displaying symbols of my personal beliefs on my car, if I were to do so. Since I am a professional too, a client could rightly wonder how objective I would be in areas related to these beliefs. And since we were entrusting our son to his supervision for the trip, I said that I needed reassurance that his personal views would remain private, and not be raised for discussion with the students.

His reaction was that his personal life was just that - personal, and was never a subject for discussion with students. He did not seem defensive, and I took his words to be true. Even though our son reported that in class some of the students made unkind remarks to him because of his sexual orientation, he had never discussed the subject with students to our son's knowledge.

Finally, we briefed our son on the importance of privacy and our views on homosexuality. (Because of the teacher's obvious effeminate mannerisms and the teasing, we had discussed the subject before). Our son is big and strong-minded by nature, so we were not concerned that he would be particularly susceptible to inappropriate behavior on the teacher's part, but we felt he needed to be equipped. We encouraged him, in the event that he had a problem of a personal nature, to go to one of the parent chaperones in the group.

The students had a fantastic experience while they were away, and did really enjoy getting to know the teachers more informally. To our knowledge, there was no reason for concern about this teacher's influence. In fact, by the end of the year, our son rated him as his "number one teacher" because he was a hard worker, involved in lots of extra activities in the school, always professional in his behavior, and respectful and caring with the students in his class. It was a pleasure to be able to give this positive feedback to the teacher at the end of the year.

This story had a happy ending. If the teacher had responded defensively to our concerns by saying that it was his right to discuss his orientation with the students if he wanted to, and if I didn't accept it I must be "homophobic", then I would have had to take the situation higher, and it would have had a different ending.

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