[H]annah Miller, an education professor at Northern Vermont University, still a remembers a handwritten note a student once left on her desk.
“It said basically ‘I think I might be gay. I’m very scared. I don’t know where to go. Can we talk?’ And when I read that note, I was too scared myself to respond for fear of losing my own job and professional standing,” she said. “I think about that all the time.”
At the time, Miller, who is a lesbian, was a teacher in Shanghai, China, and she wasn’t out at work. Now, Miller helps train the next generation of K-12 teachers at NVU, and works in an environment where both her students and peers are wholly supportive. And Vermont, the first state in the country to recognize same-sex unions, is oft-touted as one of the most gay-friendly places in the U.S.
But Miller wonders – how uniform across the state is acceptance for LGBTQ teachers?
“I heard a lot that being gay in schools, or queer, or on the LGBTQ spectrum is sort of a non-issue. That we’ve moved on. And I just don’t think that’s true,” Miller said.
Miller is launching a research project by and for LGBTQ teachers in Vermont, with the aim of making schools more inclusive.
There is a dearth of information on the experiences of queer teachers. There is no data about the number of educators in Vermont who self-identify as LGBTQ. Neither the state Agency of Education nor the Vermont NEA collect information on the subject. Miller says the academic literature is similarly scarce.
“Fortunately, we’re starting to see much more visibility in research on the experience of trans and queer-identified students, which is great. But there’s much less research on trans and queer-identified teachers,” she said.
Miller has put a public call-out to LGBTQ teachers in the state to assemble a team of between five and 10 educators. Together, the group will meet five times over the next two months to share their experiences and come up with a list of action items. Participants will be anonymous, except within the group, to protect anyone who isn’t out.
The response has been “overwhelming,” Miller said. More than 40 LGBTQ teachers had reached out by Friday. Some simply wanted to share their experiences. Others asked to participate in the initiative.
“What I’ve heard so far suggests that there’s a range of experiences, even in Vermont. Some people who are responding are not out at work at all,” she said.
The group’s findings will be presented at the Translating Identity conference at the University of Vermont in November.
Afterward, the group will set about implementing whatever actions they settle on. Miller said she already has a couple ideas — a regular support group for queer educators, for example, or ways to encourage LGBTQ students to one day become teachers themselves.
“The goals are making K-12 schools more inclusive and supportive of LGBTQ teachers. But how we’re going to do that is really up to us, as a group,” she said.