Hey all how's it going? I had the opportunity to visit Positive Images in Santa Rosa on Tuesday with my group members. We met with the coordinator and some of the people that go there. I found the experience to be very eye-opening seeing and hearing about the experiences of gay, lesbian, and transgendered students. Many times people go about their lives ignoring certain parts of society and I think this happens in classrooms. Many of the individuals that I met at Positive Images are simply people like you and me and they deserve the same respect. In the classroom, they experienced humiliation, discrimination, and ignorance. Some had positive experiences with teachers while most said that their teachers ignored the issue of sexuality in the classroom.
I think the purpose of this trip for me was to gain a perspective on how I would like to run my classroom. I hope to create an open, positive learning environment where each student is accepted and valued for everything they are. Call me idealistic, but I think that higher levels of learning can be achieved in an open classroom environment. Teaching respect of all is important for teaching social studies because there are many issues and events that we learn about which create false representations of certain groups. Gaining a full understanding may make students become better people. Mainly when I get my own class I want my students to not only learn history, but to come out of my class as a better person.
The experience I had at Positive Images was very, umm, positive. I really feel like I have an understanding of the situation LGBTQ teens go through. Although I will never fully understand the ridicule and humiliation these students go through, I can work to help this group of students in the future.
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