Note to all teachers with small-minded administrators - don't bother trying to teach your kids about history. At least not homosexual history.
A teacher in a rural Oklahoma town has been fired by administrators after trying to teach the story of gay college student Matthew Shepard's murder by assigning students parts in The Laramie Project, a play based on the hate crime inflicted on the young homosexual man a decade ago.
Of course, officials say it isn't the play itself that prompted the firing. Debra Taylor dared let her students voice their opinions about the school's decision to CANCEL the play that earned her a place on the chopping block.
When her principal told her the play - which he'd previously given permission to Taylor to put on - had to be stopped, she let her kids spend twenty minutes in a local park, writing their feelings on helium balloons and releasing them (not enviro-friendly, but at the very least offering some catharsis). Taylor says she never asked the kids to change their minds about homosexuality, just to be tolerant.
The park stunt is what administrators say was Taylor's undoing. What about it was wrong, they won't say. Perhaps that she let kids voice dissent? That she voiced dissent? That she did something else that might, possibly, maybe make the kids think again about tolerance and respecting others?
Because cancellation of the play to begin with was inappropriate, but it might have had a very positive affect on the kids. Suddenly, they saw it was like to be discriminated against. After several weeks of hard work put into practicing for their production, they had the rug swept out from under them by school officials - and for no reason.
And how's this for irony? The school punished Debra Taylor, but her job loss makes her a role model for kids. Kind of what we always hope our kids' teachers will be.
Image: USA Today
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