Return-Path: <nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id gAK18BX20142; Tue, 19 Nov 2002 20:08:11 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 20:08:11 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <5.0.0.25.0.20021119165751.009fbbc0@mail.aracnet.com> Errors-To: alcrsb@langate.gsu.edu Reply-To: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: Sylvan Rainwater <sylvan@cccchs.org> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-WOMENLIT:2418] Re: teacher self-disclosure X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0 Status: O Content-Length: 3511 Lines: 62 At 03:19 PM 11/17/2002 -0500, Daphne Greenberg wrote: >I think that Bernadine is touching upon a very important topic-how much >self-disclosure is appropriate for instructors? Does anyone have any >thoughts about this? This is a good question, and one I have thought about a lot over the years. In this case, I just have to think it varies with the situation. It's very hard to set any hard and fast rules about this. There have been times when I felt that it was quite appropriate for me to come out and other times when it seemed not at all useful. Most of the time, it doesn't seem to be relevant, but sometimes it does. I guess I've come to the point where that's the standard I use - whether it may have some bearing on what's being discussed, or what's coming up. For example, this last spring, my partner's grandson was born, and we flew to California (I missed a couple days of class) to be with the new mom and baby. After we came back, I shared pictures we had taken, and took advantage of it to do a sex ed lesson, since it was clear that several people didn't know some basics, and needed more information about that and contraception to make better choices for their lives. Before I could get too far into it, I needed to clarify my relationship with my partner, which I did matter-of-factly by drawing a family tree style diagram on the board. It's also come up sometimes in discussion of family makeup -- talking of blended families, divorce, living together, sometimes will bring up issues of same-gender families. Then when my partner died a month after the grandson was born (when I was out of the classroom for 3 weeks or more), I was really glad that we had already clarified that, so it made sense to people what was going on with me. At one point, I came back to class when I thought she was doing better, and did a lesson on the Critical Care Unit where I had been spending so much time -- using hospital vocabulary, etc. So I try to make it all grist for the ESL mill. This year, I haven't had any occasion to talk about it at all, and don't know whether it will come up. Sometimes I feel it's really inappropriate, or it feels a bit hostile, as when I have a fundamentalist student who is strongly pushing a religious agenda. It's hard under those circumstances to sort out the rights of that student to her own beliefs vs the rights of other students in the class to their possibly contrary beliefs. And the question of whether a straight teacher would share details might be a good reality check, but people differ in how they approach this. My co-teacher, who I believe is straight, tends to be very private about his private life. And I think this is a more professional approach. Others are just more open by nature. The questions about whether someone is "pushing" a homosexual lifestyle make me very skeptical. I'm not sure I've ever known anyone to do that in a classroom, but I suppose theoretically it's possible. I'd want to observe what's going on in that classroom and not rely on a student report, since, as others have pointed out, a given student is filtering what's happening through their own lenses. If there's really inappropriate self-disclosure, then it needs to be dealt with as with any teacher, lgbt or straight, about what constitutes good teaching. -------------------------------------------------------------- Sylvan Rainwater . sylvan@cccchs.org Clackamas County Children's Commission Oregon City, OR USA
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