Gay Teacher 'Outs' Himself To Second Grade Class

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - Parents want their kids out of a Interdistrict Downtown School class after a second-grade teacher talked about being gay and how people who are different are treated.
Diversity has diverse meanings, as an innovative school in downtown Minneapolis found out again Friday.
The Interdistrict Downtown School, which serves students from 10 Twin Cities-area districts, drew several parents and about a dozen supporters to protest a second-grade teacher's class discussion about the fact he is gay and related issues without first notifying parents. They also want the school to let their children switch to a different class. Principal Laura Bloomberg has turned down that request.
Dustups over school curriculums are not unknown in Minnesota. Last year, school board members and parents in Minnetonka debated a suggestion that the notion of intelligent design be included in science classes. The board turned it down.
School districts around the state use several curriculums that explain differences among families, including those with gay parents. Debra Davis, who conducts training sessions and gives speeches around the country on gender curriculum topics, said she has "not heard of anyone in Minnesota being upset" over them.
Davis, a former Southwest High School librarian who used to be a man, said curriculums are reviewed closely by school boards and committees that often include parents and other community members.
"I don't think there is an agenda here" to push gay issues, Davis said.
Friday's news conference by the parents' group on the school's windblown plaza drew a loud unexpected counterprotest from a 17-year-old student at the school who said he didn't think the second-graders were in any danger.
The parents retorted that he didn't have any children in the classroom.
The protest grew from a Sept. 15 class taught by Peter Sage, 34, who was following a curriculum describing different kinds of families.
Sage said he read a prescribed book about a two-mom family and then explained to his 23 students that he, too, is gay.
As he discussed society's reactions to different kinds of people, he also told the class he disagreed with his grandfather's negative views about black people. (The protesting parents are black.)
Sage said students' wide-ranging reactions to his comments persuaded him to write to their parents to explain, which he did Sept. 18.
Parent Gena Bounds said she doesn't object to Sage's sexual orientation but that she considered the discussion inappropriate for her second-grader and that parents had "no right or say-so" in approving the curriculum.
Sage and Bloomberg said most parents overwhelmingly support the school's diversity curriculum. Bloomberg, a former Mahtomedi school board member, also noted that the mission of the seven-year-old school is to build "a partnership of diversity, community and technology."
She said she has not approved the parents' requests to move their children to another class because students are assigned carefully based on abilities, classroom mix and "what we know from prior years."An attribute of the teacher is not something we'd use" to justify switching a student, she said. Parents are free to object to the school board or to withdraw their children from the school, she said.
By law, parents have the right to review the curriculum and to request their children be excused from parts of it. The parents said they were not aware of that provision.
FeLicia McCorvey Preyer, one of Friday's protesters, said that she has seven children in the school and that when she met with Sage in late August, "I mentioned that I did not want my child hearing this information" about gay issues.
She interpreted the resulting class discussion as "forcing an agenda in a second-grade classroom."
Walter Kaplan, the counter-protesting student, shouted that the parents and their supporters were "hatemongers" and that the school was "not teaching anything wrong."
The shouting soon subsided, but the interruption did not change Bounds' mind.
"I want my daughter taken out of that classroom," she said.
from The Star Tribune