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Well, I had a nice weekend. How about you?
On Saturday I teach two classes at a NYC graduate school of social work. In the morning I teach a social justice class and in the afternoon I teach a policy class on LGBT issues. The students in my class range in age from about 25 to 50.
One of the new school requirements is that all students much do something "outside the classroom" to expose them to places, experiences and ideas in the "real world."
For my LGBT class, I thought I would take them to the LGBT Community Service Center and then to the Stonewall Inn as it's the historical birthplace of the modern LGBT rights movement (even if it is a cheesy bar nowadays).
What made the afternoon so great was that we ran into the Proposition 8 protest. They walked past the Center as we were leaving, and we followed them as they happened to plan the end of their march to conclude at the Stonewall Inn! My students were so energized.
It was an interesting experience for me too, though, in ways I had not anticipated.
One student told me she had never seen two men holding hands before. Several students said they'd never witnessed or been to any kind of political demonstration in their life. The oldest student in my class (a woman in her late 50's and a native New Yorker) said she got chills standing in front of the Stonewall Inn for the first time after reading about the Stonewall Riots and learning about LGBT history in my class. They all whipped out their mobile phones and took pictures of the demonstrators. 3 of my 9 students asked me why they wrote "H8" on their placards and I had to explain to them that it was a play on words with the word "hate" and the fact that it was Proposition 8.
Now, I've taken my classes to other outings before. For example, I routinely take my history class to the LES Tenement Museum. But this time I feel like I accomplished more in one afternoon with a small handful of students than I have in several semesters of teaching. It's not that these students were unusually naive and unworldly. It was an eye opener to me about how much I've taken my modest engagement in social activism for granted. And it made me realize even more that even though I live in NYC, one can never assume people have had any level of interaction with the LGBT community.
ETA: President Elect Obama has posted statements on his website about areas of interest he plans to pursue under his administration. While I don't know how I feel about his stance on Civil Unions, I am deeply moved that our new national leader took the time to delineate areas of policy he wants to address and specifically defines LGBT rights as a Civil Rights issue.
On Saturday I teach two classes at a NYC graduate school of social work. In the morning I teach a social justice class and in the afternoon I teach a policy class on LGBT issues. The students in my class range in age from about 25 to 50.
One of the new school requirements is that all students much do something "outside the classroom" to expose them to places, experiences and ideas in the "real world."
For my LGBT class, I thought I would take them to the LGBT Community Service Center and then to the Stonewall Inn as it's the historical birthplace of the modern LGBT rights movement (even if it is a cheesy bar nowadays).
What made the afternoon so great was that we ran into the Proposition 8 protest. They walked past the Center as we were leaving, and we followed them as they happened to plan the end of their march to conclude at the Stonewall Inn! My students were so energized.
It was an interesting experience for me too, though, in ways I had not anticipated.
One student told me she had never seen two men holding hands before. Several students said they'd never witnessed or been to any kind of political demonstration in their life. The oldest student in my class (a woman in her late 50's and a native New Yorker) said she got chills standing in front of the Stonewall Inn for the first time after reading about the Stonewall Riots and learning about LGBT history in my class. They all whipped out their mobile phones and took pictures of the demonstrators. 3 of my 9 students asked me why they wrote "H8" on their placards and I had to explain to them that it was a play on words with the word "hate" and the fact that it was Proposition 8.
Now, I've taken my classes to other outings before. For example, I routinely take my history class to the LES Tenement Museum. But this time I feel like I accomplished more in one afternoon with a small handful of students than I have in several semesters of teaching. It's not that these students were unusually naive and unworldly. It was an eye opener to me about how much I've taken my modest engagement in social activism for granted. And it made me realize even more that even though I live in NYC, one can never assume people have had any level of interaction with the LGBT community.
ETA: President Elect Obama has posted statements on his website about areas of interest he plans to pursue under his administration. While I don't know how I feel about his stance on Civil Unions, I am deeply moved that our new national leader took the time to delineate areas of policy he wants to address and specifically defines LGBT rights as a Civil Rights issue.
