Class Invited to Teacher's Commitment Ceremony
March 25, 2009
Another LGBT person has stepped up to be a role model for today’s youth and it just has to be recognized. I’m talking about Chance Nalley, a math teacher at Harlem’s Columbia Secondary School, has invited the 7th grade students and their parents to his commitment ceremony next month. (Thank goodness it’s a small school!)
In Harlem a week ago, a 32-year-old math teacher handed out slips of paper inviting the entire seventh grade of Columbia Secondary School to his upcoming ceremony, where, the names on the invitation made clear, he’d be celebrating his commitment to another man. The teacher, Chance Nalley, rarely wastes an instructional opportunity but said that, in this particular instance, he wasn’t trying to make an educational statement.
“They kept asking if they were invited,” he said of his students at Columbia, a selective public school that specializes in math, science and engineering. “Originally, I said no. But when I found a venue that turned out to be big enough I said, ‘O.K., you can come.’ I invited their parents, too.”
[...] With his principal’s support, Mr. Nalley, who started at the school when it opened in 2007, felt comfortable coming out to students during a diversity workshop that fall.
“A lot of the students were shocked at the time,” said the principal, Jose Maldonado-Rivera, “shocked that he said it, and shocked that it was true. For many students, it was a huge eye-opener — it was the last thing they would have thought about Chance.”
I don’t want to post the entire article by Susan Dominus, so go over to the New York Times to read the whole thing.
Chance Nalley pauses for a picture.
Already the effect of having an out non-heterosexual teacher in school can be seen. According to Mr. Nalley, six students have come out to him this year, and the article quotes some remarkably mature opinions from 7th graders, including understanding the difference between homosexual (which Mr. Nalley isn’t) and bisexual (which he is).
Kudos all around, to the principal for not squashing this, to the parents for being (mostly) on board, and of course, to Mr. Nalley and his partner/husband.
