Reading Reflection on McCready and Blackburn

The article Voices of Queer Youth in Urban Schools: Possibilities and Limitations does a great job of showing how ending the problems of harassment and persecution of queer students in public schools in an ongoing problem that doesn’t have just one solution. Many solutions work only in urban settings, or only for white, non-immigrant students, or some only for student lesbians. They have done a great job of showing how not one thing can work for all students.

Growing up with a gay best friend, and later, a lesbian roommate in boarding school, I have experienced first hand the teasing, harassment, and struggles to belong that many of these students feel. I can remember leaving a roller rink (remember those?) because some kids were teasing my best friend and we didn’t know quite what to do. We were twelve years old and didn’t have much experience, living in a small mid-Western town, with verbal violence. But we did feel shaken enough to leave, although this meant calling a parent to pick us up. My friends, did find a social group of acceptance in the music and drama departments at school. Typically a welcoming group for outsiders and other kids in search of belonging, the choir teacher left her music room open for kids to eat lunch in, saving them from the uncomfortable situation of the lunch room. These things did not solve the problems for my friend, but merely created a safe place in a school that, in the 80’s , had very little to offer in the way of protection.

Ideally, all schools would have GSA’s or groups to support LGBTQ students. However, like Blackburn and McCready state in the article, there have to be alternatives, not just to accommodate the urban, immigrant, or outsider students but the average white students in small mid-Western towns just looking for a place of acceptance. Maybe that won’t be a GSA but a drama or music group that doesn’t counsel but just allows the student to be who they are without judgment. The importance of these students cannot be forgotten about either because if we can change the views of these students’ parents, we’ve gotten one step further to opening the minds of parents and adults everywhere.