Our History
Supporting LGBTQ+ Educators since 2013
For the past ten years, the Proud Educators (formerly Proud Teacher Initiative) has been working to support LGBTQ+ educators in their efforts to be effective role-models in schools. Located in New York City, PE brings together teachers, principals, counselors, paraprofessionals and other school personnel, offering a supportive, safe community where reflection on the intersection of gender identity, sexual orientation and professional practice is possible.
Origins
The Proud Teacher Initiative began in 2013-2014, when a small group of gay and lesbian elementary educators met with Professor Wayne A. Reed to discuss ways seasoned LGBTQ teachers might support LGBTQ preservice student teachers. A professor in the School of Education at Brooklyn College and a gay educator himself, Professor Reed invited the group to join him in a series of conversations, to explore the ways in which queer identity influenced their work. Reed’s intention was to turnkey the knowledge gained from these conversations to gay-identified pre-service teachers and to eventually provide new LGBTQ+ teachers with mentors and role-models.
Professor Reed and the eight practitioners soon discovered that they, as seasoned, tenured educators were in need of safe spaces to negotiate their identity in schools. In meetings that lasted the remainder of the 2013-2014 school year, the eight educators explored the challenges and possibilities of self-disclosing in schools. In subsequent months, group members observed that self-disclosure by queer teachers, even in Brooklyn’s so-called “progressive” elementary schools, was not common.
Over the course of six months, each educator in the group identified ways they might more fully actualize their sexual orientation and/or gender identity in the classroom. Throughout the process, the group provided support and feedback, as each practitioner explored the uniqueness of their school context and the challenges associated with being “out”. Teachers who took steps to self-disclose to students, families and colleagues found that sharing themselves more authentically increased their efficacy in schools. On May 4, 2014, the teachers and principals shared their findings in a panel presentation for pre-service teachers at Brooklyn College.
In the years since, the Proud Teacher Initiative expanded its work by hosting regular events for LGBTQ public school educators in the New York City area. In June 2017, we held our first city-wide event, the Standing Proud conference at the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan, with Alex Gino, author of George, serving as keynote speaker. In subsequent months, we hosted monthly meetings and social gatherings in various locations around the city and worked to establish collaborative relationships with other LGBTQ institutions and organizations.
Expanding the Work
In 2016-2019, educators involved in the Initiative presented at local, regional and national gatherings, including: Brooklyn College (CUNY), National Network for Educational Renewal (NNER), National Association of Multicultural Education (NAME), New York Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (NYACTE), New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCORE) and Decolonizing Education.
In August 2018, we began a collaborative partnership with Dr. Michelle Fine and Dr. Maria Elena Torre at the Public Science Project, CUNY Graduate Center. With their guidance and support, we expanded our efforts to document and share our work. This included the our first Story Sharing Workshop, January 2019, an all-day event that offered opportunities for K-12 educators to share their stories through narrative writing, Moth-style storytelling, artistic expression or video-taped interviews.
On June 2019, we held our first Story Night, an evening featuring seven LGBTQ+ educators, each sharing stories of their experiences as public school teachers and principals. Attended by over seventy people, this highly successful event launched an ongoing project to provide forum for educators to share their stories in a public space.
During the pandemic we stayed active, hosting virtual social hours and even a Story Night via Zoom where three educators shared their journeys, unimpeded by the new creative format. Once it became safer to meet in-person again we began planning more of our flagship events, with COVID-testing, social distancing and mask-wearing strongly encouraged.
In January 2024 we revisited our collaboration with Dr. Michelle Fine to host the Queer Voices Rising, a day of solidarity, storytelling, healing and action. NYC Proud Educators joined us for workshops such as 'Building an Inclusive School Culture’ and ‘On Being an Out Educator.’ We then used this momentum to promote several spring Social Hour events across Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan that encouraged new voices and perspectives. This led up to the May 2024 Story Night event, where four Proud Educators bravely spoke about their experiences to over twenty people, and we began to promote our future Queer Camp retreat-style event, which will serve as a day of fun, community building and restorative activities with queer educators from the Tri-State area. Next year we plan to expand this effort to invite educators from across the United States, particularly those in politically embattled states where visible queerness is prohibited in the classroom.