This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 15 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode, you'll hear what happened with Jessica Liftschitz, a fifth grade teacher,

decided to finally share her true self, including her sexual orientation at school.

There are very few issues more important to me than the rights of the LGBT community.

Since I was probably in my early 20s, for reasons I really can't explain,

I have had a really soft spot in my heart for this community and for the struggles that they

have gone through to basically just be recognized as full human beings deserving of every right

that anybody else has. And despite gains in civil rights in the military and the right to marry

in somewhere around 35 to 37 states depending on how you look at certain legal statuses right now,

I always pretty much assume that the US public school would be among the very last institutions

where people would not have to hide their sexual orientation. So a few months ago, I was really

surprised to read a blog post written by somebody named Jessica Liftschitz who is a fifth grade teacher.

Her blog is called Crawling Out of the Classroom. And in this blog post, she basically talked about

coming out at school that she, her girlfriend at the time, proposed to her and they were engaged

to be married and she had to make the decision to tell her co-workers and her principal.

And reading this, I thought, oh my goodness, I can't believe there is actually a teacher in the

United States who is an out gay woman and she's still teaching. I was just really surprised that she

had not been somehow driven out by I rate parents or by co-workers who I don't know somehow marginalized

her. It was just such a surprise. And so since that time, I have followed her on social media

and I've read her blog and I asked her recently if she would come on the podcast and just tell her

story because I know based on my own experiences that there have got to be tens of thousands at least

of closeted teachers out there. People who hide this big piece of who they are from their co-workers

...