Teaching lesbians

Carol shows that journey toward maturity—and happy homosexuality—better than any movie I’ve ever seen before. Paul Baker, author of Outrageous! So you're undercover the whole time. For gay teenagers, it fuelled that bullying and a sense of shame. Sarah Squires, who taught in Exeter and London, also advised the film's makers.

Section 28 contributed to "internalised homophobia" that she is still processing today, she says. Every conversation, every wide-eyed look and every child with a million questions reminds me why it is so important that I am visible as a lesbian, why I need to ‘usualise’ my life as being just like every other family and make LGBT lives part of our everyday narrative.

She experienced this surreal sort of time travel by visiting the set of Blue Jean, a new British film shot in Newcastle and set in the late '80s, which is partly inspired by her story and those of other gay teachers. They didn't use certain books in English literature classes and things like that.

That was how Catherine Lee felt as she watched a PE teacher in her 20s, her short blonde hair uncannily similar to her own, taking netball practice in a high school sports hall. We define "lesbian pedagogy" broadly to include reflections on the ways lesbians' gender identities such as butch, femme, nonbinary or transitioning through genders, impact how one teaches.

For many gay teachers, it meant not just avoiding references to sexuality in lessons, but fearing for their jobs if they came out, or supported students who were struggling with their own sexuality, or confronted homophobic bullying. Georgia Oakley went to school in the late '90s and early s, but only became aware of Section 28 when she came across articles about it later.

You were constantly vigilant, always having to present this almost two-dimensional version of yourself because you're checking yourself. It was in force until in Scotland and in England and Wales. “Is it true you’re a lesbian? Introduced in , Section 28 was designed to safeguard traditional family values and protect children, according to supporters.

Opponents called it "state-sponsored homophobia". From behind the cameras, Lee watched as the actress playing the young teacher intervened when the lesson descended into taunts, and a homophobic slur was shouted. Finally, I’m the lesbian I needed to see and who my classes need to know.

Especially if that younger self is going through one of the most difficult periods of your life. It just hit me right here in the solar plexus. That night I collected a few pictures of myself with my partner and daughter, cooking and hanging out at the playground, and one of our extended family.

As teachers across the country begin the school year, they face over number of anti-LGBTQ+ education laws and ramped-up attacks by conservatives. Section 28 stopped councils and schools "promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".

McEwen "conveys this absolute turmoil, this inner struggle, so brilliantly", Squires says. If there was bullying, they turned a blind eye to it. When year-old Clare and her best friend sneak away from a high school talent show to vape in the locker room, they discover their teacher, has snuck away to cry.

The film is up for the best debut award at next week's Baftas, and recently won four British Independent Film Awards including best lead performance for McEwen. Lee is now a professor at Anglia Ruskin University and has just published Pretended: Schools and Section 28, drawing on her diaries from the time.

In the film, Jean, played by Rosy McEwen, must navigate a tricky web of relationships at school and in her private life, at a time when public and political attitudes to homosexuality made it a fierce moral battleground. You're constantly on guard and need to make sure what you're saying doesn't give you away.

When she visited the set, Squires was shown a clip of Jean and other teachers in the staff room watching a news report about a Section 28 debate in the Houses of Parliament. People were so scared of losing their jobs, or getting into the newspapers, that they just kept quiet.

Coming face-to-face with a younger version of yourself must be a very strange experience. A founding teacher at the Facing History School in Manhattan, Haines discusses her experience being an out lesbian, white, middle-class teacher over her year career, as well as approaches she recommends to LGBTQ educators she coaches and how she deploys intersectional thinking to support members of her school community.

Two women who inspired the film recall the impact of Section 28 on them. As Clare tries to reach out. Will you talk to us, too?” I repeated my request that they think about appropriate questions and agreed. Bafta-nominated Blue Jean follows a lesbian PE teacher in the late s at the time when a controversial law banned the "promotion of homosexuality" in schools.