[Karen26762]

I am a teacher and my sixth-graders have been using the word ‘gay’ as a slang term meaning ‘good.’ Is this viewed as an insulting term?
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Name : Karen26762, Gender : F, City : Portland, State : OR, Country : United States, Occupation : Grade 6 Teacher, 

[Jessica N.]

I used to teach at a private learning center where it would not have been acceptable for me to publicly advocate gay rights in the classroom. This was a difficult balance for me: Whenever the subject came up, I tried to make it clear that I felt positively about gay people, without preaching or getting into an in-depth conversation. My students often used the word ‘gay’ in an off-handed way, in the middle of a classroom conversation about something else entirely. I would always stop and, without taking up more than a minute or two, say: ‘When you say the word ‘gay,’ do you mean something bad or negative?’ If the students didn’t follow me, I might say ‘To me, that word means homosexual; did you use it to mean something negative?’ Most of the time the student would say they never really stopped and thought about it before. Then we’d just go on with the conversation as before and, amazingly enough, I’d almost never hear them say it again afterward.

User Detail :  

Name : Jessica N., Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Bisexual, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 26, City : New York, State : NY, Country : United States, 

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