House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to support LGBTQ+ inclusion and academic freedom. Willie Carver, a high school English and French teacher, the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, and an openly gay teacher, testified before the U.S. Banghart goes by Mx., and their pronouns are they/them. For example, they could continue to wear pins that express their honorifics and pronouns. They were provided with strict rules as to what they could do in school and say to students. They really look forward to that, and it makes my job so enjoyable.”Įarlier this school year, Banghart came out to their school administrators as transgender, nonbinary. “I have standards and things I must teach,” Banghart says, “but students look forward to coming to my class because they know it’s ‘fun time,’ and what we’re learning is going to be done through singing and playing instruments. Joy of Teaching in Perilįor Banghart, their joy of teaching comes from how excited students get for coming to their class. Recently, they have paired these attacks with fearmongering about critical race theory and book bans to mobilize their base with a potent mix of racist and transphobic tropes.Īll the while punishing educators for doing their jobs. In 2022, they refined this strategy to create a moral panic over transgender youth, introducing more than 250 anti-LGBTQ+ bills across the country to criminalize medical care for trans youth and bar them from participating in school sports. However, over the last ten years, some politicians have increasingly turned to anti-transgender rhetoric and “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” legislation as a powerful complement to the racist dog whistles they use to whip up fear and consolidate power. “I transform students’ thinking, abilities, and lives.” House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, in May. “I was born to teach, and I’m good at it,” said Carver, an openly gay teacher, during his testimony before a U.S. By the time she entered kindergarten, he says, she was ready for the first grade.Ĭarver is now a high school English and French teacher and the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year. When Willie Carver was a kid, he would teach his sister what he had learned in school. Like Banghart, many teachers have similar tales of how they felt the calling to teach at a young age.
Today, Banghart is a music teacher in Louisiana and for the past five years has worked with students from Pre-K – 5. “I made all-state for playing the French horn and realized that being a music teacher is something I could go to school for … and that’s what I decided to do.” “I didn’t know specifically what I wanted to teach … high school, when I got more involved with our band program,” they say. It’s a familiar start to a familiar story: Blaine Banghart wanted to be a teacher ever since the first grade.