Forced Out

Forced Out

Mariel is a high school teacher.

Five years ago, when she was just 22 years old, she got her first teaching job.

It was at a Catholic high school, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Pretty soon, she was one of the most popular teachers at the school.

She was one of those young, cool teachers that the students just love.

Mariel kept her private life pretty much to herself.

She felt that her professional life should be a separate thing.

But at the same time, her students almost considered her a friend.

In her third year, something happened.

Mariel: "Two seniors of mine who were just, uh, kind of being playful.

On a Saturday night I think it was, uh, they went driving around the neighbourhood I lived in.

And apparently it took 45 minutes but they finally found my car.

Which, being a purple Lincoln, it's not very hard not to find I suppose.

Then they went knocking on all the doors in the neighbourhood with their lights on at, like, almost 10.30 at night.

And they knocked on my door.

And I thought it was my roommate who was locked out, which, I was a little surprised

because I'd told him that I wanted the place by myself because I was going to be with someone.

And I opened the door, and there was one of my physics students saying, "Miss Triggs, we found you!".

And here I was going, 'oh crap!'"

Her two students had caught her on a date with a woman.

Mariel had been found out.

From the time she got the teaching job, Mariel had been conflicted about how much she should tell people about her sexuality.

Mariel: "When I first started, I didn't think it was going be that big of a deal.

But, um, I was really torn about everything,

about whether or not I should be hiding it, whether or not it was wrong, um,

it got me a little paranoid too. It got me very paranoid actually."

She remembers signing her contract to teach at the school and seeing all the words that secretly applied to her.

Mariel: "Um, if I brought any sort of shame, or slander,

or, basically it was like someone went through the thesaurus and found every word for 'bad'.

And there was just this paragraph with all these adjectives that if I bring any sort of,

like, if I somehow soil the reputation of the school in any sort of way, that I could be fired."

But once she signed on, everything seemed okay.

The school's administration didn't seem to even have any issues with the way she ran her classes.

Mariel: "I like to do things a little bit wacky.

Of course at my old school, a little bit wacky meant going outside.

And, um, what else would I do? I'd be skateboarding in class. I mean...

In a typical Catholic school this is not normal behaviour."

For three years, she had never said a word about being bisexual, and she felt the safest that way,

but after the two students had shown up on her doorstep, she was worried that her job was in jeopardy.

She decided to tell her boss about what had happened before the rumours got to him first.

Mariel: "The next Monday morning I went up to my boss and was like, look, um,

two kids came to my house and basically caught me on a date.

He's like, 'Oh, my God, I'm sorry, those, those knuckleheads', I think was his direct, his actual quote.

And then I completed my sentence, was, and it was a girl.

His reaction was to give me a very strong shoulder squeeze, which really surprised me.

He put his hand on my shoulders, squeezed to the point where it, like, where it hurt,

and told me that my, 'secret was safe with me'.

To which I read in that this was a secret."

Even back when she accepted the job, she knew that the school had a history of getting rid of gay teachers.

Mariel: "Everything was always, not because they were gay, but because of some other reason.

One literally just disappeared with his briefcase still in the classroom

and then there were some rumours going on about what happened there."

Little did she know that after teaching at the school for three years, the rumours would be about her.

After coming out to her boss, it spread amongst the rest of the faculty. She felt strangely unwelcome.

People started acting differently around her, making strange sympathetic comments.

She says some of her colleagues even got weird about sharing the coffee machine with her.

Mariel: "You know, it was just so, it was just too much, it was too much. It was too heady."

Three weeks passed. She was having her annual meeting with the principal to talk about the coming school year.

They hadn't spoken about her 'secret' at all since she had first told him,

so she went into the discussion expecting it to be fairly routine.

Mariel: "The, uh, principal basically cut me off and said, 'well, we've really enjoyed having you here and we have someone lined up for your job.'

Which was a complete surprise because I had been getting pretty much glowing reviews before that.

I was causing the same havoc I was causing before. I mean I was causing havoc, I admit it, taking those kids outside.

And, um, just all of a sudden, everything went from being okay and rather endearing and humorous

to 'well, thank you very much for your efforts over the last few years'".

And just like that, it was over for her at that school.

Mariel applied to teach at another private high school.

This time, she decided to do everything differently.

After being hired, she came out right away, at the first faculty meeting.

Mariel: "My boss who hired me, she was like, wow,

I knew you were helping our diversity, but I didn't know you were helping our diversity that much!' [laughs]

But I was out! I was out to the faculty, at least some of the faculty.

The Head of School here basically told me, look, if you think you're a good person,

and if you think you have something good to share with the kids,

then you should go ahead and share that wholly.

If there's something that's part of your life that you think you should hide,

maybe you should think, you should rethink why you're a teacher. Or why you should be a teacher.

And I really took that to heart, like, you know, there's like nothing to be ashamed of in what I'm doing."

Now, she's not only out to the faculty, but also the students. She still has her own way of teaching.

When students have questions about anything, she takes them seriously.

No matter how ridiculous the subject might be, or even when it has to do with homosexuality.

Mariel: "And if it comes up in my classroom which somehow it does.

It did today! In fact, on my board right now it says monkeys and gay penguins.

I have to send my Algebra 1 class articles about monkeys and gay penguins.

But, um, it can come up and I'm going to talk about it.

I'm not going to give a how-to. That's an elective I don't think we offer here. But I will talk about it."

But it isn't always easy being out.

Mariel: "I had, uh, some parents suggest that I turned their kids gay.

I can't even get them to do their homework. I mean, what do you say to that?

I do think I'd be affecting the children, but I don't think I'd be turning them gay.

What I think, um, is happening is that I'm making them comfortable

with the scenario that they didn't think was okay to be comfortable with."

She does not only have to deal with the parents of her own students,

but whenever a gay student comes out, their parents come to her too.

Mariel: "One of the main lines that the parents give is, look, I want them to be happy.

And a gay life is a much harder life.

But, um, I try to remind them, like, yeah there are hurdles in life and there are stresses and there are obstacles,

but they're going to have them whether they're heterosexual or homosexual,

and while it might be more difficult to be homosexual,

at the same time it is way more difficult to try to be something that you're not.

And as a parent I know you want to protect them and love them,

but if you start to try to impose a different, uh, identity on them that they aren't,

you're going to become one of the stresses, you're going to become one of the obstacles,

you're going to become one of the hurdles."

Regardless of what new things she has to deal with, looking back, she's glad now she's able to be out.

Mariel: "It's really made me consolidate who I am rather than having these different facets of personality.

My relationships with the students have become a lot more, a lot more real I suppose in the sense of,

they feel a little bit more comfortable showing me who they are.

So it's allowed me to help kids learn how to live and to help me learn how to live."

Mariel was my math teacher last year. She was pretty much the first queer adult I knew.

It wasn't really a big deal to me, considering I had been out since the seventh grade.

But I could see the impact she had on other students.

I didn't necessarily always talk to her about being gay.

But the fact that I could is what made the difference.

For outLoud radio, this is Ashley Garber.

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