Seth Stambaugh, Student Teacher

The Portland Tribune reports that the recent change in assignment for a gay student teacher has stirred a debate about how much of their personal lives teachers should share with their students.

Last month at Sexton Mountain Elementary, Stambaugh told a fourth-grader who asked whether he was married that he was not. When the student asked why, Stambaugh replied it was not legal for him to get married because he would choose a man.

The student then asked, “Does that mean you like to hang out with other guys?” and Stambaugh responded yes, said Lake Perriguey, Stambaugh’s attorney.

The parent of a student who overheard the conversation complained, Perriguey said, and district administrators asked Stambaugh’s advisers at Lewis & Clark College to find him another school.
–Oregon Live

Over at the Tribune, there are several quotes from educators at local colleges, including:

“We want teachers to be fully present as humans to their students,” says Scott Fletcher, dean of Lewis & Clark’s Graduate School of Education and Counseling. “We expect the kind of relationship that can motivate the students to be their best, to inspire them.”

This entails sharing relevant life experience, Fletcher says. As a result, “it’s not as easy as we might think to draw a bright line between personal information and part of the curriculum.”

When the teacher does not identify as heterosexual, “it gets complicated,” says Randy Hitz, dean of the Graduate School of Education at Portland State University. “Unfortunately, it is still the case that some people view the homosexual lifestyle as being inappropriate somehow.”

This means that teachers need to be careful.

“You don’t go out of your way to talk about it,” Hitz says. “You don’t flaunt it.”

Mark Girod, chairman of Western Oregon University’s Division of Teacher Education, likens the open statement of a teacher’s sexual orientation with other forms of free speech.

“You have the right to live your life,” Girod says, mentioning such behaviors as having a tattoo or a nose ring. “But when you’re acting as a teacher in a school, sometimes it’s not appropriate to wear the nose ring.”

“It’s simply a fact that there are schools in which the circumstances don’t allow teachers to be out,” Fletcher says.

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Jeanna Frazzini of Basic Rights Oregon, an organization that the Beaverton School District is willing to consult regarding its policies said:

“There are professional boundaries that every teacher, gay or straight, needs to set.”

The Oregonian reports that Beaverton Superintendent Jerry Colonna spent three days listening to gay and lesbian staff in the staff express their concerns about working in the district in light of the recent action.

There has been a lot of “hurt and pain that has come forward as a result of this by our gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual staff and students and community members and many, many others who see schools as a place of tolerance and social justice,” Colonna said.

Meanwhile, the student teacher, Seth Stambaugh, has been placed in a Portland Public Schools elementary school to continue his student teaching “internship.”

Stambaugh’s attorney, Lake Perriguey, says that his client has submitted a request to return to the same classroom at Sexton Mountain Elementary. Colonna did not comment on that request.

Sources: Portland Tribune, Oregon Live

Other Stories On This Topic:
–Beaverton Student Teacher “Fired” For Saying He Wanted To Marry A Man
–Beaverton Superintendent Agrees To Meet With Ousted Gay Student Teacher

What do you think?
–How much of his or her personal life should a teacher share with his/her students?
–Should Stambaugh return to the classroom where the incident happened?