I'm taking a "Queer Issues in Education" class, and Paul, my professor asked us to write reflections on our queer experiences in our education, and how we have been affected by homophobia and heterosexism.
As for me, I have never really had a formal “queer” education; it’s always come in subtle bits and pieces, and a lot of it unfortunately had to be self-taught. I was lucky enough to take the very first American Women’s History course at my high school, which, though in a small way, queered my academic perspective from that point onward. I knew that one of my most beloved teachers in high school (who incidentally was the one who taught the women’s history course) was gay, though I was never able to meet her partner, because the privileged few of us who knew her orientation kept it quiet out of respect for (or maybe fear for) her reputation as a teacher. Plus, it was her personal life, so whose business was it anyway? Still, I wonder, did she feel she had to hide or did she simply regard her private life as just that, private? Unfortunately, I never really got the chance to ask her. 
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