I count Fall 2021 as my second-worst semester in 23 years of tenure-stream teaching.
A week before classes started, I rapidly assembled syllabi for two sections of ENGL 3950: Literature for Children, my regular offering to education majors. I’d stretched myself by ordering several books I’d never read.
I hastily found an article covering feminist versions of “Rapunzel” to counterbalance the male-focused tales. Late on September 30th, I began preparing for the next day’s class on the Rapunzel essay.
Complex and Fluid Gender Roles
The article’s author taught seventh graders to critique gender portrayals in versions of “Rapunzel.” I read with horror her commitment to books offering children “more complex and fluid” gender roles.
I had a choice:
a) I could pretend I hadn’t noticed.
Or
b) I could break my habitual silence and address an important social issue.
I prepared PowerPoint slides to highlight the points aligned with my original purpose of presenting fairy tales with strong girl protagonists. I also crafted one expressing disagreement with the call for gender “fluidity.”
Student Resistance
I began class by saying I believe we have a Creator. I don’t remember precisely what I said after that, but students were resistant to my discomfort with the article’s insistence that children should be taught to embrace a range of gender identities.
Students expressed their belief that children (even kindergarteners) should be allowed to decide whether they are male or female. Student after student agreed, the discussion grew heated, and my temper rose too, particularly when one student made erroneous claims about the Bible.
“Are you homophobic?”
At the next class meeting, I made this assertion: We need to be very careful what matters we let children decide. One student asked, “Wait! Are you homophobic?”
Tension with this student and her class continued throughout the semester, and I feared a complaint. One of the pastors at my church, whom I’d sought out for prayer, encouraged me that if administrators heard about the matter, they’d say, “We know Laureen.” He expected that my reputation within the department would speak for me.
When my department chair asked to meet to discuss rumored “issues” in my children’s literature classes, the Holy Spirit assured me it would be OK. That pastor and his prayer group provided additional encouragement.
A Higher Authority
The meeting with the department chair was more than OK. She said we would discuss the matter as two colleagues with mutual respect. After showing her my slides and explaining what happened in class, I told her that ultimately I must answer to a higher authority. She made no comment, but seemed unfazed by the remark.
Both classes remained tense, and in November a confrontation occurred over a matter of race, prompted by the student who’d accused me of being “homophobic.” Although my department chair envisioned protests demanding my firing, any such effort was blunted by a Christian student prayer initiative and a brief apology emailed to me by the angry student.
Collateral Damage
The next semester, the Office of Equity and Diversity summoned me to two video conferences—one for each issue. Both times, I was praised for making adjustments to my Spring classes. But there was still collateral damage: low Fall 2021 student evaluations consistently called me racist and homophobic.
I see these two takeaways: First, I broke my pattern of silence on cultural conflicts with the Bible, and God protected me, providing prayer support and godly counsel. Second, prayerful preparation for the classes would have abated much of the trouble.
Each Fall is a brand new semester. Thank God! I look forward to seeing what the Lord brings my way.
