Teaching Kids About Pride

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Originally published in TEACH Magazine, January/February 2021 Issue

By Elana Moscovitch

I started my teaching career at a public middle school in Toronto about two decades ago. At that time, I was not comfortable being personally out to my students. I recall that several students who noticed my short hair and square shoes called me “battyman” (a word I had to look up), which is derogatory slang for gay or homosexual.

The second school I taught at was a Jewish day school. At that school, I asked the Vice Principal, an Orthodox Rabbi, if I could bring some resources about same-sex families and anti-homophobia lessons into my classroom. The lessons had been created by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). He said he didn’t want me to “confuse the students” by talking about same-sex families. However, after a student in my Grade 4 class was called “gay” several times by his classmates, I received permission to do a lesson on name-calling. In the context of that lesson I also unpacked what it meant to be “gay.”

Towards the end of my seven years at that school, several teachers came to Pride Day and saw me dancing on a TDSB float for teachers. They were supportive and excited about it when they saw me in the staff room the next day.

Outside of the classroom, my partner Jessie and I met when I was thirty-three. We had our daughter when I was thirty-eight. We sent her to a public school in our neighbourhood. Even though it was a fairly large school, she was one of only a handful of children with same-sex parents.

By Grade 1, children started asking her questions about her family structure: “How can you have two moms?” “What do you mean you don’t have a dad?” She told us that one child even thought it was because her dad had died. She would explain it to them or say it was none of their business. But I could tell it bothered her.

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Elana Moscovitch has worked as a teacher and guidance counsellor, and is currently a Child and Family Clinician at Integra. She lives with her partner, Jessie, and nine-year-old daughter, Ma’ayan.

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Elana Moscovitch
Elana Moscovitch
Elana Moscovitch has worked as a teacher and guidance counsellor, and is currently a Child and Family Clinician at Integra. She lives with her partner, Jessie, and nine-year-old daughter, Ma’ayan.

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