One of the first pictures of me in a newspaper was on the front page of the Minnesota Daily holding up a door in front of Coffman Union with Goldy Gopher while a friend burst through the door with a huge smile on National Coming Out Day. It was a great celebration. It felt good.

I celebrated it every year at the U of MN. Then I got my first job in Saint Cloud and got a serious lesson in life when I posted a Happy Coming Out Day picture on my classroom door that explained that it was a day to support and celebrate our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends and family. It had a picture of Keith Haring’s original poster that I think I colored in with markers because I didn’t have a color printer at the time. It was the year 2000.

A mother of a student in my home room group sent a complaint to my email and to the principal. I got an email asking me to meet with the principal that afternoon in his office. I brought the poster, walked in, sat down, and told him “Here is the poster that I had on my door today. There is nothing wrong with this and I expect that I will be supported in this situation.” I was pretty bold. I’m not sure I would do it like this anymore, but I was a barely 23-year-old brand new teacher who firmly believed in the rights of my students and myself and probably didn’t even realize that what I was saying and doing was kind of out of the ordinary.

The principal, an old, large white Irish Catholic man, was visibly taken aback. I remember looking at him and being surprised by his reaction, and I’m pretty sure he was just as surprised by my reaction. He kind of sputtered his way around his discomfort, but ultimately I was not disciplined. Since Coming Out Day was over, I took down the poster. By that time, LGBT students were talking with me about possibly starting a group, and I was fully supportive. The district, however, wasn’t. That pissed me off, but I worked with the St. Cloud Human Rights Commission (I think that’s what it was called, it was a long time ago) and we did some educational work for the admin and teachers. There was eventually a group started, although I wouldn’t be there to see it through. I was let go at the end of my third year – my tenure year. When the principal told me, he said “let me give you a little advice” and proceeded to basically tell me not to rock the boat so much at my next job. I was hired at Forest Lake before the year was over.

I could talk about my experiences at Forest Lake trying to support and help build safe spaces for LGBT youth, but that is an entirely new post that would be far longer than I have time to write here, so I’m going to jump forward (sorry Flake friends – I love you and your stories are too important to gloss over).

Every day in my Composition class now, we do a five minute daily write – that’s actually why I started this blog, because I wanted to make sure I practiced what I preached – and this year, I’ve been using the national holidays for each day as prompts to get started. The students aren’t required to write about them, but I offer them things like a variety of quotes for the beginning of Hispanic Heritage month and I gave them each a fortune cookie for National Fortune Cookie day and they could write about their fortune. Today, I put four quotes about coming out and the LGBT community as well as the Keith Haring picture on my slide for daily writing. I read them out loud, and at the end of one that said something like “someday, we won’t have to come out; we’ll just say that we love each other and that will be enough,” a number of kids sighed “awe…” (as in “how cute”). During one of my two composition classes, I had an administrator drop in at the beginning of class for an unannounced observation.

And you know what is great? I didn’t have a single worry about the prompt or that I was going to find an email in my inbox asking me for a nondescript meeting. I don’t think I have to fear for my job. That’s progress.

Since it’s coming out day and all, even though I’ve come out to important people already, I suppose I should be clear: I’m bisexual. I have been since I started having baby crushes on people in middle school and I still am, even though I’m in a monogamous, committed marriage with a man and two children. It’s a complicated identity in a lot of ways, because for the most part, I present as straight and I don’t correct anyone’s assumptions. But I identify as queer or bisexual, and I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve come out quite so publicly about that. Happy Coming Out Day to all my amazing friends. We’ve come a long way.