Mr Hill Art Teacher at Nemaha Central in Seneca Ks
Michael Hill did non expect the news of his deviation from Kansas to become viral.
Hill was an fine art teacher and theater manager at Nemaha Cardinal High School in Seneca, population two,048, up most the Nebraska border. On April 17, he posted Facebook photos of anonymous letters he'd received and wrote:
"I decided I needed to put these out there considering people need to know this kind of ugly hatred still exists in the world only by against information technology tin can nosotros end information technology. This was part of a pattern of harassment that started back in Oct 2017. As a consequence of this I made the difficult conclusion to pack up and make a huge spring of faith and moved to Palm Springs, CA."
People shared his post, the papers around hither wrote about him and shortly information technology was national news.
"Mr. Hill was our fine art section," the schoolhouse district's superintendent, Darrel Kohlman, told the Kansas City Star. "He was the director of our plays, and he did a very skillful job as a classroom teacher. We're sorry non to have him anymore."
The Seneca Police Chief, Jordan Weaver, said he believed the letters were real (because some commenters had suggested they weren't), and that his department was taking the threats seriously and investigating.
The torment had begun afterward some other Facebook post, last Oct, when Colina officially came out.
"I was guarded nearly what I posted, and I had several people who couldn't see posts, and then it didn't become shared publicly, it didn't get shared with friends," he tells me. "But shortly subsequently that is when some things started happening."
Likewise the letters, someone had slashed his tires and written "faggot" in the dust on his car.
"It got to point where I was genuinely fearful of leaving apartment and going out after dark," he says. "I lived off an alleyway and it wasn't well-lit. I was genuinely afraid of leaving and going out and doing things."
Under increasing stress, he took a few weeks of unpaid medical leave over the winter then he resigned. Past the time he posted the letters on Facebook, he was already gone.
"I kind of figured some people around my former hometown would remark about it, but I never dreamed it would strike a nerve with people and that it would become that much attention," Loma says. "I was shocked, surprised – a lot of thoughts went through my head."
Ane of them was business, because he wasn't sure how the media attention would affect his search for a new task in California.
"Just then I just felt very supported," he says. "For the most function, people's responses were, 'Sorry you had to go through this.'"
It was difficult for Hill to leave his habitation. He's extremely shut to his son, now a student at the University of Kansas, and his parents.
"But in the conversations that I had with them, they kept saying, 'You need to get someplace where you can be rubber. Become and be happy. That'due south what we want for you.'"
Like some of the other people in No Place Like Home who grew up in pocket-size Kansas towns (in Hill's case it was Sabetha, pop. 2,500), Loma married young and had children. He went to higher for a couple of years, sat out for a while, and and then finished school and started his teaching career.
"I had kind of always known about my sexuality but wasn't prepare to admit information technology to myself," he says. "I had known even in high school in the 1990s that I'm gay. But it'due south non easy to exist gay in small-scale rural communities."
The good news is things have changed since Hill was in loftier school.
"For a younger person it seems like it's more accustomed," he adds. "Merely for someone my age to come out who was married, that fabricated it more challenging."
Hill is in his mid-40s. He waited until his divorce was final to make his coming-out post on Facebook. He wasn't in a relationship, only he was happy. However, even without the ensuing harassment, he knew he would accept to get out his home land.
"I knew that staying in small, rural Kansas wasn't going to work for me. I knew I couldn't be myself," he says. "I would never take felt comfy walking down street holding hands with somebody
A friend had invited him for a visit to Palm Springs last November. He fell in love with the place, and the friend is now his boyfriend. I've been to Palm Springs a few times, and I can confirm that in some ways information technology'southward LGBTQ heaven. I'm actually a bit jealous.
But now in that location's one less adult who could save a queer child'south life in Kansas.
Here's why Hill decided to come out:
"I had been reading a book called 1 Teacher in 10 (Gay and Lesbian Educators Tell Their Stories), and was feeling very empowered by information technology," he says. "I wanted to help my students who were LGBTQ or who were struggling with their identity and coming to terms with themselves to know they had someone they could plow to, could talk to, relate to."
Hill says i student at Seneca High is openly gay.
"And so, presently after I came out, I had a couple of students approach me and come out to me likewise. They were trying to figure out how to come out to their parents. 1 girl said she was out to her parents just non to her friends. Another pupil is still very much struggling with how to come out to parents, friends and other people and just be her authentic self. So they confided in me."
Loma's service to the state's educators went beyond being a confidant for those kids.
"Kansas and Seneca have lost a strong voice for their community," says Amanda Voth, a member of the Kansas National Education Association board of directors. Hill had been a rise leader in the KNEA earlier he left, and Voth says he was one of the nearly caring teachers she'd ever met.
"He wanted what was the all-time for the teachers of the state of Kansas and his students. He was a consummate professional."
"He's a very talented guy," adds Linda Brungardt, who taught for 23 years at Junction City High School (90 miles southwest of Seneca, near Manhattan) and, like Voth, got to know Hill while working him at a regional subgroup of the KNEA.
"I came to capeesh his intelligence, his inventiveness, his dedication to whatever he takes on. And he was fun."
The terminal few years have been hard for Kansas educators, who've endured budget cuts and epic legislative battles and lawsuits over how the state funds public teaching. Brungardt says they need leaders like Colina.
"We're losing teachers like crazy anyway considering of poor pay and working atmospheric condition," she says, "and not getting respect."
And no thing what some anonymous Christian in Seneca might say about Biblical teachings, there are e'er going to be queer kids in Kansas who need adults they can trust.
Brungardt knew there were LGBTQ kids at Junction Urban center High School, fifty-fifty earlier she retired five years ago. She remembers a transgender educatee – struggling a chip for the right linguistic communication, she describes this person every bit "a guy who wore dresses and lipstick" – about 16 or 17 years former, who hung out in the library.
"I remember this person specifically because they were trying to be who they were," she says. "They weren't hiding it. That's tough."
She even remembers a young homo in her daughter'due south grade who was gay. "I don't call back he came out until after graduation. I thought he was going to marry my girl," she says with a express mirth.
When he first left Kansas, Hill says, he worried the LGBTQ kids at Seneca High would feel abased. But his bearding tormentor might actually have strengthened their resolve.
"I've had a chance to talk to a couple of them since," Hill says. "And I think they feel a niggling bit more than empowered to stand up for their rights, to say, 'He's not the only one around here who's gay and it's terrible what somebody did.'"
And merely a fiddling current-events reminder: The time to come belongs to pissed-off high school kids.
C.J. Janovy is the author of No Place Similar Home: Lessons in Activism from LGBT Kansas. Follow her on Twitter, @cjjanovy.
Source: https://cjjanovy.wordpress.com/2018/05/12/from-gay-teacher-who-left-kansas-for-palm-springs-lessons-on-empowerment/
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