Homophobia Forces Kentucky's Teacher of the Year to Resign
Kentucky’s Teacher of the Year for 2022, but he announced last week he is resigning from his position teaching high school and college-level French and English at Montgomery County High School in Mount Sterling and leaving the profession due to the increasing hostility to LGBTQ+ teachers and students.“The new anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is complicated,” Carver, 37 tells The Advocate. “It's a dangerous game of policy and culture, and it clearly craves sacrifice.”Carver says it’s the most vulnerable students who are most at risk and left out.“We have to create and maintain space for people who are in ways different to the norm, especially our kids, who are vulnerable,” he says. “Our country allows and respects hatred at the moment as a valid political identity, and this has serious consequences.”According to Carver, who has taught for 12 years, the decision to resign has been heartbreaking, but one that had been under consideration for some time.
Carver aired his feelings on the state of education for LGBTQ+ folks earlier this year in an opinion piece that ran in Education Week.
He noted how the hostility toward the LGBTQ+ community in general as well as toward queer educators really increased around the time former President Donald Trump assumed office.“I feel unsafe to return to the classroom,” Carver wrote in the piece that ran in April, explaining how his “identity as a human being is a teacher.”But recent events changed the nature of his position and caused him to question his choice of a profession.
Accusations made online by students and community members that he was a “groomer” that then went unpunished by school administrators were the final event that drove his decision.“But I’m increasingly thinking, why am I in the.
