- A gay kindergarten teacher in Florida has said he fears the state’s new law prohibiting him from engaging in classroom “instruction” related to sexual orientation and gender identity will prevent him from forming important bonds with his students because he is unable to talk about his personal life.
- The state’s Parental Rights in Education law – known to its critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law – was signed on Monday by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who warned of the “gender bread man” in Florida classrooms.
- Current and former primary school teachers in Florida have argued that the law is unnecessary and that age inappropriate or developmentally inappropriate curriculum is not present in the state’s classrooms.
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A gay Florida kindergarten teacher on Tuesday said he worries he will have to shield his personal life from his young students under the state’s new Parental Rights in Education law, which has been dubbed by its critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
Under the law, signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday, primary school teachers will be prohibited beginning in July from engaging in classroom instruction related to sexual orientation and gender identity. Educators of all grade levels will be barred from addressing those topics in a manner that is not “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate” for their students.
In a Tuesday interview with MSNBC, Cory Bernaert, a kindergarten teacher at Barbara A. Harvey Elementary School in Parrish, Fla., said he’s concerned the new law will put a wall between him and his young students.
“As educators we build relationships with our kids, and in order to build relationships, you talk about your home life, you talk about what you do on the weekends,” Bernaert said. “It scares me that I’m not going to be able to have these conversations with my children … I don’t want to have to hide that my partner and I went paddle boarding this weekend.”
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Proponents of the law have argued for months that the law’s sole intent is to strengthen the role of parents in their children’s education and protect young Floridians from “mature” topics.
During a signing ceremony on Monday, DeSantis, flanked by schoolchildren, said his office had seen “classroom materials about sexuality and woke gender ideology” and “libraries with clearly inappropriate, pornographic mature materials for very young kids.”
The governor on several occasions referred to instruction around gender identity and sexual orientation the “gender bread man,” a reference to an educational tool.
But educators and lawmakers opposed to the law have long said that, despite the premise of the law, Florida teachers are not “indoctrinating” young children with age inappropriate or developmentally inappropriate curriculum.
“They’re not secretly pushing the ‘gay agenda,’ the ‘trans agenda,’ the ‘woke agenda’ – it’s just not happening,” state Sen. Lauren Book (D), who is a former kindergarten teacher, said during a debate of the then-bill in the Senate earlier this month. “And they’re certainly not sidestepping Florida law in some secret state-allowed grooming or abuse of children.”
On Tuesday, Bernaert told MSNBC that the law is offensive to educators who are deserving of parents’ trust in educating their children.
“It truly makes me feel like I am not trusted as a professional,” he said. “I know my kindergarten standards through and through and nowhere in our curriculum does it have anything about teaching sexual orientation or sexual identity.”
Bernaert added that he worries about the direct impact the law will have on his young students, some of whom have LGBTQ+ family members.
“I have a little girl this year who has two moms and the kids are curious about her two moms,” he said. “They want to know about her two moms.”
“If they go to her and ask her about her two moms, and she doesn’t know what to say, they’re going to come to me and ask me … so what do I do?”
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