Illustration:Matt GoldingCredit:
For me,the crisis came as a result of an escalation in inflammatory rhetoric from school leadership during the 2017 marriage equality campaign period,and a concurrent uptick in incidents of peer bullying among students. As the campaign period unfolded,I noticed the sexuality-related bullying incidents in my year 5/6 classroom increase in number and intensity.
The incidents I witnessed included homophobic slurs,graphic drawings depicting physical violence towards LGBTIQA+ people,and religiously worded accusations and threats – for example,that the student being targeted was “demon possessed” and “going to hell because God hated them”. The incidents seriously affected the wellbeing of this student,and I felt that I had no choice but to adopt extra supervision measures to prioritise their safety.
Even though I documented each of these incidents and passed on my reports to the appropriate staff members,the students who were leading the bullying were allowed to continue for some weeks with no meaningful intervention. When they were finally interviewed by the school executive,they defended themselves by saying,“but I was just telling them what the Bible says”.
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I could see that the senior staff had no adequate response to this. In fact,it was only when I copied multiple staff members into emails documenting a number of incidents that the bullying behaviour was dealt with at all.
Once my supervising teachers became aware that I was documenting these incidents,my duties were suddenly changed,and I was warned of negative consequences if I “overstepped my role”.
Up to this point I had gone about my duties with some level of professional independence,but I now began to feel under scrutiny. This made me extra vigilant and anxious about offering emotional and spiritual support to my students who were being bullied in these ways – despite the fact that this support only consisted of simple Christian messages of God’s love,acceptance and inclusion,which in my view any Christian teacher should have been able to articulate unequivocally.