Teacher under fire for questioning 5th graders' acting like lesbians in front of class

A Florida teacher is under fire for asking two female fifth 
grade students if they were in a relationship in front of class, 
leading one of the students to withdraw from school.

Jezinia Gambino, the mother of one of the students, told NBC 
affiliate WPTV that “the rumor was that my daughter and another 
fifth grade little girl were dating.” After the teacher learned 
of the rumor, she summoned the children before the class and 
asked them if they were a couple “in a way that they felt they 
were in trouble,” Gambino said.

After the incident, Gambino said her daughter was texted by the 
other student, who said she “wasn’t sure if they should hang out 
together anymore because of what happened in school.”

“She didn’t want anyone to think they were gay,” Gambino said of 
the other student.

Gambino said her daughter felt humiliated and will be 
homeschooled for at least the rest of the year. "What they did 
affected my daughter in a way that now I'm having to go back and 
fix," she added.

The teacher was reported to the Florida Department of Education 
for engaging in inappropriate communication with students and 
was given a verbal warning, according to WPTV.

Regardless of the perceived sexuality of the two students, a 
2016 report by Human Rights Watch found that many U.S. public 
schools are hostile environments for LGBTQ youth, with the 
report documenting multiple examples of school administrators 
lobbing homophobic abuse at students.

Ryan Thoreson, an LGBTQ researcher at Human Rights Watch, said 
these incidents happen because so few schools train teachers and 
administrators on LGBTQ cultural competency.

“One of the most surprising findings from our research on LGBT 
issues in U.S. schools was that a lot of students said teachers 
and administrators were a bigger problem for them than other 
students,” Thoreson wrote in an email Wednesday. “Other students 
knew it wasn't OK to be overtly homophobic or transphobic, but 
school staff would still publicly humiliate LGBT kids for who 
they dated, what they wore, or how they identified.”

A number of incidents involving school officials mistreating 
LGBTQ students have made national news this past year. In 
November 2018, an assistant principal at a West Virginia public 
school was accused of harassing and following a 15-year-old 
transgender boy into the bathroom, telling him “you freak me 
out.” And last month, a Kentucky girl was expelled from a 
private Christian school for “behavioral issues” after she was 
pictured in a photograph with a rainbow birthday cake. Her 
mother later filed a lawsuit claiming her daughter was expelled 
for her “perceived sexuality.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/teacher-under-fire-
questioning-5th-graders-sexualities-front-class-
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