Amy Moran, Ph. D. with Terron Singletary
This February, we honor Terron Singletary. Terron is the choral music teacher at Burnet Middle School in Union, New Jersey—the same middle school he attended in the mid ’90s! With 18 years of experience, Terron is also NJEA’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) representative for Union County and has been a delegate to the NEA Representative Assembly seven times.
Terron expresses necessity and pride in being an “out” gay black man at his school and communicates that it’s safe to ask him questions. Co-workers ask him questions about pronoun usage, best practices with addressing students’ same-sex parents and more.
Over the years, he intentionally created an environment where it’s safe to talk about who he is with students as well, answering middle schoolers’ questions confidently and securely in a way that’s developmentally appropriate and showing them it’s safe and OK to be “out.”
“We’re known for being curious,” Terron says of queer people. “We had no choice but to be curious about ourselves.”
As a middle schooler at Burnet, Terron never saw a positive representation of LGBTQIA+ people that wasn’t on a sitcom or a movie.
“Those aren’t real people,” he remarked, remembering craving authentic reflection of his own lived experience and developing identity.
He vividly recalls navigating the realm of professional “closetedness” and not talking about being gay. But compared to now, where being a visible part of the LGBTQIA+ community is more normalized and even a necessity, talking publicly about queerness helps prevent suicide and provides access to necessary health care, expanding the path forged by “out” queers before him.
Without a doubt, throughout his teaching career, “outness” has changed.
In the beginning of his career, he never discussed sexual orientation or gender identity/expression with students or parents. Sure, he was out to close friends, but not the rest of the world. When students started asking him questions about his orientation and relationships—as they often do with straight teachers with wedding photos on their desks—Terron, worried, told them to come back when they were in high school. And, craving visible authenticity from a trusted adult, they did!
Over the years, Terron saw the value of young people being able to see models of successful, confident queer adults, and he encourages other queer teachers to be their authentic selves in the classroom when they’re ready.
The importance of visibility and “outness” is certainly not lost on Terron. Years ago, at New Jersey Pride in Asbury Park, he saw the NJEA Pride float and was amazed. Not knowing that there was an organized group of queer teachers in our statewide union, he yearned for connection and was led by his curiosity about what other queer teachers’ schools were like and how ”out” they were in their school environments.
“We need our safe space too!” he remarked, recalling how he made a phone call about how to get involved and swiftly became the Union County representative to the NJEA Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee.
When I asked him about other queer educators in his life that he looked up to and may have modeled his pedagogies after, he drew a blank. Queerness, back then, wasn’t talked about.
“We have had to pave this road on our own,” he said. “But this shows the next generation that there is a way, and that there may be new paths to pave—and it’s OK! We did it, and you can too! Maybe make it better, make the path wider or make a new path!”
Amy Moran, Ph.D. is an out lesbian educator, leader and activist working to make education affirming and inclusive for all of her students and colleagues. Moran has taught middle school for 30 years and was a high school GSA adviser for 16 years.