Overlooking the Obvious

Families have to trust teachers - adults outside the demarcations of 'family'- to aid in the rearing of their children. So a good rapport between teachers and families is important. Trust and good rapport, as I see it, has honesty as its base.

So it annoys me that I am not honest, and that I feel I cannot be honest, about a very basic piece of my life with families.

Why should it matter that my significant other is a woman? It shouldn't. And maybe it wouldn't, if I happened to mention it in conversation.

But I work hard enough as it is to convince families (not all, but many) that my approach to education is thorough and informed, that I understand their children's needs, and that even though I have a facial piercing and I wear jeans & t-shirts to work, I am a professional. I carry around this niggling feeling that if I were to share this piece about my life (a piece that I feel is ultimately inconsequential), there are enough people out there who would second-guess my work as to make my already substantial efforts unsustainable. It's not a feeling I enjoy, and as I said maybe it's unfounded, but there it is.

However, as with so many things, people don't see what they're not looking for. A week or two ago I guess I let slip a first-person plural pronoun sort of story--"we" don't watch much tv or whatever it was--and the mom I was talking with exclaimed, "Oh! I didn't realize you were married!"
Though I've known this woman for almost two years, we've only ever encountered one another within the hallways of the school. How many moms, dads, grandparents, etc. have had countless conversations with me about families and never noticed that I am particularly oblique about my own? When my colleague became a grandmother, signs went up announcing it. Others talk about their children freely; it's never a question that they have husbands (or less frequently, ex-husbands) who are a part of those children's lives. In my case, maybe there are a few parents who have put two and two together, but one way or the other, I've fallen into this 'don't ask, don't tell' policy with families.

Trust? Check. Good rapport? Check. Total honesty? Hm, we're all working on it.