‘You’re gay, sir, innit?’: As a teacher, I kept my sexuality a secret – until I couldn’t

It was my first week as a fully fledged teacher. Pinned up next to my sixth-form college whiteboard, the neatly coloured timetable told me that the AS literature group were next. They milled around outside the classroom, brimming with nervy start-of-term small talk: how vast the site was compared with the various secondary schools they’d said goodbye to a few months ago; stuttered lists of subject choices. I opened YouTube on my monitor, increased the volume and beckoned the students in.

Twenty bemused kids made their way to their seats as I clicked to the beat at my desk, before rising to my feet to offer a laid-back two-step. I got a quizzical thumbs up; one brave soul testingly called out: “Yeah, funky, sir?” As they peeled out of their box-fresh hoodies, Fela Kuti’s Water No Get Enemy strolled towards its chorus.

Playing “cool tunes” as students filed in was one of many gimmicks I used at the start of my teaching career, all of which now seem utterly laughable. But back in 2011, I was a bushy-tailed, 26-year-old newly qualified teacher (NQT), thrilled to have my first job at an “outstanding” college in genteel Surrey. I was keen to be one of those maverick, anti-authoritarian English teachers. Riding high on the idealism of my PGCE course (one of our more memorable seminars was on “Teacher as clown”), I wanted my democratic classroom to be an extension of the students’ common room: a place for relatable but fiery intellectual debate.

Informality and eccentricity were to be mainstays of my approach, too. I referred to my students as “my lambs”, I playfully called myself “their shepherd”, and sheep puns were scattered throughout their worksheets. We played elaborate versions of bingo to help memorise literary terms. I only just managed to stop myself dressing up as a wizened matriarch to better deliver a lecture on Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba. The students were remarkably tolerant and humoured my efforts.

These flourishes might have been seen as a little odd, but they weren’t wildly out of place: the college’s spirit was fairly open, progressive. The head of classics had the classroom above mine and she cried whenever she read Homer aloud to her classes. Teachers were referred to by their first names, dress codes for staff were relaxed: scuffed Converse abounded. We English teachers were given autonomy in terms of text choices and how we explored them. Initial analyses of characters in King Lear often centred on the question: in your opinion, which of the three sisters would be most fun on a night out?

With all that freedom, I was very much at home. And I soon sensed that students felt at home with me, too. At break times, the ambitious ones were relaxed when talking to me about their intractable perfectionism. The perennially disorganised ones shared their frustrations about always being on the back foot. My goal was to be nonjudgmental as we solved problems together and – fingers crossed – to perhaps even make the kids laugh. Teacher as compassionate clown, perhaps.

But I was not so comfortable or at home that I was able to tell my students I was gay. Even when studying The Picture of Dorian Gray, where discussion of my own, personal thoughts about Wilde’s experience of outsiderhood might actually have been pertinent – illuminating, even – I kept shtum.

* * *

Even though I had come out to my English department colleagues, I never talked to them about this particular reticence, this fear of speaking freely with my classes. Strange, given that we were a pretty collegiate bunch, staffroom chat veering between updates on The Archers, family strife and triumphs, Yeats’s tangled love life, sweary but precise takedowns of Gove’s Gradgrindian vision. Strange, given that I felt so warmly towards them, these more experienced teachers who were sharing so much with me about how to survive successive weeks with 30 hours of lessons and 20 hours of marking.

From the vantage point of 2024, when the Equality Act supposedly legislates against discrimination for a person’s sexual orientation, and popular culture – Heartstopper, Sex Education – represents the classroom as a queer-friendly space, my reticence seems archaic, incongruous. I’m disappointed in my former self, too. Isn’t our aim as teachers not just to impart knowledge or to get young people through exams, but to model positive adult behaviours – like self-belief and pride?

At the time, I was deeply frustrated about this for other reasons, too; angry about the unspoken imperative often placed on queer people to repeatedly “come out” in each new social context, as if we owe this information to those around us; as if this self-revelation is always an easy and untroubling thing to do.

While it was galling, I also understood my hesitation. Perhaps, I thought, there was something inherently pragmatic about the choice to keep sexuality private. Why did students need to know about teachers’ personal lives? Where was that a requirement on any mark scheme?

I had no precedent for how to have these sorts of conversations with pupils. When I had been at school in the late 90s and early 00s, no teacher ever told us they were gay. Section 28 of the Local Government Act, which prohibited the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools was only repealed in 2003 – the year I did my A-levels. And I don’t think my teachers should have felt compelled to reveal their sexuality – indeed, the National Education Union suggests to its LGBTQ+ members that the decision to come out at work “is yours and yours alone”.

Still, there were frenzied whisperings about a couple of science teachers. When I was in year 9, the arrival of a young maths teacher who favoured unfeasibly tight trousers heralded playground speculation about his sexuality, but nothing more than that.

On some level, I reckon that, for me, a version of internalised homophobia was at play. Some deeply held, inner sense absorbed from the world around me that my gayness, in the classroom context, was inappropriate and unprofessional. A fear that, once “revealed”, it would undermine me and become the sole focus of students’ interactions with me. I would be “that gay teacher”, and nothing more.

* * *

Five years later, I found myself teaching in a very different setting: a south London sixth-form college euphemistically described in some quarters as “vibrant” and in others as “challenging”. Nominally, it was a Roman Catholic college. A little crucifix was nailed to the wall of every classroom, often flipped and made wonky by lively jokers as they sauntered out of lessons. Many of the students had been on free school meals at their previous schools. Something like 50 different languages were spoken across the predominantly Black student body. It was rated as “requires improvement” by Ofsted in 2017, a year after I joined the staff.

I arrived with my kooky shepherd shtick, but there was no perky lambiness about this lot. Initially, my buoyancy and bags of brightly coloured tricks were met with scowls at best. It didn’t take me long to understand why. The majority of my lessons were for GCSE resits. A lot of the kids in these groups had attempted the English exam three or four times and not reached the threshold grade C. Most of them had studied Of Mice and Men so often that they could recite whole chunks of it with glazed eyes. And here I was, serving up the same tired old stuff that no amount of bells and whistles could redeem. Their ire for Curley’s wife knew no bounds. I did not blame them.

Praise is a powerful thing. I should have recognised it sooner, but it became clear that what many of these young people were lacking was acknowledgment of their achievements – in whatever form they took. So, however exhausted or bored I was with trotting out tasks about differences between “their” and “there” and “they’re”, I made a point to incorporate some tiny sense of congratulation. Perhaps the group had been quieter than they were last week. Perhaps they’d been more vocal – more responsive to questions. Maybe someone had spoken sensitively about Lennie’s dialogue.

Whatever good I could see and that felt important, I tried to acknowledge. And, even if they found it a little corny, the understanding that I was actively looking for goodness, that I wasn’t just another person loudly putting them down, enabled the beginnings of rapport between me and some of the more willing students.

Even so, the seemingly difficult business of my coming out to students remained. This time, the issue was complicated by race. As a Black gay man, then in my early 30s, I had had countless experiences of covert and overt homophobia from my community. At the barber’s I went to in Brixton, I clenched and winced each time a fellow customer called someone a “battyman”. The slur passed entirely unremarked on – in fact it was usually accompanied by gales of approving laughter. And, not far from that barber’s, I had had stones thrown at me by homophobes from a car window (I don’t know why they picked me out).

So I was wary of talking to my largely Black classes, who were merciless with each other about things as ridiculous as a misremembered Rihanna lyric, about something that seemed as sensitive and incendiary as my sexuality.

Then came a moment where something shifted. After a session with my fizzy English language group had ended, one of the students walked back into the room. What had she forgotten? It was lunchtime. I had four million things to do, I was at my desk sorting out my next PowerPoint, dashing off emails, writing reports, gobbling the canteen’s speciality: a pallid ham sandwich. This ambling student, let’s call her Annie, was chatting loudly on her mobile – totally against college rules – as she blithely trotted through the door and approached me. Annie mouthed a “Sorry”, indicating with a finger that I should wait a minute. I rolled my eyes, crossed my arms.

She moved the phone from her ear and met my eyes: “You’re gay, innit, sir?”

There was something disarming about the directness. I blinked, swallowed a hunk of bread, nodded.

“Cos I’m just chatting to my friend, he’s Nigerian – you’re Ghanaian, innit sir?”

I nodded again.

“He’s basically about to tell his parents, and I was just saying to him he should, because it’ll be completely OK – because you’re completely OK, innit sir?”

I nodded again – at her, at the sandwich. Annie thanked me and bounded off, utterly unfazed. I was in shock. Angry, too, that I had been caught so off-guard and that the opportunity to decide how I would raise the issue been taken from me. Surely Annie was going to tell all the other kids? And surely any frail cordiality would be replaced by chaos – lessons were going to be impossible, unbearable now?

* * *

The next day, I began my class with Annie’s group – a rather technical session about toddlers’ tentative first attempts at speech – feeling pretty tentative myself. But the gossiping I expected did not materialise. Annie seemed to pay much more attention than she usually did. She worked hard, and not once did she even think to scrabble in her bag for her phone.

It strikes me now that this was a missed opportunity. Not just to speak openly about myself, but to have a broader conversation about sexuality, and to stand against any homophobia that might come. A door had been opened. What stopped me from walking through and moving forward? Some intuition that I shouldn’t go too far and that, on this occasion, I’d had a lucky escape.

This anxiety followed me to my next teaching appointment. This third school, in 2017, had me leaping into a different milieu once again. It was a highly selective, fee-paying girls’ school in west London. I was doing a maternity cover and had been given, among other things, a sixth-form tutor group to look after.

As this was an independent school, the class was tiny – only 10 students. They were fantastic, wise beyond their years, but prodigiously silly, too: for me, an ideal combo. Interesting, chatty, inquisitive, they came to me every morning, for a least 45 minutes, at registration. Those conversations were often the highlights of my day. The girls steered me through the social peculiarities and history of this particular school, beaming as they regaled me with tales of errant head girls and questionable RE teachers. They were weirdly obsessed with Abba and musical theatre, and introduced me to a phenomenon called RuPaul’s Drag Race, which I hadn’t a clue about before their hyperactive recommendations.

As they sorted out their Ucas forms, I shared stories of my own university high jinks. I was open with them about the strangeness of being in this world of extreme privilege after my last job. There was a lot of interest in my writing, the nervous wait for the publication of my first novel. At parents’ evenings, their mothers and fathers talked about how lucky their daughters felt to have me as a form tutor. My ego did somersaults.

Despite all this, I again drew the line at talking to them about my gayness, and more specifically the fact that I was now engaged to my partner of a decade. This was in spite of there being a few happily “out” teachers at the school, an institution that prized itself on its liberal ethos.

Again the intersection of race and sexuality had something to do with my keeping quiet. At the time, I was the school’s only Black member of teaching staff. Because of “colour-blindness”, fear of causing offence, not wanting to be seen as focusing exclusively and detrimentally on my Blackness, I’m not sure, but my racial difference was never meaningfully acknowledged by my colleagues in my early days there. To be fair, I didn’t raise it, either.

This conspicuous silence made me feel as if my Blackness was enough of an awkward aberration. I didn’t want to mark myself out any more by bringing my queerness into lessons. Besides, I was otherwise, to use Annie’s assessment, “completely OK”. Settled and liked and doing well in a well-paid role. A permanent position was very much on the cards. What was the hardship in not telling the kids about my wider life? It didn’t matter all that much.

* * *

Christmas parties are always decisive, aren’t they? At my first festive bash at the school, the flamboyant drama assistant and I had a shouty conversation on the dancefloor about the sexiness of the gay romance in the film God’s Own Country. We talked, too, about students we both taught – listing off names, comparing notes. He’d had some rehearsals with a few of the girls in my tutor group. He wondered if I had come out to them. I said no. Embarrassment pricked my cheeks as I registered his surprise. He spoke about how he had discussed his sexuality with his sixth formers, and how much he had enjoyed giving advice to the school’s LGBTQ+ society.

Comparatively, I felt like a “bad gay”. I talked about my reservations. While he listened empathetically, he also asked me to consider how much it might mean to a possibly queer student in my group to hear me – someone they looked up to and respected – speaking honestly about myself.

Related:‘My blackness seemed curious, difficult to handle’: the day I ran away from Oxford University

He asked me to imagine what it would have been like for me at school if a gay teacher had opened up about themselves. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what difference that scenario would have made to me. But it would have been an important part of my path towards understanding and delighting in my gayness.

The next morning, I had my last registration of the term with my tutor group. They were singing Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You and getting themselves in a tizzy about the year 12 secret Santa. Mutterings about university acceptance letters expected in early January were feverish. I asked them about their Christmas plans. They wanted to know mine. The conversation with the drama assistant was still with me – rallying and comforting.

Maybe it was the festive hangover, or the last-day-of-term devil-may-care spirit, but I told them I was spending Christmas day itself with my partner’s family. It was sure to be a noisy affair because his family was so large. “He’s one of seven brothers – it’s absolutely mad,” I told them.

They registered the pronoun. It hung in the air between us. The girls looked at each other, warmly. What I remember most about that aside that morning, and the quiet seconds that followed, was how natural it all felt. Despite it being years in the making, and the subject of so much agonising, there was no sense of effortful force or adrenalised fear. No huge sense of release or relief, either. Only a lightness and absolute ordinariness to the moment, to their silent smiling.

I was smiling, too. Curious about what, if anything, might happen next. Pleased, yes, that as the drama assistant had said, I might now be able to offer solidarity to students in need. But mostly proud, now, to be shepherding myself.

• Michael Donkor’s novel Grow Where They Fall is published by Fig Tree (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply