One In Ten Fairy Tale endings

I bought a book this weekend, titled One Teacher in 10. This book shares stories about LBGT teachers, focusing especially on one pivotal or critical moment in each teacher's career. Most of these stories, at least of the ones that I've encountered so far, are happy tales of "everything working out all right in the end."

That's great, really it is, and some of the stories even summarize the difficulties that teachers faced getting to that happy ending point. Perhaps it is a sign of the times, that students are more accepting, that people in general are more tolerant and homosexuality is "no big deal."

But what about when things do go wrong? The stories about defeat are just as important as the stories about success. I have heard it said that we learn more from our failures than from our successes and I believe that may be true. While success stories might be uplifting, stories about struggles, difficulties teach us - they can teach us how to work with or around unsupportive parents and administrators. They can teach us appropriate ways to come out to colleagues and students. They can teach us how to respond to difficult questions and address homophobia in the classroom.

Not that success stories can't teach these lessons as well, but I wonder if the decision to include mostly uplifting stories was based on editorial desires or if the majority of the stories submitted really did have positive messages.

Either way, I plan on including the good, the bad, and the ugly in this blog, so that others can share in my triumphs and learn from my mistakes.