Teachers: The Front Line of the War on Bullying.

          By the time I entered high school in 1990, I had already endured three long years of severe bullying.  My school, just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, was not particularly welcoming to adolescent boys of my persuasion.  My naturally flamboyant nature attracted a swarm of hornets whose daily stinging left indelible scars.  But the day it all became too much to handle was the day I realized how alone I really was. 

I walked from first period English to second period Science class and stopped in the doorway of the science lab to say hello to my friend Gindy.  In mid-conversation I felt a hand clutch my shoulder from behind and whip me around.  One of my tormentors, a boy named Matt, picked me up by my shirt, punched me in the stomach and threw me across a lab table. I glided along the slate table-top like a bowling ball and landed on the concrete floor.  Then Matt lunged at me to take a few more shots.  My science teacher, Mr. Johnson, walked in as I was airborne.  A crowd had gathered to cheer Matt on, yelling, “Yeah, kick that faggot’s ass.” 

I looked up desperately toward my teacher, but to no avail: “Okay, come on now boys, cut it out.” 

Matt ran off and the crowd of spectators disbanded, leaving me wincing on the floor.  Mr. Johnson picked up his chalk and faced the blackboard.

I collected my books, walked out of Burlington High, and never went back.  I transferred to another school the following semester. Mr. Johnson was not the first teacher to turn a blind eye to this kind of behavior.  In fact he was the last in a string of teachers who showed more annoyance than concern in the face of such hazing.  Most teachers tossed off a casual rebuke and went on with their lesson as if the abuse was no more than a mere disturbance.  But I wanted them to see what was really going on and stick up for me.  I required their protection. 

Like me, many teens feel isolated and alone when coming to terms with their sexuality and often can’t tell their parents for one reason or another.  But this unfortunate reality places our teachers in an even more vital role in our children’s lives.  Today I am the Co-Chair for GLSEN-NYC (The Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, www.glsen.org) and teach anti-bullying workshops to students from all walks of life. Although the recent explosion of “gay” in mainstream America, via television characters, marriage equality and the anti-bullying movement, has launched a revolution, our schools still have a long way to go. 

I recently taught a workshop at a high school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  When I arrived and the coordinator escorted me down the chaotic hallway, memories of that day in Mr. Johnson’s science lab flashed in my head.  We reached an unruly classroom pinging with the shrieks of teenage intensity.  As I waited there for the teacher to arrive, not one of these students so much as acknowledged my presence. It was a mixed class of gay, lesbian, and straight students.  The strength of the dominant kids, both gay and straight, was overpowering as they called each other slurs like- “slut”, “fag” and other derogatory terms.  Some flung these words out in sarcastic jest at their friends, but others hurled them across the room like stones from a slingshot meant to harm.  I noticed a few students hiding in the corners of the room avoiding eye contact with anyone.  When they did look up I saw that all-too-familiar look of fear in their eyes, pleading for help but too petrified to speak up.

  I wasn’t all that shocked – I’ve seen it before while teaching many workshops in all kinds of schools.  But finally someone stood up and said, “All right, let’s pay attention to this guy from GLSEN.” It turned out she was the teacher. That did shock me.  She had been carrying on and laughing like one of her students.  The rest of the workshop was a battle for control between me and the class. I can usually get them to pay attention and participate for some length of time, but I struggled for the entire hour to start an honest dialogue about their behavior.  Every time I thought I was getting somewhere they erupted into laughter or acted out, with their teacher, their leader, laughing along with them. 

I left that day with the stark realization that my work with students is irrelevant if teachers are not on board.  Now, not every teacher or every school is like the one I just described. Still, I have seen varying degrees of this behavior in most classrooms I’ve visited.  Most often, I continue to observe the type of silent neglect that Mr. Johnson exhibited toward me close to twenty-five years ago.  Teachers who allow words to fly across the room like emotional bombs with enough power to destroy self-esteem send the message that it’s acceptable for students to treat their peers in this manner.   

I believe that teaching is the most respectable and most honorable profession.  There are remarkable teachers out there who change children’s lives for the better and help build an unshakable foundation in their students that live on in society as they grow and enter the world.  But while each student deserves such an experience, that’s not what every student receives. Is it unrealistic to expect better? Is the education system itself irreparably broken?  I don’t think it is.  What teachers need, rather, is more support.

The point of teaching is to impart knowledge. But is the term “knowledge” limited to calculus, chemistry and English Literature? Most teachers worth their salt will say that it’s not.  They recognize that emotional development in young adults is just as important, if not more so, as mental development. Indeed, the teaching of facts has to be coupled with the nurturing of wisdom.  How many more school shootings carried out by students or former students who felt ostracized, bullied, or unaccepted do we have to see?   If changing this behavior means saving lives then we need to educate our educators with tools and systems that support a respectable and bully-free learning environment.

 I have the great pleasure of sharing my GLSEN –NYC duties with fellow Co-Chair, and educator, Jonah Frank of Achievement First High School in Brooklyn.  He had this to say: “I must model what being an “Upstander” is rather than reinforce the image of a “Bystander”.  Students have no choice but to place their trust in the adults at school, but it creates a much better situation for all when children’s trust in teachers is actually earned by way of the teachers’ insistence upon mutual respect for everyone.  Teachers should not merely demand mutual respect, we should model it.  This is a daunting task sometimes, as we are only human, but upon choosing this profession we should understand that it is the most important job there is and treat it as such, for these children are the greatest hope for a kinder, more courageous, enlightened, and empathetic America where people truly are free to experience life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  If America is viewed by the world as a bully, where do we think that started?  As teachers, we have a great opportunity to help eradicate bullying once and for all.”

While searching for a way to join the war on bullying it was important for me to align myself with an organization that recognizes the enormous scope of the work needed to truly make a difference and ways to carry that out.  GLSEN works with educators, policy makers, community leaders and students on the urgent need to address anti-LGBT behavior and bias in schools. GLSEN strives to protect students from bullying and harassment, to advance comprehensive safe schools laws and policies, to empower principals to make their schools safer, and to build the skills of educators to teach respect for all people.  They have also designed a guide to help educators create a safe space for all of their students called The Safe Space Kit (www.SafeSpaceKit.com), which is easily accessible and only $20.00. 

This July, Jonah and I and our entire board of directors will attend GLSEN’s Training of Teachers (TOT) weekend where we will receive four days of comprehensive training on how to equip teachers with tools and tactics to handle bullying behavior in their classrooms. We’ll then set off on our quest to carry this training into as many of the 1,700 – plus New York City schools as we can.  GLSEN has created a grassroots organization where everyday community members like you and me can step up and help our educational system become the safe space our children deserve. For more information visit GLSEN at www.glsen.org and find the nearest chapter to your community.  And if there is no chapter near you, then start one.  If I can do it, you can too.  It is our civic duty to help our students and teachers.

Happy Pride New York City!

Happy Pride everyone! I'm so proud to be marching in today's parade with GLSEN. We are the first group behind the lead contingent. I'd like to wish everyone a safe and celebratory day! Xo

Heritage of Pride Speech

 Last night I had the esteemed honor of speaking at this year's New York Pride Rally.  Little did I know that Lady Ga-Ga was waiting in the wings to go on after me. It was a truly magical evening.  I've published my speech below for those who couldn't be there.

Heritage of Pride speech- “Turn Your Wounds Into Wisdom.”

By: James Michael Angelo- Co-Chair-GLSEN-NYC

Good evening New York and Happy Pride! What an honor it is to be here this evening. I'd like to thank the entire Heritage of Pride committee for their hard work in producing tonight's event.  Let me start off by sharing why I got involved with GLSEN.   By the time I was fourteen years old, like so many of us here tonight, I had already endured three long years of severe bullying for being gay.  Those countless acts of abuse culminated one night when a group of 5 to 6 eighteen year old boys jumped me in the woods, and gang beat me for several minutes. As I lay curled up on the cold ground these boys then circled around me, unzipped their pants and collectively urinated all over my shivering body while laughing and yelling things like, "That’s what faggots deserve.”  

It has taken me twenty years to work through the shame, anger and resentment of that hate-crime and the three years leading up to it. I became an aggressive, over-sensitive and angry gay man always on the defense and eventually turned to alcohol, drugs and sex to escape the indelible pain.  Today I keep a quote from Oprah Winfrey on my desk that reads, “Turn your wounds into wisdom.”  I no longer use those self-destructive methods of escape to cope with that pain.  Instead, I am the co-chair of the New York City chapter of GLSEN-the country’s largest anti-bullying organization.  I have been able to turn my wounds into wisdom and teach anti-bullying workshops to teens from all walks of life and from all across the world.  And I can report to you that although we face an epidemic of palatial proportions, I have seen firsthand the change in a young person’s eyes when he or she realizes that their thinking and behavior need to change.  Working with young adults has been one of the most challenging experiences of my life. Bullies come in many different faces and yes even in the faces of LGBT youth. This vicious cycle continues on into adulthood and corrodes our community.

So my message here to you tonight is that we, the adults of the LGBT community, have a civic duty to heal our own bullying scars first, so that we can carry this message to the generations coming up behind us who so desperately need our help.   We need to support and educate our teachers so they are armed with the tools needed to properly handle bullying in the classroom.  One of those tools is GLSEN’s Safe Space Kit. It’s a comprehensive guide on how to be an ally and should be in the hands of every teacher in every school across the country.  You can access this kit at glsen.org for only $20.00. Which is a small price to pay for change.  

I am proud to be a bullying and hate-crime survivor.  But that experience doesn’t do any good if I don’t actively seek out ways to heal those scars. That help can be found in places like our LGBT Community Center, Callen-Lorde and the many other resourceful facilities in our city.  Then, and only then, can I truly carry the message to today’s bullied, bullies, parents and teachers through organizations like GLSEN, The Trevor Project and Lady Ga-Ga’s Born This Way Foundation.

We deserve the chance to heal as a community and are responsible to break the cycle of bullying for our children and future generations.  This week we saw that things do change!  We can change the future and together we can eradicate bullying once and for all. Thank you for listening and again Happy Pride New York!

Heritage of Pride Rally 2013

I will be a guest speaker at the New York City Heritage of Pride Rally on Friday, June 28^th from 7pm to 10pm at Pier 26, located on West Street in Tribeca.  I am scheduled to take the stage at 8pm and deliver a speech on bullying and how we as the gay community can turn our wounds into wisdom and change this palatial epidemic.  I hope to see you there! Happy Pride New York!

The American Dream

I’ve been chasing “the dream” my entire life.  I was born into it.  My parents were sponsored into the cultish Amway business shortly after I was born.  My father was a struggling salesman with four kids and an obsession for success.   By the time I could walk and talk the transformation had already begun.  Between their sponsors, Amway rallies and the motivational books and tapes, my parents had become Amway aristocrats focused on climbing to the upper levels of Emerald and Diamond.  When most kids were reading Huckleberry Finn I was reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

 Image and a positive attitude was our religion.  We had a home with two offices; a product facility, a meeting room and a twelve car drive way to accommodate Amway distributors coming to our home throughout the week.  My father had found a subculture he could thrive in and a star to hitch his wagon to.   He was a dynamic personality with charm oozing from every pore.  He had only one idol and that was Elvis, and he had only one son and that was me.  I grew up in Amway rallies with motivational speakers and couples who paraded across the stage like celebrities at an award show.  Like a Frankenstein experiment I was constructed to be a success-driven steam engine, groomed to become second generation Amway.

Spoiled kids like me growing up in Amway were referred to as “Ama-brats.”  This narcissistic term of endearment shielded me from reality until I was kidnapped like an episode of Dateline, by my adolescence. The kids at school saw something in me that I had not yet seen or wanted to see - they sniffed out my homosexuality like blood hounds.  Severe abuse followed me throughout junior high and high school and broke my trust in humanity.  And because of the pressures at home to carry on the family business and name, I kept my bullying a secret from my parents.  I never saw a gay couple parade across the stage at an Amway rally.  It was clear that the Christian based family value system set forth by Amway co-founders Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel did not recognize homosexuality as part of the pursuit for free enterprise. To escape the tortuous feelings of pressure and self-hatred I turned to alcohol and drugs.  They numbed me but didn't kill me. I suppose it worked in the sense that I stayed alive.

At around fifteen years old I began noticing a shift in my parent’s relationship and witnessed more and more fighting.  The subject was always either money or my father's unrelenting amounts of traveling. In particular, the money fight always perplexed me because I saw fur coats in the closets and expensive cars in the driveway.  But as the recession of the early 90’s crept in, I also saw my father working harder than ever to sponsor more people into his pyramid.  But despite his best efforts over the next couple of years the business was not producing as it once had.  My father spent more time on the road. And one day he never came home.
       That was when we learned that he was in big trouble with both the IRS and a loan shark in Atlanta.  Running from Uncle Sam and the mafia was too much - my father had a breakdown and lost it all. He left my mother and me with nothing but anger and sadness. 

It turned out that my father had built a second life with another woman in Atlanta in order to plan his escape from the crumbling life he had built with us in Boston. Then it was my mother's time to breakdown.  At seventeen, I had to get out, and so I moved to Los Angeles to become an actor.  I seethed with resentment over my father pulling the rug out from underneath me after filling my head during my entire childhood with reassuring secrets of success.   The only thing I had left was my art. I could act, and I could write. So, I picked up my laptop and wrote a one-man show titled “Life After Amway.”  I moved to New York City and performed this show for five years, playing seven characters telling the rise and fall of an American Amway family.  I've since turned this story into a screenplay telling my father’s story, and I've just finished a related memoir.

All of these experiences forced me to explore the drive for success in men.  Despite my father’s downfall I still had seventeen years of brainwashing to unravel. I saw what an unhealthy desire for money and fame could do to a man and his family, but I still craved it myself because witnessing one or two breakdowns does not relieve the obsession. I spent years battling my desire for success, sometimes achieving it and then losing it like my father.  I always felt that I had to overcompensate for being gay and prove to the world that I am equal to any straight man and not just comic relief for a so-called normal society.   This only turned me into an aggressive, competitive man, trying to grab a spotlight anywhere I could. 

Eventually I cracked. I had achieved success in New York and had everything I thought I wanted - a thriving career, a corporate American Express card, a boyfriend, a dog and an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  But I was still running from the feeling inside of never being good enough.  I fell apart at the frustration that I would always feel like this and that my childhood had done too much damage for me to recover from. Essentially, I threw in the towel.   For three years I used every form of escape I could find - alcohol, drugs, sex, travel, humor, exercise and food.  I reached for every outside pacifier I could identify, but I only felt worse with each one. I had to finally surrender to the notion that I had to break down every idea I had of what success should be and rebuild myself from the ground up.

This personal renaissance over the past few years has changed my life.    The compassion and forgiveness I now have for my father is priceless. He must have felt so much pressure to be a “man” and measure up to what society expected of him. The responsibility of raising a family is the most profound one we have. I know he wanted only the best for himself and for us.  Was there major dysfunction and delusion on his part? Absolutely. But his own difficult childhood, couple with, the need for acceptance and applause from the world, is what lead to his demise. That makes sense to me now.  Through my book, my film and my blog (http://lifeafteramway.blogspot.com/) I explore new meanings of what it means to be successful in America.  With the current financial and political crisis in this country, the need for a change in perspective is greater than ever.  I have had to redefine what it means to be successful, gay, and a man in America.   I am searching for the meaning of Life After Amway.