Last Monday, I posted an interview with Tina Owen, one of the winners of this year’s Point Foundation scholarships. Today, the other Point Scholar who is also a parent, Utah resident Kim Hackford-Peer, gives us her thoughts on winning the scholarship, parenting, and education. Kim is pursuing her PhD in Education Culture and Society at the University of Utah, where she teaches multicultural education and is beginning her dissertation on the pedagogical decisions queer teachers make.
The Point Foundation is the nation’s largest publicly-supported scholarship organization for LGBT students. Point Scholars receive financial support, leadership training, and mentoring from the Foundation after undergoing a rigorous selection process—in 2006, only 1% of applicants were chosen. The Foundation “[pays] particular attention to those students who have lost the financial and social support of their families and/or communities as a result of revealing their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
What will the impact of the Point Foundation Scholarship be on your family as a whole?
Being a Point Scholar will allow me to continue pursuing my Ph.D. full time without working or holding a teaching assistantship. Over the past three years, my family has endured my frequent absence in the evenings and weekends; I needed to spend my time teaching during the day so most of my studying took place during what should have been “family time.” Thanks to the Point Foundation I will be able to work on my dissertation during the weekdays and spend some much needed time with my partner and our boys in the evenings and weekends. I’ll be able to support my partner as much as she’s supported me — she will not have to be the sole parent responsible for our energetic little ones after a long day at work. And, I won’t miss another trip to Nana and Papa’s house or visit to the Discovery Zone Children’s Museum!
How do you balance your time as a mother and a student?
As I already mentioned, this has been a challenge. For starters, I simply do not sleep much. My partner works full-time during the day; My program is structured so that the classes are in the evenings. We try to have some family time together each day. This obviously gets difficult.
My favorite evenings are the ones where we eat dinner together as a family, take a neighborhood walk, read books to the boys, and share a snack before bed. Unfortunately, these evenings lead to nights where I tuck the family into bed, and head to my office to “catch up” for several hours.
There is no doubt that this is difficult on each of us in our own ways. Thankfully, my partner is amazing and has been supportive of my education. She always finds the extra energy the boys need when I’m not able to give it. Through it all, I have learned this: we couldn’t make it without cooperation, good communication, and flexibility. The last 3 years that I have been in school has made my partnership a better partnership, my family a stronger family. I have also learned to extend my definition of family, seek help from others when I get overwhelmed, not to feel guilty for making my family a priority, and forgive myself for not being able to do it all.
Has being a parent influenced your approach to education?
Whenever I get to teach the Multicultural Education class offered through my department for pre-service teachers, I start the class by telling the students that I view the class as the most important class they’ll take as future teachers. And then I tell them that I have two young children who might one day be their students, and it is my job to make sure that their potential future teachers are prepared to treat them, and all of their classmates, with the dignity and respect that they deserve. I have always considered myself an educator, and I have been working to make our educational systems more inclusive since I can remember. But now that I’m a parent, I feel a greater sense of urgency regarding this task. I believe that there are many things that are “broken” in our educational systems, and while I don’t think that any child should have to endure an experience in a broken educational system, I come home to two beautiful, brilliant reasons to never take a break from this work every day.
As an educator and an LGBT parent, what did you look for in a school? Did you ask any particular questions of the teachers or staff before your son started? How involved are you and your partner with his school now?
Both of our boys go to “school” during the week. Our youngest, Casey who is 1, is at a daycare. Our oldest (Riley – 5) just got done with a year in a HeadStart program and will start kindergarten this fall. We have always “shopped long and hard” for a school that we feel will be good for them. The first question we always pose is “The boys have two moms, what does this mean to you as their teacher?” The responses are very telling. If they tell us that lots of the children have a step-mom it is clear to us that families like ours are not even on their radar. If they say they have “no problem with it, but…” we know they actually do have at least a small problem with our family. If they say, “great, when we talk about you and your family what should we call you so your son knows we are talking about you” we know we’ve found a place we can consider. It is also important to us to ask about the school’s general feelings about gender non-conformity. Our oldest has always liked pink, wears flowered socks, and plays with his Legos while pretending he’s a princess. We don’t want him in a place where he can’t fully express himself, or where the biggest (and in our opinion, the worst) lessons are around how to “be a boy.” We look for schools where we see all sorts of children playing all sorts of things together, where there aren’t obvious “boy” areas and “girl” areas. And we look for a school with diverse populations in terms of race, primary language, socio-economic status and religion as well. We don’t want them to be among the very few non-LDS (Mormon) children (we live in Utah) and we want them to have the opportunities to develop an appreciation for all kinds of differences from a young age.
Finally, we look for a place that doesn’t take academics too seriously. They are very young still and we want them to learn that their energy and their creativity is valued, and this means that they get to learn through playing and being themselves. I will be volunteering in our oldest son’s kindergarten class on a weekly basis (thanks again to the Point Foundation for providing me with the time to take this hour each week) starting in the fall. He’ll be in a dual immersion program, where he will learn Spanish as he learns literacy in English. We know many of the faculty and staff at his school already, and they are excited to be able to have “Riley’s moms” spend time in the classroom.
What do you know now that you wish you had known when you were first starting college?
I did not come out until my fourth year of undergraduate studies. I wish I would have felt like I could do this sooner. I think I would have been more successful as an undergraduate student if I was not ignoring a large part of myself. But I simply didn’t know that I could survive — and flourish — as a lesbian. I thought my world would fall apart. I wish I would have been able to look into my future and know that my world would not only stay intact, but improve.
What is the most important thing you hope your sons will get out of their own educations?
My partner and I both think the most important thing our boys can get out of their own educations is a love of learning, imagining, and creating and an appreciation of multiple perspectives which push them to interrogate their own. I hope they get to experience a wide range of “learnings” so that they can find some that light the fire in their bellies. They are both active and passionate little guys, and I want them to be able to develop their passions, not have them reigned in. Of course reading, writing and arithmetic are important, but they are meaningless without passion or imagination. They are also meaningless if multiple perspectives are not present in the learning.
(Photo of Kim Hackford-Peer (r, standing) and family, courtesy Kim Hackford-Peer.)
