voice
education, wrote in her blog in 2008: “A teacher is
employed to do a particular job. They are acting in
loco parentis and are there to oversee the safety and
wellbeing of pupils in their care.” Helen Goddard’s
pupils knew her as ‘The Jazz Lady’. She wasn’t a
glamorous sixth former or visiting university student
to form a crush on – she was their music teacher.
Given these issues of power and responsibility,
the motives of a teacher who wants to start a
romantic relationship with a student are
questionable. Being seen as a role model by an
adoring younger woman can be hugely flattering.
Adult role models are incredibly important to
young queer girls and there are increasing numbers
of lesbian and bi women gaining media coverage,
including Ellen DeGeneres, Portia de Rossi, Carol
Ann Duffy, and (more dubiously) Lindsay Lohan.
Yet young lesbians need a real-life mentor: someone
to talk to about the experience of being queer,
someone who can answer difficult questions,
provide moral support and show what a queer, adult
woman is.
Ariel Schrag,a writer on The L-Word, has
reminisced in her teenage memoirs, Potential, about
her two mentors. The 17-year-old Ariel could talk
with her ‘dyke teachers’ Ms Salt and Ms Novak about
nature vs nurture case for homosexuality and what
counted as ‘lesbian sex’; they also supported her in
the aftermath of a messy break-up with her girlfriend,
33
Sally. Even with a massive queer youth scene in the
high school, Ms Salt and Ms Novak were the only
lesbian adults that Ariel met.
Helen Goddard was sentenced to 18 months in
prison on 21 September this year; her student says
she hopes the relationship will continue after Ms
Goddard is released from jail. Whether the
relationship works outside of the school gates is
another matter. Dr Boynton points out the problems
of afterschool club relationships for young girls –
whether you hang out with your friends or your
teachers, how your relationship might change as you
mature throughout your teens, and whether you’ll be
able to trust your partner with all those other pupils
at school. Ariel Schrag’s lesbian teachers were there
to look out for Ariel’s emotional wellbeing, not to try
and get into her knickers. Ms Goddard might have
done well to learn from this.
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