Shortly after Willie Carver Jr. received Kentucky’s 2022 Teacher of the Year award, he announced he was leaving his teaching career due to years of facing homophobia.
Carver told NBC News when he started teaching high school English in Montgomery, Kentucky 12 years ago, an administrator told him he would be "crucified" for being openly gay, saying, “No one will protect you, including me.”
Carver said he was eventually able to teach as an openly gay man after changes in the school’s administration, but over the next 12 years, he watched administrators continue to suppress the LGBTQ community.
According to NBC News, Carver said he witnessed many instances of prejudice at school, but the administration’s failure to address repeated harassment against him and LGBTQ students was the “straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Carver said a group of community members repeatedly showed up at school board meetings and accused him and LGBTQ students of being “groomers.”
He said the attacks continued on social media, and one member of the group posted photos of him and LGBTQ students along with homophobic comments and slurs.
School officials, Carver told NBC News, did not respond to the harassment.
NBC News said the superintendent of Montgomery County Schools, Matt Thompson, refused to answer specific questions about the allegations but said Carver is a “wonderful” teacher.
Carver said his belief that rural students needed LGBTQ role models was part of what kept him going.
“I have put up with these problems over the years because the benefits outweighed the cons,” he said. “But I’ve now reached a stage where I’m starting to see that the toll on mental health is going to be such that my students are not going to be seeing a successful LGBTQ person in front of them. They’re seeing someone who is stressed out and unhappy.”
According to NBC News, the Education Department said in response to Carver’s resignation that it was “proud of Willie and what he has accomplished in his teaching career.”
Next school year, Carver will serve in an administrative role in student support services at the University of Kentucky.
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