ITP - 117: Teaching While Queer: The Reality in Schools Today

JPMint:
see a microphone. It is all the way up. Okay, because mine is as well. And I see I'm hitting yellow. I'm hitting yellow, which is the sweet spot. If I go right up here, I'm like yellow, red.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
It's all the way up.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
I mean I can lean closer into my mic which I'm perfectly good with. My mic is just very low. It's something I've dealt with on my own podcast that I just recently realized is causing issues so I might have to get a new mic. It has this cute little knob for volume but it doesn't do anything.

JPMint:
But I think that's the listening, no, that's the listening volume, I think. Because I turn mine down because the guys are loud.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Maybe.

Kent The Cat Guy:
What what what yeah, I am a little loud

JPMint:
Ha

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
It's a separate mic, like specifically microphone not speaker.

ITP:
I don't know what you're talking about.

Kent The Cat Guy:
I like that, and I like that mic.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Yeah, it's real nice. It just is very low.

JPMint:
Greg, you're sporting fewer earbuds than I usually see you. You usually got the DJ look.

ITP:
Well, you know, I've got to move on, you know.

JPMint:
Yeah, you're a little low.

Kent The Cat Guy:
Greg, you're sounding like the midnight DJ. This is Greg Lemoyne taking you through all night long the low jazz.

ITP:
I'm just.

ITP:
We're gonna be here all night long. Why does Brian's name have the word host underneath it? Does that have anybody else's, see that?

JPMint:
Kent The Cat Guy:
maybe we're all on his Riverside. You got a Riverside account, Brian? You know, Brian, it's great to be on your podcast. Thanks for inviting us.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
ITP:
Are we interviewing with you?

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
I used to have a Riverside account, but when I logged in it said guest.

ITP:
Thanks for inviting us. I've never been on your podcast before, it's a pleasure to be here.

Kent The Cat Guy:
You

JPMint:
Wow.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
I wonder if I could change that, I don't know. Cause I definitely was like, it says guest when I log in and it says guest on the side. I could change it, look I could just delete it.

Kent The Cat Guy:
No need.

ITP:
Yeah, you can.

JPMint:
I don't think.

JPMint:
Yeah. Yeah, but when I know when I look to the right, OK, what? Yeah, when I look to the right, I see ITP as host Kent, the cat guy guest guest guest. So that's OK. I think it might just be from back when you were recording with Riverside. Well, you know, don't know how you're changing all these. Add your title.

ITP:
Can I change it for you, I wonder?

Kent The Cat Guy:
All right.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
When I was a host, yeah. Look, the loud guy is there. You can click on it and type it, yeah.

Kent The Cat Guy:
That's awesome.

ITP:
I put it in for Kent. Yeah. Well, it's just, it's not even the video. It's just so you guys know, just so you know, it's not on the video. It's just, it's not on the recording. It's just while we're talking. Right.

JPMint:
I had no idea.

Kent The Cat Guy:
Well now we know who we are

JPMint:
Hee hee!

Kent The Cat Guy:
Hold on Brian. This is the part of the show where we do the morning traffic. It's a little busy on the I-90. Give yourself about 17 minutes at exit 174.

ITP:
Right. There's a camel. There's a camel that just

JPMint:
Ooh, nice. And Greg is ITP. I've never seen you sign in as ITP. Was that something? they just did. All right. Okay. Housekeeping, Greg, are you in charge? Gregorio.

ITP:
The camel jackknifed on the road.

ITP:
I haven't either, right? This is new stuff that they just updated.

Kent The Cat Guy:
token queer dude.

ITP:
Yeah.

ITP:
I didn't have time to clean up today, I'm sorry.

Kent The Cat Guy:
What is it you need to clean up? Like your hair or what?

JPMint:
No, you always do the housekeeping announcement.

Kent The Cat Guy:
The token Canadian.

ITP:
Brian, the question is, do you have anything directly after this? If we go a little bit over an hour, which happens a lot with guests because we have a lot of fun, is there anything pressing that we need to just keep in mind or earlier? Okay. That's the only thing. And then afterwards, we'll just wait for about a couple seconds or a couple minutes, maybe one or two, and then let it upload. That's all we have to worry about. Did I remember everything?

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Nope, I'm good.

JPMint:
yeah. Yeah, at the end I'll do this, Brian. No, shoot, I can't do this anymore because we're on video. I have to do this. Well no, when we hit recording. Yeah, when we do recording, we stop recording, then I do this and it just means like freeze.

Kent The Cat Guy:
I'll do this and Greg will do this and JP Mint will do this. So those are just a few signs we use.

ITP:
You can do that if you want. I'll do this.

ITP:
And Ryan, can, Brian, you can check to see if you have any, anything that really goes through Kent and I.

JPMint:
Animations? Yeah, we have no animations, the guests. Although Kent does. I don't know. So Kent is... No, Kent's locked out. We sometimes get... okay, fireworks or confetti or things. Laser.

ITP:
Mine does once in a while too.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Whoa, that's cool. When did they start doing this? I left Riverside like six months ago and it was not this cool.

Kent The Cat Guy:
Yeah, I know right?

ITP:
the lasers! I don't know.

JPMint:
Nah, the two guys get it. I don't know why I don't get it. Maybe because I don't have a login. Can't you have a login, right?

ITP:
I don't know if it's Riverside or if it's...

ITP:
There's a little heart thing, like a little heart thing.

Kent The Cat Guy:
I do, I use an external camera, that could be part of it.

ITP:
You have to get your hands close to the camera. I'm using an internal camera.

JPMint:
an external camera, okay. All right, sorry, my eye is leaking.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
No.

Kent The Cat Guy:
You know, the exciting part is we started this podcast five minutes ago. Just wanted to let you guys know that.

JPMint:
Ha

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
day.

JPMint:
This whole gets edited. The magic of editing. Okay. Intro outro. Intro outro not me. Intro outro not me.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
This would be great. Everybody at home, play with your gestures when you're on Zoom.

ITP:
Yeah,

Kent The Cat Guy:
Someone bring us in. I got the outro. Someone bring us in.

ITP:
Okay, I am not the one with the memory problems. Okay, so shut up. Yep. Hey, quiet down in the set.

Kent The Cat Guy:
Do you remember the name of our podcast, Greg? Because I don't. Just asking. All right.

ITP:
Welcome to another episode of the International Teacher Podcast. This is Greg the Single Guy and I, as always, I have next to me Kent the Cat Guy. How are you doing Kent?

Kent The Cat Guy:
Happy New Year, Greg the Single Guy. Happy to be here.

ITP:
And we have JP Mint is back in Mexico. She's not in Canada anymore. How you doing JP?

JPMint:
Woohoo! Hi! Welcome, yes and thank you.

ITP:
I talked to her the other day. She was absolutely cold. I don't understand that Mexico does not get cold, but she's getting cold.

JPMint:
Two layers. Yeah.

Kent The Cat Guy:
12 degrees there right now. Celsius.

ITP:
Exactly. Right. So we do have an episode. I'm going to delete that out. Okay. So I'd like to welcome Bryan Stanton. Where are you coming from Bryan?

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Hi, yeah, I'm coming from New York City, where it is in fact cold. My husband just texted me, it's gonna snow in 10 minutes. I was like, cool.

JPMint:
Yeah, yeah.

ITP:
Welcome to the show.

JPMint:
Hey! Ooh! Is he like Google or Alexa where he tells you when there is adverse weather?

Kent The Cat Guy:
Wow! Alright, wow!

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
So we're from Southern California originally, and then we lived in Texas for a while. So snow is still exciting for us. I'm sure we'll get over it eventually, but when it snows here, we're like, my God, this is amazing.

JPMint:
Yay!

Kent The Cat Guy:
Tell us about that journey from... yeah, sorry.

ITP:
No, that's okay, go ahead Kent.

JPMint:
We're just excited.

Kent The Cat Guy:
I know I just want to know about that journey. I'm from the West Coast. I'm from Seattle. So how do you go from Southern California to Texas to New York? Because most people who are seeking sunshine will go the other direction. So tell us a little bit about that.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Well, I'm going to start by saying I'm not seeking sunshine, which I probably should have, because this is my second winter where it actually is dark and you can't go outside because it's cold. And I was like, wow, this is what seasonal depression looks like. That's cute.

Kent The Cat Guy:
Yeah.

Kent The Cat Guy:
Yeah, you should have Googled New York City before you left California.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Who knew? Who knew? Right? So I grew up in Los Angeles. My husband grew up in San Diego, and we met in San Diego while I was in college. And we adopted children. We have four kids and, yeah, we're like crazy people. We went from zero to three through foster care in one night. So it's like, bam.

Kent The Cat Guy:
Wow.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
And then the hardest part was adopting a baby. Apparently, having three children at once was super easy because they had a schedule. They were in school and they had things to do. Having a baby just blew up everything.

Kent The Cat Guy:
Wow.

ITP:
Well, trying to get a stork during that time is really difficult. If you get the older ones, you don't have to get the stork, but you have to get the stork involved. And that's why babies are more difficult.

Kent The Cat Guy:
Hahaha!

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Honestly, it really...

JPMint:
Ha.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
I love mythology. So I understand. I've seen a stork. I used to work for animal parks. My history is in theme parks and education.

ITP:
It's real.

ITP:
Wow, we're already all over the place. Listen, let's do this, Bryan. Let's talk a little bit.

Kent The Cat Guy:
If he hasn't finished the story about how they got to New York, let him finish the story.

ITP:
Yeah, I cut him off so that we could hear.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
So my husband was working for a property management company that had him going back and forth from Texas to California. And there were times where he would be out of town for two or three weeks dealing with stuff. And that just became a lot for me. And when he first went, he was like, you know, Texas is kind of okay. It's really cheap and all of these things. And I was like, absolutely not. And then a few years later,

I was working at SeaWorld at the time and they started doing several rounds of layoffs, which I was the designated survivor, I guess, because I kept surviving the layoffs. But it's because I was doing too much work.

Kent The Cat Guy:
I think they let the seals go before they let you go.

JPMint:
Hahaha.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Honestly, probably. The Guadalupe seals, they're cute, but they will chase you down.

Kent The Cat Guy:
You know, I was seven years old when I saw my first SeaWorld show.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Yeah? I feel like I was an adult. I have no memory of SeaWorld as a kid.

Kent The Cat Guy:
Hahaha.

ITP:
You're the first person I've ever heard say, those Guadalupe seals.

JPMint:
Yeah.

Kent The Cat Guy:
It's gonna be our new thing.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Yeah, they're cute. They just chase you down. So after a while it started grating on me, just doing everything on my own. And so we eventually moved to Texas, and when I got there, I started working at SeaWorld in San Antonio. I chose San Antonio specifically so that I knew I would be able to find a place to work, having been in the theme park industry. But while I was waiting for them to not want to pay me California wages,

I got my teaching credential online because Texas has that opportunity. I had been teaching private voice lessons for years and had done so much theater work that I was getting a teaching credential in social studies because I love history. And the principals I was interviewing with were like, get your theater credential. And I was like, theater? Everybody told me theater wasn't the way to make money.

Kent The Cat Guy:
No, wait a minute. Is theater an actual separate endorsement?

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Yep. All of the arts have their own endorsement, at least in Texas. In New York, you can get the endorsements, but they don't fund the programs the same.

And they tend to cut a lot of the arts here, which is wild. But after working eight months at SeaWorld, I got a job as a teacher and it was pretty good. I was working for a school that was a coveted district.

JPMint:
This is in San Antonio.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
Yeah. And over four years it became the place nobody wanted to go. I became Teacher of the Year in my third year because I built a theater program based on philanthropy and inclusion.

... (content continues unchanged for flow) ...

Kent The Cat Guy:
Most of the ITP crowd believes we are just an artificial intelligence podcast.

ITP:
We're just going to call it the AITP.

Bryan Stanton (he/they):
I don't know that line.

[End of transcript]