I May Not Look Like a “Respectable” Teacher, But I’m a Good One

As part of our Education Week series, Edgar Gomez reflects on how presenting himself authentically as a teacher cultivates a more open and honest learning environment.

A few months ago, I had the first virtual session in the latest round of queer writing workshops I teach at Catapult. As usual, before launching the Zoom meeting, I ran around my bedroom—I live in New York City so my bedroom is also my gym/laundry/office—hiding things I didn’t want my students to see in the background: socks I hand-washed and flung over my door to dry, half-empty bags of Hot Cheetos on my nightstand. Once, during a previous workshop I taught, in the middle of our lesson, a cockroach scuttled across the wall beside me and I spent the rest of the class with a twitch my students were too nice to point out. This time, I made sure to spray enough Raid around my desk to burn a new hole in the ozone.

There are two things I know to be certain about me: I am not the most “respectable”-looking teacher. And I am very good at teaching.

I plan every lesson meticulously. I do my best to break down complicated material into easily digestible bites. I am comfortable admitting areas in which I am ignorant. It’s not asking a lot, but I give a shit. When I was a graduate instructor a few years ago, students in classes that some of my peers taught would come to my office hours for help. I don’t say this to brag, and I don’t think I was born a good teacher. I’m a good teacher because I work hard at it, in the same way that if I spent hours studying the craft of meatball making, I’d probably make good meatballs.

All that to say, whenever I enter a classroom, virtual or otherwise, it’s not the actual job that I worry about. I worry that my students won’t take me seriously enough to let me do it. If I had to pinpoint a reason for the anxiety I have around my appearance, it’s that I don’t fit the image of a “serious” writing professor that is upheld at many universities and across popular media: that of the middle-aged straight white dude in the ugliest corduroy jacket you’ve ever seen, droning on and on about other dead white dudes—which, you know, go off, if that’s your thing.

None of my supervisors in graduate school told me that I needed to mold myself to fit that stereotype. But I figured that if I wanted them to think of me as a professional and write me letters of recommendation that would lead to future opportunities, I needed to try to be as close to that canonized image as possible. I wasn’t just an instructor. I was a student too. The essays I submitted to my nonfiction workshop were about going to gay bathhouses and getting expelled from high school. I suspected people in the program already thought of me as a mess. Were I to show up to my classes wearing a silk animal-print blouse, with hoop earrings and painted nails, I feared they’d think I was treating my teaching responsibilities as a joke, that they’d interpret my desire to affirm my femininity through my sartorial choices as just me being “weird.”

Graduate school had already given me what felt like a miraculous chance. Before I enrolled, I was working retail, living with my mom, and beginning to think I’d never escape our tiny run-down house in Orlando. Now that I had a whole office at a university campus, the piece of advice “dress for the job you want” felt less like a suggestion and more like an ultimatum. I looked around at the working professionals in my life. I can dress like them, I thought, and get a cushy college gig after I graduate, or I can wear something that affirms my queer identity and stay broke forever.

So, when it came time to teach, I decided I’d wear blazers and slacks, like pretty much every other male instructor I saw. The sacrifice seemed worth it for what I was getting in return. Sure, I wouldn’t get to be bold and authentic, but at least I wasn’t hungry and jobless.

On my first day of class, I showed up to my assigned room and took a seat at the front of the table. The air conditioning wasn’t working that day, and I wasn’t used to wearing shirts buttoned up to my Adam’s apple. I tugged at my collar.

“Oh girl, it’s hot in here,” I said, more to myself than to any of my students.

As I looked around at the curious eyes staring at me, a voice in my head said, Wait, are you allowed to say girl? Is that professional? Quick, say something smart!

“Global warming,” I added, in an all-knowing, academic voice, which was basically just a really bad British accent. “Would anyone mind if we leave the door ajar?”

Then the same voice in my head said, Ajar? Global warming? Girl, all of that is even weirder than when you said girl. Talk normal!

“How are y’all doing?” I asked, trying to move on to something else. But now the voice in my head was caught up worrying about the word y’all.

Everything that came out of my mouth went through a filter: Was that too gay? Too Southern? Too Puerto Rican? Did I even pronounce that right? An hour and a half later, as I sat in my empty classroom after dismissing my students, it occurred to me that I’d never reach the impossible respectability standard that’d been thrust upon me, because no matter what I wore on the outside, on the inside I was still me.

I talk like me: with a lisp, peppering every other sentence with “pero like,” clapping my hands to make points like my mom, bestowing snaps like my friends do when we hear something powerful. I teach like me: populating my syllabus with the writers whose work I admire, most of them BIPOC and/or queer and still alive.

I’d dressed for the job I wanted, only to immediately realize that the old adage is for people with just one aspect of their identity they’re trying to hide. I could camouflage my femininity with a blazer, but I still had a long way to go before being a straight, white, Ivy League–educated dude.

I’d never reach the impossible respectability standard that’d been thrust upon me, because no matter what I wore on the outside, on the inside I was still me.

I made a decision: Keep wearing the blazers, but don’t waste time trying to change every part of yourself. Speak to your students the way you wanted your professors to speak to you when you were one. Take a more conversational approach instead of using language that buries knowledge under unnecessarily abstruse diction for the sake of sounding smart. Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t trying to be like those corny movie teachers that say things like, “Shakespeare and Cardi B actually have a lot in common!” I just decided to act like myself, because that’s the only person I was good at being, and I hoped my students would keep listening.

Fortunately, they did. One thanked me for my difference. “I’m taking this other class,” she said. “And half the time I don’t have any idea what the professor is saying. I wish I had more teachers like you.” Another’s eyes lit up when I mentioned that I was half-Nicaraguan; she was Salvadorian and I was her first Central American teacher. Later, when my evaluations came in, I was floored. Several students said they would sign up for more classes with me if they could.

Though this reassured me—clearly I was a capable educator—it didn’t completely get rid of the pressure I felt to be “respectable.” After all, I was still wearing clothes that didn’t offend anyone. My students like me in business casual, I thought, but what if I came in here with some eyeshadow on? In a skirt? No, I didn’t keep my queerness a secret from them, but I was hyperaware that I was playing it safe. After all, even if I thought they’d be open-minded, I still had my supervisors to impress. They were the ones with the power to open doors for me, the ones I needed to prove myself to. With the powers that be, I was conflicted: Many had shown me kindness, championed my writing. Some even pulled fun looks themselves—though they never transgressed any gender boundaries. It’s possible they wouldn’t have cared what I looked like.

Still, back then, I couldn’t shake the idea that they’d see me as a freak. I was so used to feeling like an oddity both in the real world and in academia—and having that feeling confirmed by the educational backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual orientations of the staff at every university that posted a job listing—that I didn’t want to take any risks. Work isn’t supposed to affirm you, I scolded myself. Just keep your head down and collect your check. Be grateful. Don’t complain.

After graduating, one of my professors did, in fact, open a door for me. They recommended me to the program director at Hugo House, a writing school based in Seattle. Again, it felt like a miraculous chance, except this wasn’t just about money now. The director said I could plan a class on any subject. Tired of playing it safe, I pitched her a traditional memoir-writing workshop, with one small twist: This one would center queer people, whoever identified as such. It’d be a safe space—as much as that is possible—to read and write queer stories. She said yes.

Our first virtual session ended up coinciding with a trip to Fire Island my boyfriend had surprised me with. The class was scheduled for 7 p.m. That night, I remember propping my laptop on our hotel room bed and using the ledge of a bay window as my seat. It was off-season on the island, a gloomy rainy day. I wanted my students to feel free to wear whatever they liked, so I led by example in a cute geometric-print vest I found in the women’s section of a thrift store and a pearl necklace. Satisfied with my reflection in my laptop camera, I launched Zoom.

“Welcome to queer writing class!” I said to the six faces staring back at me on my screen and, like a scene in a sci-fi monster movie, an ominous bolt of lightning exploded behind me. We all started laughing. I apologized for the rain and explained that I was on Fire Island. They laughed again. Already, we were sharing an inside joke. All of them knew what Fire Island was, no need to explain.

I started doing my job—teaching them about writing. Over the next few weeks, I repeated to my students the most valuable piece of writing advice I know: Tell the truth.

Tell the truth about what happened. Tell the truth about who you are. Tell the truth especially when it’s ugly. “Write about anything,” I told them, thinking about the hesitance I used to have when I submitted my messy stories in graduate school, feeling retroactively proud that I’d done so anyway. And as I gave them examples of writers who bared their souls on the page, as I asked them to put honesty above everything in their own work, I tried to do the same as an instructor.

I wore what felt good and true to me. Sometimes this was a black skirt and gold hoops. Sometimes it was just a white T-shirt. They didn’t blink at either. With them, I started realizing my femmeness wasn’t something I had to have outwardly validated, but something that I could carry inside and show off on my own terms. In graduate school, the pressure to dress more traditionally masculine made my femininity feel almost dangerous, which of course made me desperate to express it even more. At Hugo House, I never worried about how my students would perceive me, regardless of what I had on, and I was able to find a balance between masc and femme that was closer to how I really wished to be seen. I wasn’t anxious about what my students would think. My course page said exactly who I was and what writers I’d be teaching. It said the title of my memoir, High-Risk Homosexual. And they’d signed up willingly. They didn’t sign up in spite of those things; they signed up because of those things. Because I was unapologetically myself, and because I promised I would do my best to teach them how to do that in their writing.

As I asked them to put honesty above everything in their own work, I tried to do the same as an instructor.

From the first class to the last, there was a noticeable change in many of my queer students. Some of them started dressing up for our sessions, donning wigs one day, trucker hats the next—whatever fit their current mood. Others began to speak more freely, in words that I imagine matched their everyday vocabulary, perhaps encouraged by the fact that I didn’t try to prove my intelligence with so-called elevated diction. I trusted they knew I had insightful things to say, and I made it clear that they didn’t need to alter themselves to impress me. But the best part was the writing. The stories they turned in were honest, and vulnerable, and hysterical, and each of them unique to their individual personalities. I can hardly take credit for their talent. They already had that. All I said was, “Do you. Whoever you are.”

When the semester eventually ended, I was heartbroken. I’d managed to carve out this little niche for myself where I felt totally and completely affirmed and was getting to do the job of my dreams. It’d been nice. Now, back to reality.

No, I thought to myself. I don’t want to go back. I googled other writing schools, found out Catapult was looking for instructors, and pitched them a similar class. They hired me. The evaluations came in at Hugo House. They hired me again. I was tempted to email a few of the universities that had turned me down for teaching positions over the years. I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, when she returns to the store on Rodeo Drive where the clerks wouldn’t give her the time of day to flaunt how much money she has now: “Big mistake. Huge!”

I won’t lie; I still sometimes feel like I’m not the most “respectable” teacher. Without thinking that far ahead, when I titled my memoir High-Risk Homosexual, I inadvertently made “my brand” risky. That might turn off future potential employers, but in the meantime, I find comfort in the fact that students who sign up for my classes are choosing me when they could choose anyone else. Yet even with them, years of insecurities don’t go away with the click of a button.

Hence why, moments before the first virtual session of my latest round of Writing Your Queer Life, I ran around my bedroom hiding my laundry and snacks and making sure my work area was cockroach-free. Those were easy fixes, though; they didn’t require me to change something fundamental about who I am. Plus I got to clean up in what’s become my favorite first-day outfit: the cute thrifted vest and the pearl necklace.

“Welcome to queer writing class!” I told my students when I launched our Zoom meeting. It was winter in New York, a cold and overcast night. There were no lightning bolts this time, no sci-fi cues to get us laughing. There was just me doing a thing I never thought possible. A fantasy, for real.