By: Matthew Armstrong
A South Brunswick High School educator has been honored for her efforts to build understanding and tolerance in schools across the nation.
Carol Watchler, coordinator of career services, received the Virginia Uribe Award for Creative Leadership in Human Rights from the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teacher organization. The award was presented to her at the NEA Human and Civil Rights Awards Dinner July 2. The Virginia Uribe Award goes to an educator who has worked to ease sexual orientation discrimination and bias in schools.
"I wanted to make sure that bias and discrimination of any kind is not in the classroom, " said Ms. Watchler.
Ms. Watchler was the a founding member of the National Education Association’s Gay and Lesbian Caucus and served as its co-chair from 1988 to 1994. In 1991, when the NEA was rewriting its Human Dignity Policy, Ms. Watchler was able to infuse language designed to protect people from sexual orientation harassment and discrimination.
"I see my work as primarily encouraging policy and promoting understanding among staff members," said Ms. Watchler.
Ms. Watchler has worked with staff at South Brunswick and members of the NEA on how to be sensitive to sexual orientation bias issues and how to enable students’ to receive help if they need it.
"In our society, this kind of bias permeates through, whereas other forms of bias are not tolerated," said Ms. Watchler.
Due in part to Ms. Watchler’s efforts, two staff training programs are being instituted in the nation’s school systems to make educators aware of the pressures on some of their students and coworkers.
The first program, called Affording Equal Opportunity for Gay and Lesbian Students, seeks to solve the problem of high drop-out rates among gay and lesbian students.
"If a young person is being constantly harassed or assaulted because they are different, then they are not going to want to endure that, and that leads to them dropping out," said Ms. Watchler.
Virginia Uribe, for whom the award is named, was a leader in the movement to improve the lives of gay and lesbian youth. She founded "Project 10," the first school-based drop-out prevention program for students facing harassment.
The second training program Ms. Watchler initiated seeks to make staff members aware of the hardships that gay and lesbian coworkers may have to endure.
"We wanted to make sure school leaders realize the pressure that is on gay and lesbian employees," said Ms. Watchler. "In some states there is no law against discrimination against gays and lesbians, and they could be fired for something that has nothing to do with their professional performance."
While Ms. Watchler said progress has been made in the last ten years there is a long way to go.
"It’s clearly a problem with young people due to what they see from adults who are pretty judgmental, said Ms. Watchler.
At the awards dinner, Ms. Watchler said she was most impressed with guest speaker Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew Shepard a gay man who was brutally killed in 1998 at college in Wyoming.
Ms. Shepard has made it her crusade to speak to young people and teach them that it is acceptable to be different. Ms. Shepard has helped produce a film called "Journey to a Hate-Free Millennium." The film includes the tragic death of Matthew Shepard, the dragging death of a black man in Texas and the shooting death of students at Columbine High School.
"The film shows that all kinds of bias have common elements," said Ms. Watchler. "It is the gift of our age to live with diversity and learn from it."
