Kentucky's 2022 top teacher was bullied out of his job for being gay. What's happened since?
Willie Carver Jr. has been anything but quiet since he left his job at Montgomery County High School.
Carver, who is openly gay, made headlines last summer, when shortly after being named the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, he quit because of discrimination directed towards him.
In the year since, he spoke out about all the LGBTQ+ issues he stayed silent about during his teaching years.
Carver, who taught English and French for more than a decade, left in the summer of 2022 after he said he faced discrimination from a woman who accused him of grooming children in the school club he advised, "Open Light," a student-run LGBTQ group that pushes for "systemic change."
"My big concern now is how people like that woman who came after me, are doing this across the country in ways that are severely harming students," he said. "Because if other schools are doing what my school is doing, or my school did, they're not protecting those students in that moment."
Carver has been working as an academic advisor at the University of Kentucky Gatton College of Business and Economics, he testified in front of U.S. Congress and started doing advocacy work for the LGBTQ community.
And after he finally spoke, he regrets "not telling some people off sooner."
Carver had started a sabbatical in January 2022, during which he turned the anger and frustration he felt into poems, filled with everything he wanted to say -- but following recommendations from his legal team -- couldn't.
He recently published a poetry book, Gay Poems for Red States, including two that grew out of the anger he felt at the time when the school principal was not hearing his concerns about the woman discriminating against him-- "Minnie Mouse Toy" and "The Truth Will Stand."
In "Minnie Mouse Toy," Carver writes about when he realized he was queer -- when he asked for a Minnie Mouse toy in a McDonald's Happy Meal. He said the cashier "shamed" his mother for asking for the toy for a boy.
My mom clears her throat."Could I get a Happy Meal with the Minnie Mouse car?"The words are soft like the quilted lining of her coat and each petal of a word builds a flower of please....But I hear her through the imaginary wallsas she hands the boxed meal to my mother:“You know you’re gonna ruin him?”
"Here it was 35 years later, and I'm seeing it over and over again. I'm seeing people who were upset that I am even a teacher," he said. "So, teaching itself because I'm a gay person is an option that was being limited to me."
The poems made him realize his inner child, he said, the voice in which he writes them, was deprived of the security he felt at school when he was little.
Even though the book started as an expression of anger, it ended up healing his inner child.
"No amount of ugliness from the external world can take away the goodness from the people around you," he said.
"And if that's a message that he (his inner child) can share with other queer people. If it's a message he can share with non-queer people about the importance they have in queer people's lives. Then it's something that I'm grateful to him for."
Reach Ana Rocío Álvarez Bríñez at abrinez@gannett.com; follow her on Twitter at @SoyAnaAlvarez.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year Willie Carver speaks out
