Somewhere Over the Rainbow, in Waukesha, Wisconsin
…are stark-raving lunatics. And they are dangerous.
Rainbow song deemed too controversial for tots.
On Wednesday July 21st, first grade dual language teacher, Melissa Tempel, was fired from her job. Why? For daring to use social media to publicly criticize her school administration for not allowing the song “Rainbowland” by Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus to be sung by the children at a school concert this past March.
Waukesha school district officials at first deemed the song to be potentially too controversial and laden with a political agenda.
Here are the lyrics to the song:
Living in a Rainbowland Where everything goes as planned And I smile ’Cause I know if we try, we could really make a difference in this world I won’t give up, I’ll sleep a wink It’s the only thought I think, you know where I stand I believe we can start living in a Rainbowland
Living in a Rainbowland Where you and I go hand in hand Oh, I’d be lying if I said this was fine All the hurt and the hate going on here We are rainbows, me and you Every color, every hue Let’s shine on through Together, we can start living in a Rainbowland
Living in a Rainbowland The skies are blue and things are grand Wouldn’t it be nice to live in paradise Where we’re free to be exactly who we are Let’s all dig down deep inside Brush the judgment and fear aside Make wrong things right And end the fight ’Cause I promise ain’t nobody gonna win (come on)
Living in a Rainbowland Where you and I go hand in hand Oh, I’d be lying if I said this was fine All the hurt and the hate going on here We are rainbows, me and you Every color, every hue Let’s shine on through Together, we can start living in a Rainbowland
Living in a Rainbowland Where you and I go hand in hand together (let’s do it together) Chase dreams forever I know there’s gonna be a greener land We are rainbows, me and you Every color, every hue Let’s shine on Together, we can start living in a Rainbowland
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Dolly Parton / Miley Cyrus / Oren Yoel Kleinman
Rainbowland lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group
Yes, I can see exactly how laden with controversy those lyrics are to the 90% White, median household income of $94,000, majority conservative Trump-voting Waukesha parents are… (insert eyeroll please).
Heyer Elementary School principal, Mark Schneider, backtracked his earlier comments about the controversial message of the song and stated that it was the controversial nature of Miley Cyrus herself that made the song inappropriate for the young students to sing.
No mention that the song is five years old and Miley Cyrus is not as popular with the kids as she once was. It’s safe to say, the vast majority of first graders do not even know who Miley Cyrus is.
Later Schneider declared that the entire debacle was not about the song or the artist at all, but rather that Tempel had taken her complaints to social media and dared to criticize the district and her superiors.
Waukesha Superintendent James Sebert testified:
Ms. Tempel deliberately brought negative attention to the school district because she disagreed with the decision as opposed to following protocol and procedure. I believe that behavior is intolerable.
While the board meeting was going on, both supporters of Tempel and critics gathered outside. Students with signs saying, “We love Miss Melissa,” adults with signs proclaiming, “Free Speech for those who Teach,” and a quote by French Enlightenment philosopher, Voltaire, “To Learn Who Rules Over You Simply Find Out Who You Are Not Allowed to Criticize,” were countered by two teens holding signs that said, “Homosexuality is a Sin,” and “There are only two genders.”
It’s crystal clear what’s going on here.
Teachers everywhere are being silenced, told what they can and cannot say in the classroom, what books they can and cannot have, who they can support and who they can ignore. Or else.
Administrators, like Schneider, terrified of the parents in wealthier, White districts, warn the teachers that by having books, discussions and lessons in the classroom, by creating culturally responsive spaces where all students are nurtured in order that they might fulfill their full potentials, constitutes a left-wing political agenda, not best practice.
They’re being told that by even speaking about gender as a spectrum will cause kids to become gay or want to have a sex change operation.
They are being told that the classroom is no place for recognizing, acknowledging, educating or even talking about identity expression.
These backwards, backwoods, outright paranoid fantasies are being propagated by parents who claim to be “taking back their rights.” Groups such as Moms for Liberty, who have chapters in nearly every state, whose leaders look like Stepford Wives, whose members are mostly White and who are honestly, batshit crazy and also immensely, horrifically dangerous.
Under the guise of fighting for freedom and calling themselves, “Joyful Warriors,” this organization seeks to stop teachers from teaching the truth about history and nurturing students of color and LGBTQ+ students, warning that doing so is government propaganda.
Moms for Liberty protested mask wearing in schools in the height of the pandemic, and are also against sex education, mental health funding, free lunch and teaching about diversity and inclusion.
They endorse candidates for school boards that are aligned with their “values” of exclusion and denial and proudly post pictures of men holding signs that say: dad /dad/ noun, a human male who protects his kids from gender ideology.
Florida man does insane things
It’s easy to point the finger at the Florida governor and call him and his minacious supporters crazy and extremists. Because they are.
But the truth is, my home state of Wisconsin is not that much different. It may not be that different in yours. The city of Waukesha, just 15 miles west of Milwaukee, is a prime example.
While the two-term Governor Evers here is Democrat, and just used an old Wisconsin rule to pass increased school funding for the next 400 years (Yes, you read that correctly! Read about it here.), everything he tries to do to improve the quality of life for Wisconsin citizens gets opposed by the Republican legislature.
In addition to being a pro-choice, pro-voter’s rights, pro-education leader, pro-health care, Evers is a staunch supporter and advocate for the LGBTQ+ community in Wisconsin.
Human Rights Campaign Wisconsin State Director Wendy Strout released the following statement on the day of Evers reelection in November 2022:
Wisconsinites have reelected Governor Tony Evers, a leader who fights for the rights and freedoms of all of his constituents. From day one of his governorship, Governor Evers has prioritized the advancement of LGBTQ+ equality. He enacted non-discrimination protections for transgender state employees and stood strong against anti-equality state legislators by vetoing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. We applaud Governor Evers' tireless allyship and exemplary commitment to expanding LGBTQ+ equality and look forward to continuing our work together to make our state a more inclusive place for all.
But the legislature here is the enemy of the LGBTQ+ community. In January of this year they voted against a bill that would ban conversion therapy. And while they haven’t said it in exactly these same words, they don’t want kids or teachers to say “gay,” either.
Teachers in Wisconsin Republican voting districts, such as Waukesha, have been told not to read or talk about anything involving identity, or race, or gender. They have been forbidden to display the rainbow flag decal showing that they are an ally to LGBTQ+ students.
Ignorance is bliss
Which brings me back to the “Rainbowland” song and the absolute stupidity of the Waukesha administration and the parents that may support their decision to fire someone who was, by all accounts, a good and caring teacher.
The rainbow has become, for these people, a divisive symbol instead what it was originally created to be by its creator, artist Gilbert Baker, who said he was inspired by Harvey Milk (the first openly gay elected official in California) to create a symbol of pride for the gay community.
According to Britannica:
Baker decided to make that symbol a flag because he saw flags as the most powerful symbol of pride. As he later said in an interview, “Our job as gay people was to come out, to be visible, to live in the truth, as I say, to get out of the lie. A flag really fit that mission, because that’s a way of proclaiming your visibility or saying, ‘This is who I am!’” Baker saw the rainbow as a natural flag from the sky, so he adopted eight colors for the stripes, each color with its own meaning (hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit).
“A symbol of hope, freedom, and love”
In his use of the rainbow as a symbol for the unity and the visibility of the gay community, Baker has not “stolen” the rainbow from “God,” as one critic commenting on the Waukesha case suggested.
Rather, Baker has expanded the rainbow’s recognition as a symbol of hope that it has always been and adhered it to a group of people who have been historically marginalized, criminalized and shamed for being who they are.
The Pride rainbow has served to uplift, embrace and celebrate a culture that for too long was shunned and told to hide. When this flag is flown from a store window or a someone’s porch or is a decal in a teacher’s classroom window, it says: You are welcome here for who you are!
Support teachers who tell the truth and support youth
Melissa Tempel is a teacher who got fired for proclaiming on social media that the school district she worked for that forbade students to sing a song about rainbows was absurd and wrong and biased.
She dared to tell the truth about the district, who called the song political and inflammatory, while the district, by banning the song, consequently made the song more political and inflammatory than it ever would have been if the kids had just sung the dang song!
Fact: Singing songs about rainbows does not make kids gay.
Fact: Singing songs about rainbows does not purport a political agenda.
Fact: Denying students’ sexual and gender orientations increases depression, anxiety and self harm.
Essentially, teachers like Tempel are being told to lie by omission to their students and call it education.
Tempel, even before the rainbow situation which gained national attention, routinely pushed back against her district’s harmful restrictive policies and threats.
The day after the district forbade teachers to put anything deemed “political” up in their classrooms, Tempel donned her rainbows and posted on social media. She routinely posted herself and other teachers with Black Lives Matter T-shirts and inspiring quotes about teachers having “the incredible responsibility…of teaching (students) to notice injustice and speak out against it.”
The montage included pictures of Tempel wearing rainbow shirts, a headband, and copies of her texts detailing how she read a story to her students a book about a family with two moms and the positive conversation with those students that ensued.
It also showed photos from Tempel of her educational and lesson planning books that included “Teaching for Black Lives,” and storybooks she loves that Tempel wrote, “push back on the stereotype that family is a mom, a dad, a son and a daughter,” followed by #lgbtq #pride.
This was all part of Schweitzer’s evidence that, “A rainbow is just a rainbow until it isn’t.”
Schweitzer, Wisconsin chapter president of the group, No Left Turn, a national organization whose Number One objective is to, “Use all forms of media to expose the radical indoctrination in K-12 education, its perpetrators, the resources and methods employed and the resulting harm it inflicts,” proclaims that teacher activism has no place in public schools, while simultaneously pushing her own brand of harmful anti-gay, anti-trans agenda by using her power to silence and vilify teachers like Tempel.
Note to parent: Teaching is, was and always has been, at its core, about social justice. It is also front-line activism. Teaching children to read, to think, discuss ideas, and grapple with moral complexities of life, even at a young age, is the job of every teacher, no matter what age the students.
Teaching is also an ever-evolving practice that unlike the 1950s, 60s and 70s, even 80s and 90s, now acknowledges that feeling accepted, and having one’s culture, ethnicity and identity valued, is crucial to academic success.
In addition, education, because it involves decisions about what types of information is taught, how it is taught, what versions of history, literature, science we include, or do not include, in our lesson plans, our lectures, our discourse, is now, always has been and will continue to be: political.
Back in the day, when we were all learning about all the White heroes who “helped” the Indigenous people, THAT was political.
Back in the day, when the stories of Black people were relegated to one sidebar on slavery and plantations of the old south, THAT was political.
Back in the day, when history erased the voices and accomplishments of anyone not cis-gendered, White (and for a long while) not male, THAT was — and IS — political.
We can’t, nor should we want to, go back to those days. We need to keep moving in the direction of equity for all which is: forward.
Teachers like Tempel are being attacked across the country and must be defended and encouraged.
They are not “grooming” our children. They are teaching them to be empathetic, kind individuals, who accept and celebrate differences instead of shaming or shunning them. They are teaching the truth.
These groups who want to forbid acknowledgement of gender identity in our classrooms are coming for the “activist” teachers and they are coming for our kids. We must be vigilant.
Please send words of encouragement to Melissa Tempel.
The Rainbowland Teacher @melissatempel on Twitter
Send Principal Mark Schneider and the Waukesha School Board a letter or a nice Hallmark card full of rainbows, shame-on-yous, and a little education.
ATT: Principal Mark Schneider Heyer Elementary School 1209 Heyer Dr. Waukesha, WI 53186 Phone: 262–970–1705 Fax: 262–970–1720
https://sdw.waukesha.k12.wi.us/page/board-of-education
Remind them that teachers like Tempel are what students need to thrive and the Waukesha School District has made a grave, astern and detrimental decision firing her.
The kids are the ones who will be stifled and will suffer because of it.
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