If we could travel back in time to see Vinnie Pompei in high school, we would have found a young boy studying the scribbles on bathroom walls, scrutinizing the stickers and buttons on his teachers’ message boards and searching for just one sign – any sign – of someone he could talk to about being gay.
“I couldn’t identify one person who would be accepting of my sexuality – not my parents, administrators, or educators,” said Pompei. “I felt like I would be rejected.”
After fruitlessly trying to pray his gay away, Pompei said he could not cope with his loneliness, leading him to attempt suicide twice before graduating. Looking back, he is thankful his fatal efforts failed and now, as an educator and an advisor at Val Verde High, Pompei can appreciate his struggle and works everyday to make sure his students don’t suffer as he did.
“If I could have had one educator in my K-12 experience that would have been open and accepting of how I was feeling, it would have done miracles for my soul, psyche and heart,” Pompei said. “That is why responding to the needs of LGBT students has become a part of my passion and the reason I became an advisor. I became an educator to create a safe space for every student in my classroom where they can trust and confide in me, feel comfortable to talk about their issues and report what’s happening to them.”
But Pompei is a pioneer in his willingness to openly address LGBT students. Administrators and educators tend to keep quiet on the issue, fearing that an open response is still too taboo. Only recently has the media begun discussing LGBT needs in the classroom in light of the numerous and shocking gay teen suicides and reports of bullying. Societal awareness of the problem has led to the discovery that nine out of ten LGBT teens deal with bullying at school and are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight counterparts. But unlike Pompei, some of these teens will succeed at ending their lives.
Confronting these negative statistics in schools and responding effectively has become a growing movement both nationally and internationally. From Washington D.C. to San Diego Unified, administrators and educators are preparing to not only help their LGBT students, but also learn how to identify bullying and homophobia, while teaching against both. Pompei along with Trish Hatch are chairing Solutions to a Crisis: Supporting Students, Saving Lives, the second annual Center of Excellence in School Counseling and Leadership (CESCaL) conference for educators to empower themselves to fight negative statistics in schools.
The conference, which is the largest in the nation and the world to confront LGBT issues is Feb. 25-27 at the Doubletree in Mission Valley and is monumental in its reach. Powerful educators such as Kevin Jennings, assistant deputy secretary for Safe and Drug-Free Schools of the U.S. Department of Education, David Sanchez, president of the California Teachers Assn. and Bill Kowba, superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District – the eighth largest in the nation – will be at the conference, along with several large-scale influentials, Mayor Jerry Sanders and State Senator Christine Kehoe. Newly-outed, award winning country music singer/songwriter Chely Wright will be there to show support as well as L. Stuart Milk, founder of the Harvey Milk Foundation, Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and Charles Robbins executive director of the Trevor Project, an LGBT suicide hotline.
“It’s empowering to know that these national associations are supporting the treatment of LGBTs in schools,” Pompei said. “These leaders in education are saying the same things we are, that we believe we need to change and we want to effectively respond.”
The conference is open to the general public and Pompei stresses that anyone who deals with youths would be wise to attend. The conference will provide a number of workshops to help educators learn new techniques to address LGBT bullying, suicide prevention and how to keep these students in school. Currently the dropout rate for LGBT students is at a 20 percent high and absenteeism is a critical concern for schools.
“This is a one-stop show to come and learn the skills necessary to be empowered in working with this youth population and to minimize negative statistics,” Pompei said, “The consequences of being ill-prepared and not addressing them are too devastating to ignore.”
Learning can be fun too, and attendees can expect catered breakfasts, personalized photos from NOH8 Photo celebrity photographer Adam Bouska and a Dear Harvey special performance. Those interested can register on the website lgbtqi2011.com.
