Reclaiming the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender school teachers was the topic of a speech by Jackie Blount, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction, speech Wednesday night.

At a previous teaching job in North Carolina, Blount said she struggled with the problem of “gender transgressing” teachers not being accepted within schools. She was also concerned that the history she had been taught had nothing to do with women, poor people or “queer” people.

She said LGBT history is hard to find because people often pretended that gays and lesbians did not exist. The sources she located had been removed from the journals.

“People felt they had to censor ‘our’ literature,” she said, making it even more difficult to research.

She said there is a need for lesbian and gay teachers in the classroom. “Students go through so much and are unbelievably tormented,” she said.

Fortunately, she said, progress is being made in gathering LGBT history.

She credited the establishment and availability of more “queer” archives, publishers who are willing to publish material on LGBT issues and the decreasing risk teachers face of losing their job by conducting such research.

“ISU has done a lot to help me,” Blount said. The audience applauded when she announced she had been tenured while being an “out” lesbian. Her research goal is to “out” the historical conditions that have forced educators to live in fear and have prevented them from helping students.

“It is my hope that with the exposure of this scholarship that I can do something to ease the collective pain of the people I have worked with in schools, people that I have admired and mostly the people I have loved,” Blount said.

Blount was awarded the ISU Award for Early Achievement in Teaching in 1997. Her first book, “Destined to Rule the Schools: Women and the Superintendency,” is expected to be published soon.

The speech was part of ISU’s LGBT Awareness Week.