The Experience and Evolution: An interactive package on East’s LGBTQ+ community and how its changed over the years

Dear students and community members of Shawnee Mission East,

In the recent months, we’ve watched as students in Florida are have seen their education restricted, their peers banned from playing the sports they love and felt unwelcome in their own school.

In a time where voices are often drowned out by adults, media and society as a whole, we wanted to give others the opportunity to share their stories, from their perspectives.

In this package, you’ll learn what it was like to be a queer student at East in the 80s vs. now and how the problems have and haven’t evolved. You’ll hear from teachers, students, policy-makers and community members on how the community is acting to improve the queer experience. 

Through it all, we hope you take away how to go into next school year as a more welcoming and accepting classmate and ally.

— The Editorial Board

“The story of a midwestern teen on the verge of coming out and the night of danger that changes the course of his life.”

The logline of a story that 1991 East alum Clayton Dean Smith had to tell.

Clayton had just won film stock to be used for the making of his next film at a Kodack film festival. While at East in the late 80s, Smith battled with coming to terms with his sexuality in a time where openly being part of the LGBTQ+ community was uncommon and unwelcome by students and faculty. He wanted to tell his story — his inner realization of being a part of the LGBTQ+ community at East. 

The short film, which Clayton expects to release this fall, focuses on a specific day at East, and directly after school when Smith had his first encounter with homophobic harassment. Through the film, Clayton hopes to show other queer students and alumni that they aren’t alone. 

Clayton was a theater kid through and through. He had a best friend named Matt. He always knew something was different about himself. He couldn’t remember a time where he hadn’t gotten along with the girls more than the boys, but he had a special feeling about Matt — maybe a crush. He wasn’t sure.

But what did it all mean? Clayton didn’t know. He was still coming to terms with who he was and figuring it out at his own pace. According to Clayton, the sad fact is that some people in this world feel entitled to speed that process without that individual’s consent. That’s what happened to him on “the night of danger that changed the course of his life” — the same night that inspired his film in support of the LGBTQ+ community.  

He was at a friend of a friend’s house in Leawood when their older brother, who he didn’t know at all became overly aggressive, homophobic and physically threatening towards him. Clayton couldn’t understand what had just happened. He didn’t know why the person was so hostile toward him. After all, he was still in the process of coming out to himself. 

Clayton came out to his family and friends the following summer and experienced harassment numerous times following his high school experience, but according to him, that night set a tone of guilt and confusion about his sexuality.

Clayton believes documenting his experience of how the LGBTQ+ experience has evolved over time shows how inclusivity has changed at East. That’s why it was important to him to come back to tell this story two decades later. 

“This story is a piece of the puzzle in my process of coming out to myself, and it involves other people’s perceptions of me,” Clayton said. “I didn’t come up with [my sexuality] on my own, it was waking up to the world around me and the way that my friends were a part of that process. It’s incremental and you go into denial, so you kind of know it and realize it and then you just shove it away into the back corner of your mind. [Coming out is] confusing and weird.”

After contemplating whether to bring past writing to life, tell someone else’s story or keep searching for inspiration elsewhere, he landed on past writing. Having written about his experience in a short story in the past, he decided to take that story and turn it into a script. 

“It was an incredible opportunity but also a challenge to figure out what to shoot on film because I wanted it to be intentional,” Clayton said. “I kind of wanted there to be a reason it should be shot on film, and I thought to myself, ‘Well I would like for it to not be set in the present time.’”

Once he had a script and a general idea of what he wanted this short film to look like, he headed back to Prairie Village Kansas in fall 2020 to start the process of finding places around the community that looked as similar to PV in the 80s as he could get. 

Clayton moved his search deeper — looking into areas miles out south and west. However, he still wanted to shoot at least part of the film in its original location — the exterior of Shawnee Mission East, interior at Ruskin High School, a gas station scene in Drexel Kansas, a car scene in Brookside and a basement in south Leawood. He wanted to maintain a level of realism that couldn’t be found in the original locations due to renovations. However, he found that the art-wing entrance hadn’t changed much since his time at East, allowing him to film scenes there without much change to the background. 

As for casting and finding people to help back in Kansas City, Clayton reached out to the Kansas City Film Commission along with personal connections for help. In doing so, he found local people for wardrobe, hair and makeup, producing, specializers and acting. He also reached out to his high school friend Matt Rapport, part-time drama teacher at Ruskin High School, who witnessed the older brother harass Clayton.

Matt joined in on the casting and directing process after Clayton approached him about the film. An actor was casted to play Matt’s role in Clayton’s life, and Clayton wanted Matt to be a part of the production of the film. 

According to Clayton, Matt and his wife helped him set up a full NYC-feeling casting room where they saw countless young Kansas City actors audition to play the characters. Finding the lead role to play himself was one of the hardest decisions in the process for Clayton because he wanted someone who could capture what it was truly like to experience his story.

It wasn’t until Clayton showed his parents the headshots for help that they landed on then Northwest Missouri State University student Joey Wheeler, whose mother attended East with Clayton. 

It took several long talks between Clayton and Joey to find how Clayton’s character was to be portrayed. Joey had memorized and followed the script exactly. He wanted for the role to be perfect — he wouldn’t allow himself to make any mistakes. 

“He just was like coming up to me and saying, ‘Don’t worry about that, because if you memorize it, it’s not going to be authentic,’” Joey said. “I had a really tough time at first because I was trying to be a perfectionist. And I remember Clayton telling me perfection is the enemy of progress. And I was just like, ‘Oh, s—, I love that. I love that so much.’ And so after I finally realized like, ‘I’m not going to be perfect. I’m not going to do everything right.’ I finally realized as the days would go that everyone on set just wanted me to succeed as much as I wanted to succeed.”

Joey became more comfortable and Clayton’s character took place. The delivery of the lines were natural and the movements were smooth.

The filming and editing process is now complete after three years of COVID-19 difficulties, and Clayton is just waiting for music rights and color-correcting on the clips. He expects to release the film to competitions and the general public this fall. 

With hopes that the LGBTQ+ community will be able to resonate with his film in their own coming out stories and experiences with harassment, Clayton is eager for the East community as well as viewers across the country to view the time capsule of his coming out experience at East.

“It’s really important to try to capture a sense of what it was like to be gay in the past because it’s different for every generation and I feel like it’s my responsibility to do my part to honor the ways that it used to be for people,” Clayton said.

Florida’s Parental Rights in Education or “Don’t Say Gay” bill was signed on March 28 by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and goes into effect July 1 — causing a wave of resistance from the LGBTQ+ community out of fear for lack of queer and education and representation in the classroom. 

House Bill 1557 is a seven-page document prohibiting public schools from discussing the topics of gender identity and sexual orientation with kindergarten through third-grade students. It also restricts curriculum about these topics for older students if the lessons are not “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

The significance of this bill, according to government teacher Benjamin Hendricks, is both the posed threat to LGBTQ+ education and the majority support for the bill. In fact, in a March 2022 Public Opinion Strategies poll, 61% of 1000 registered voters nationwide support the bill. Of those, there is strong support from both Republicans and Democrats.

“It’s a tough situation,” Hendricks said. “On one hand, people are very concerned about individual rights. On the other hand, there’s majority support for this, seemingly, at a political level.” 

Bills like these are not only moving forward in Florida but in Kansas too. Kansas House Bill 2662 seeking to ban LGBTQ+ education in K-12 public schools was introduced on February 9. The bill prohibits discussion of “sexual conduct” — later on in the bill, sexual conduct is defined as “acts of… homosexuality.”

On the February 16 Committee on K-12 Education Budget session, the bill was revised to omit the ban on LGBTQ+ education. However, bills limiting LGBTQ+ rights in Kansas such as the participation of transgender students in sports and other curriculum restrictions have recently been passed in the Kansas Legislature before being vetoed by Governor Laura Kelly.

Kansas ACLU attorney Josh Pierson cites this recent legislation targeting LGBTQ+ students as an indicator of a similar bill’s chance to potentially pass in Kansas.

“There’s been a lot of focus at the Statehouse in Kansas on legislation targeting or regulating LGBTQIA+ people, particularly at school,” Pierson said.

The possibility of curriculum restriction is still very viable, according to Kansas State Senator Ethan Corson — and it largely depends on the Governor to veto the bill.

“I think it’s very possible,” Corson said in a political panel hosted at East on May 12. “It all comes down to the Governor race in November. If the bill was on Governor Kelly’s desk, she would veto it. If Eric Schmitt is Governor, it’s a bill he would sign in a heartbeat.”

Since January 2021, 156 bills limiting education on such topics have been introduced or prefiled in 39 different states, according to a February 2022 report by Pen America.

These bills are a direct attack on LGBTQ+ youth everywhere, according to senior Bella Wolfe. As a member of the community herself, Wolfe notes that growing up in an accepting and diverse educational environment helped her with discovering her identity. She also says that finding herself and coming out would be a much larger struggle if she didn’t have such discussions about gender and sexuality at a young age.

“If you don’t grow up with [LGBTQ+ education] openly talked about to where it is normalized, you feel like you’re doing something wrong, or that you’re not normal,” Wolfe said. “That is a really tough situation to be willing to put kids in. If that was my situation, I think it would have been a lot longer journey for myself to be able to accept who I am.”

The bills also limit LGBTQ+ teachers from talking about their lives — not only reprimanding them for discussing their families but further isolating queer students by taking away their role models and teaching them that being queer is not normal or accepted, according to sophomore Ben Gilman.

Gilman remarks that having a trusted adult to talk to about gender identity and sexuality can be formative for students. He and Wolfe both agree that seeing queer representation in school will help queer or questioning students feel more affirmed about their sexuality or gender when seeing successful queer role models in everyday life.

“It’s common for LGBT children to feel like they are weird or that they don’t have a place in society,” Gilman said. “And to see a teacher who’s successfully living the way that they are can be really [beneficial.]”

Both Gilman and Wolfe urge teens to take action against this kind of legislation by learning about the bills and demanding action from lawmakers either by in-person protest or by reaching out via phone or email.

When learning about this legislation, Hendricks teaches his students to examine how the bill relates to the Constitution. Specifically, he calls into question the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause — a provision advocating for the equal protection of all citizens, regardless of race, gender, class or sexuality under the law. However, senior and East Youth and Government leader Emma Kate Squires says that the state of LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S. is fragile due to its relative newness, citing the legalization of gay marriage within her lifetime. 

“It’s not like this is something that’s been around for a while and we have a ton of constitutional protections to help us out,” Squires said. “Something like [the Don’t Say Gay bill] is, as of right now, fully constitutional, and [LGBTQ+ education] is able to be banned.”

She remarks that, by taking away the opportunity to discuss queer relationships and genders, the effects of the bills will be felt most by the young people are supposedly meant to protect.

“These are rights that we need to be standing up for, because it’s not just about, ‘What if there’s a lawsuit?’” Squires said. “It’s about the social implications of it. It’s about how this is going to affect the kid in class who has two moms who are happily married and can’t talk about them in class, because it’s prohibited.”

When math teacher Emily Colebank walked through the halls of East as a student 10 years ago, she didn’t believe being openly bisexual was an option for her. 

Her religious upbringing forced her to hide her bisexuality, and that was only reinforced by a lack of LGBTQ+ role models in school. She couldn’t relate to any of her teachers, much less have a conversation with them about her identity. She decided to  keep this part of herself a secret. 

Because living a normal life and being openly bisexual weren’t compatible — right?

Colebank never had a queer teacher or diverse role models, people that could support her through the process of coming out. As a result, she believed she couldn’t be a public educator or live a normal life without constantly being judged and questioned.

“In high school, there weren’t adults that understood or were ready to talk about [sexuality] in any way,” Colebank said. “It’s not like somebody was going around saying, ‘Don’t you dare share your sexuality,’ but when there’s nobody asking or prepared to help you, the result is that you just don’t mention [your sexuality] and you don’t figure it out till later.”

Not having these role models eventually pushed Colebank to become more open. So now being an educator, she makes her classroom a safe space for all identities by having check-ins with her students and educating her students when they make anti-LGBTQ+ remarks.

“I just hope that if there is a student who doesn’t feel like they can be 100% themselves at home, I can be an example that everything will be alright,” Colebank said. 

Colebank has always feared the judgment that being bisexual brings. According to Colebank, being bisexual often requires a lot of explaining — like how having a girlfriend doesn’t invalidate her past relationships.

Until she fully came out last summer, Colebank used to “censor” the stories she told students by constantly swapping out names. Instead of mentioning her current girlfriend, Colebank never committed to telling the full story — referring to her girlfriend as “my friend.” 

“I think when you’re bi there is a lot of justifying that you need to do because there’s this perception that you switched somehow,” Colebank said. “And so I think there’s bisexual-erasure that happens, where people think, ‘Now that she’s dating a woman, she’s lesbian and then if she goes back to dating guys, then she’s straight again.’ That gray space is a hard space to exist in unless you’re really willing to explain a lot.”

Like Colebank, orchestra teacher Adam Keda is an openly LGBTQ+ teacher. Keda’s had a positive experience being openly gay, never experiencing — to his knowledge — any form of  discrimination, hate crime or simple ignorance. 

Teaching kids from seventh grade to senior year allows him to build a family-like connection with his students. Because of this, orchestra students know Keda’s husband, Seth, from the times he’s attended concerts and orchestra trips. 

“Most of [my students] know my husband,” Keda said. “I talk about trips we go on or things we did over the weekend, what movies we watch, everyday things that any teacher would talk about when it comes to their spouse. I think just being normal about it, just as normal as anyone would be, I think helps LGBTQ+ students feel more comfortable in my class.” 

Keda believes a lack of LGBTQ+ representation in students’ personal lives and within the media often leads students to question their futures. If they’re unable to relate to any adult role models, it can be difficult picturing themselves as openly gay and successful. Keda tries to be a role model for LGBTQ+ students and to show them everything will turn out okay. 

“It can be scary if [LGBTQ+ students] are not able to see themselves as adults, living normal, successful lives,” Keda said. “I hope I show them that it’s possible.”

Like Keda, debate and forensics teacher Trey Witt believes a larger amount of LGBTQ+ representation allows students to be more confident. Witt attended East 20 years ago, where there was some openly gay kids. He believes the larger number of openly LGBTQ+ students at East today has made it more normalized and allows people to see different types of peers in their everyday lives. 

Witt believes in always having empathy and that everyone should have the mindset that other people’s lives don’t impact you. Being gay himself, Witt works to make sure LGBTQ+ students don’t feel ostricized in his classroom. Whether or not they understand it, or even feel the same way, people need to just separate themselves and realize it’s not their place to judge, according to Witt. 

“[Being gay] shouldn’t be something that you have to reveal to people,” Witt said. “No one can identify an age where they first realized they were straight or where they had to tell people they were straight. My hope would be that that’s where we end up moving with, with gender identity and sexuality as well.”

SMSD’s Strategic Plan Action Item 2:1:4 Committee is moving forward with creating district-wide administrative guidelines related to inclusive practices and procedures for students of the LGBTQ+ community, which they’ll officially propose to the Chief of Student Services Dr. Christy Ziegler at the end of the school year.

The committee, made up of students, parents, staff and community members, meets monthly to discuss the action items being created under 2:1:4 of SMSD’s Strategic Plan. Created in 2019, the Strategic Plan addresses ways to create district-wide administrative guidelines related to inclusive practices and procedures. Section 2:1:4 focuses specifically on making inclusive policies for LGBTQ+ students, related to areas such as bathrooms, preferred name changes, pronouns, field trips and athletics.

Over the course of the school year, the committee has put together a variety of recommendations to share with Dr. Ziegler — the most requested of which is updating Skyward to allow students to set their preferred name as the default in the software. 

Secretary of Plus Club and junior Ayla Özkan joined the comittee when her summer camp and youth pastor Kelly Demo invited her to share her perspective as a queer student. Özkan then invited friend and fellow Plus Club member junior Abigail Swanson to be another student voice on the board. All board members agree that because the policies directly affect students, both youth and adult opinions should be considered. 

“As much as it is great to have one of the adults in a room trying to figure something out, they’re doing stuff for the kids and the adults aren’t the kids,” Özkan said. “They want students to be involved in the decision-making process, because students know what students want and need to see change.”

One of the main requests discussed amongst the board was for students to be able to change their preferred name in Skyward themselves. Many transgender students’ dead names are used for attendance when there is a substitute, which can cause students discomfort, according to Swanson, who’s seen friends and classmates experience this firsthand.  

“It seems kind of minor, but it can have really detrimental effects on the person confronted with a name that’s not their own,” Swanson said. “It’s really hard to know until you’ve actually heard that perspective from a trans person. It’s devastating. [The board] is trying to make whatever changes are possible to make students more comfortable.” 

There is a current option for parents or the office to add a “nickname.” However, these nicknames are not the default option as the name on students’ birth certificates are used by the office for attendance, scheduling and more.

However, since Skyward is a third-party platform, the district is unable to change Skyward themselves, forcing them to pressure Skyward to add the option for students to change their default names themselves.

In the past, the committee was able to make similar changes to the preferred name section on their Google accounts, which has alleviated many anxieties, according to former East principal John McKinney, who since leaving his position at East is now the Director of Student & Family Services for the district.

“We felt it was our responsibility to address that,” McKinney said. “That shouldn’t just be something that you have to live with: seeing your dead name every time you log into Google, so we did something about it, and that came as a result of this committee, this 2:1:4 group. We came together, we brainstormed and came up with solutions.”

Özkan and Swanson agree it’s important that both students and teachers are aware of the policies that are already in place for the protection of queer students, such as the right for anyone to use whichever gender bathroom they align with. Özkan believes that although the policy for bathroom usage exists and has for several years, students are not aware of it. 

The committee is also considering providing free menstrual products in high schools and middle schools, in female, male and gender neutral restrooms for transgender, female-male students to still feel comfortable utilizing that restroom and those products. 

STUCO currently offers free menstrual products in women’s bathrooms. However, stocking is inconsistent. A district-wide policy would offer more regularity for all bathrooms, they hope.

At their final meeting of the year, the committee will develop a formal proposal that compiles all of their suggestions, which will then be submitted to Dr. Ziegler to discuss with the cabinet. Dr. Ziegler will potentially send it back for edits and, according to McKinney, they’ll see where they can go from there. 

“Again, some of it is beyond the district’s control and while we haven’t made all the progress, I think that we are addressing issues and concerns as they arise to the very best of our ability, and we’re gonna continue to do that,” McKinney said.