Throughout school, I was every English teacher’s favourite. There was Charlotte miss, my fourth grade English teacher, who would greet me fondly years after she’d stopped teaching me. In sixth grade, there was Banu miss, who passionately praised my literature test answers to the entire class. Aliza miss only taught me for a few months but told the class that my essay was “brilliant.” In my final years at school, I found a parental figure in Shalini miss. After classes, I’d sidle up to her with vague questions about the upcoming test and essays I’d written. There were many essays. Descriptive essays about my favourite place in the world, argumentative essays about schools not allowing mobile phones, narrative essays about the most embarrassing moment of my life. “One day, I look forward to seeing your writing published,” she would always tell me.
There was another thing I often went up to Shalini miss with—my woes about my best friend, with whom I was in love (though I did not know this yet). “She wouldn’t talk to me today,” I would grumble, or, “I hate those people she hangs out with.” On days when I was particularly sulky, Shalini miss would automatically know it was something to do with this best friend. Sometimes, she’d find me alone in a classroom with tears streaming down my face and comfort me like a parent. Sometimes, she’d even spend her long break with me.
Until a few years ago, I thought I was alone in this experience of finding a haven in my English teacher. Then, I began to see the memes. “If you were your English teacher’s favourite student, you’re gay now,” a tweet from 2020 read. “Being gay is a choice,” said another, “your English teacher chooses to make you their favourite and you descend into homosexuality.” On Twitter, the now inactive @qket_archive documented anecdotes and memes about queer youth’s formative experiences with their English teachers. Even pop star Troye Sivan shared one of these memes on his Instagram story, adding a “thanks Mrs Fisher.” He also mentioned his teacher in a 2023 interview: “I had an inspiring English teacher, Mrs Fisher, at Carmel School in Perth. She saw something in me I didn’t see in myself. She was a fabulous, friendly person who encouraged individuality in her students and in me.”
My queer friends have similar formative experiences. At university, one of my friends was so close to her English teacher that they’d constantly share Tumblr posts, watch shows recommended by the other and read each other’s favourite books. When the English teacher decided to quit, it was my friend she told first. Another friend, Shivani, remembers, “I had this teacher in fourth grade who taught us English grammar and creative writing and I loved her. She used to give out these scented stickers to students who made an effort and wrote good essays. She only taught us for a year, but on her last day, she got everyone popcorn and candy and gave us her email, so she and I stayed in touch over the years.”
For many queer children grappling with their sexuality, the English teacher becomes an alternate parental figure to lean on. Often, when they realise they are queer, they also realise their parents may not accept them for who they are. These complicated relationships with their families push them to seek other adults they can trust and rely on. My friend from university, in fact, was out as a lesbian to very few people: one of them was this English teacher. Think: a Miss Honey-Matilda type relationship. Pop culture is also rife with such examples: in Dead Poets Society (1989), Neil Perry’s struggle with his parents is said to be a metaphor for the queer experience and he also finds acceptance in Keating, his English teacher, played by Robin Williams. In the lesser-known Paathshaala (2010), Shahid Kapoor’s Rahul Prakash Udyavar—who quickly becomes his students’ favourite—also teaches English. But why is it always the English teacher? What is it that makes queer kids—sometimes still unaware of their sexuality—gravitate towards that particular subject?
To find out, I went to my own English professor and queer rights activist Gourab Ghosh. “In school, through poetry, short stories and novels, our English teacher would open up many fictional worlds for us. We would feel like we are different, so we probably belong to one of these different worlds,” he explains. “That is a safe, imaginary space created for many of us by our English teachers. It’s why I opened up to my own English teachers in my school and college days. They nurtured my passion and identity and made me feel less lonely. Even now, they support me.”
Additionally, I realise, English was one of the only school subjects where we could talk about emotions and personal matters. While science, maths, history and geography relied on facts and figures, in English classes, we could open up and discuss various perspectives and stories from around the world. And open up we did. In a trend that still defines my life, all of my essays were intensely personal, often tragic, often to do with my best friend. My queer friends, too, admit to similarly “trauma dumping in their essays.” English classes were like therapy as we figured out our identities.
For many queer children, school can be an isolating and confusing time of coming to terms with their gender and sexuality. It was for me. Yet, Shalini miss was my very own Mrs Fisher: she saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. She believed in me, and for a lonely, queer teen, that meant more than she could imagine.
