A Vancouver Island teacher has been suspended for showing a video of beachwear-clad queer people lip-synching to a Christmas song to his grade four class.

Joe Winkler, an openly gay teacher at Brentwood Elementary in Central Saanich, B.C., showed a video set to Bette Midler's Hawaiian Christmas song "Mele Kalikimaka" to start a discussion on transgender issues and diversity. The video features three females (who are either trans women or drag queens) in bikinis and santa hats and a man in a swim suit dancing and lip-synching on a beach. The overall tone of the video is light-hearted and contains some brief flirtation. At the end of the video, all four hold up apples, and the man eats a banana.

Saanich School District superintendent Keven Elder said by phone that parents complained on December 19 about the video. After showing the video in class, the teacher had sent a message home to parents, with a link to the video.

Elder said that teachers are required by policy to speak to parents first "in relation to any issues of potential controversy or concern for parents" in order to allow students to opt out of the activity.

"Based on the nature of the concerns expressed by parents and my viewing of it, I determined on a preliminary analysis at least that it appeared inappropriate to me by way of both curricular relevance and age appropriateness as a learning resource," Elder said. "So I determined that we needed to do a full investigation to determine all of the circumstances in relation to this matter."

Elder said that Winkler was on a "paid leave, pending the outcome of the investigation". A substitute teacher is teaching the class in Winkler's absence.

Elder noted that there are a range of different responses by parents, including some who are upset, others who "are expressing milder opinions of concern", and a few who think there was nothing wrong with it.

"Many, many people are viewing it as a sexualized video that is inappropriate whether it's women, men, or men dressed as women or anything else," he said. "Given some of the camera angles that were used and those kinds of things, I can see what their concern is."

In an on-camera interview on CTV on December 20, Winkler apologized and admitted to making a mistake with the choice of video. (Winkler did not respond to an interview request from the Georgia Straight by the time of this posting.)

Elder added that there isn't any specific curriculum related to LGBT issues.

"I think it's also clear that this isn't necessarily a video that would lead one to talking about transgender issues either," he added.

However, the district does have an LGBT policy manual, which Elder said helps to ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity is described as "multifaceted and normal". Both Elder and Winkler, along with staff, parents, students, and community members, helped to write the policy manual. (In June, Saanich became the 19^th school district in the province to adopt an antihomophobia policy.)

"We just have in our policy a very clear direction to teachers and to our schools in general that there will be—it's not optional—to ensure that students understand LGBT issues and are aware of diversity of families in that regard, for example, and that they're talked to and encouraged to view all family types as normal and to not have a heteronormal approach to the world," Elder said.

Former Vancouver School Board trustee and vice-chair Jane Bouey, who has been an advocate for LGBT issues in education, thinks the reaction is "overboard" and points out that there are numerous aspects to recognize.

"I would have liked to have known why the teacher chose that particular video to show because I think there are a lot of other really great resources out there that probably would have been better choices," she said by phone. "But I think those students would see a lot of other more sexualized content on TV pretty much any day of the week."

She adds that there is a blurring of concerns about two different things: the perceived sexualized content and LGBT issues.

"It does make you wonder if it wasn't so much the content of the video but the fact that it wasn't straight content, and the question of whether people would've reacted the same if the teacher had been straight," she said.

Bouey, who identifies as queer, worked on the VSB's Pride advisory committee in strengthening policy around transgender identity and expression issues. She does think that transgender issues are "really important to talk about in elementary school" in age-appropriate ways.

"You can do it in ways where you just talk about what gender identity means and gender expression and make sure that all students feel really comfortable being who it is that they are and understanding those issues more fully," she said.

She also expressed concerns about the message that the suspension sends to the education system.

"The fear I have is that it will create a real chill in classrooms, not just in Saanich but all across North America," she said. "Teachers shouldn't feel that they can't bring up these issues in classrooms, and I think it makes it clear that this is why it's important to have really fully developed policy in this area so teachers have both the backing to be able to bring these issues forward for discussion in classroom but also the resources and training and support to know how to do it most effectively and in age appropriate ways."

Due to the holiday break, Elder said they will probably start the investigation, the week of January 7, with a senior member of staff or external consultant appointed as investigator.

"Hopefully what happens out of this and other things is that we learn about where the line is in terms of what's appropriate and what's not as we attempt to do the right things by way of teaching about LGBT issues," Elder said.