A beautiful story about how a pair of “tough” 8th graders left their gay teacher shedding proud tears

I wrote about this on Gay Star News yesterday but in case you didn’t see it there, I will share it again here.

It’s such a beautiful story.

A gay eighth-grade teacher in Ontario, Canada, didn’t know what to expect when two of the ‘tough’ kids in his class wanted to bend the rules for the ‘YouTube of the Day’ part of class.

The kids, who he calls Harry and Mark, wanted to show the video to the class without letting the teacher screen it first for appropriateness. The teacher decided to take a deep breath and take a chance.

He’s awfully glad he did.

The teacher, whose class had found out only a month ago that he is gay, writes on Reddit: ‘So he goes on over and pulls it on up, and on comes a song I have never heard before. The artist is rapping about growing up gay, about the struggles of being gay, and about standing up in the face of hatred and homophobia.’

The song is called Same Love and is performed by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and featuring beautiful vocals by Mary Lambert.

‘The video was beautiful,’ the teacher writes.

He then describes what happened after the video finished playing: ‘The kids applaud, and I thank Harry and he says to me, “I told you you’d like it.'”

‘And then his loud, rude friend Mark says: “That was for you, Mr K.”

‘The whole class applauded again – for me this time – and then I cried. I cried the proudest tears I have ever shed. Harry and Mark… they might tick off every teacher they ever have, but today they gave this teacher a moment he’ll never forget.’