After spending all of her childhood in the small circle of Missoula, Montana, Carlmont teacher Eva Parker knew she wanted a life beyond the Garden City’s sprawling ranches and rugged mountains.

“I’m from a small town where there are people that are not really exposed to a lot of different religions or cultures or personal identities,” Parker said. “So as I got older, I was like, ‘I need to get out of here,’ because people that stay there don’t ever change — they don’t ever really evolve or grow.”

In hopes of finding a new home and a job to pay off her student loans, Parker began searching for places to move to. In 2004, she walked away from the small college town and set foot in the Bay Area, where she shortly began to work at Ralston Middle School as a Spanish teacher. 

“When I came out here, I didn’t know anybody. At Ralston too, it was my first year teaching, and all the teachers were at least older than me by six or more years,” Parker said. “It felt like I was teaching in a different country.”

While Parker felt out of place among the older, more experienced teachers, she wasn’t completely alone, with two others also starting their first year at Ralston.

“If you talk to any teachers, they’ll probably agree that you become pretty close with whoever you start working with in school. It’s like trauma-bonding in the sense that things can be stressful, but you have each other to relate to,” Parker said.

Among the new teachers was Wendy Lyn, and it didn’t take long for her and Parker to share a special bond as colleagues.

“Since Wendy and I started teaching at the same time, we really connected. We were very supportive of one another and shared a lot of our struggles with each other,” Parker said. “Later on, when I was looking for a new place, Wendy offered me to live with her, since her roommate had just moved out, and that’s how we began spending a lot of time together.”

As they continued getting to know each other, both during and outside of work, Lyn and Parker became important parts of each others’ lives, and eventually, they reached a mutual understanding: after knowing each other for more than two years, it was clear that their friendship had developed into something more.

“Moving in together was kind of how everything started, and after spending so much time together, we noticed things were changing between us,” Parker said. “So that’s when we kind of just started dating. Neither of us had ever dated women before, so it was definitely all very new to us.”

According to a survey conducted by the Center for American Progress, over 50% of LGBTQ+ Americans report hiding a personal relationship in fear of discrimination — a grave reality that Parker experienced as well. With almost all of her family living in Montana, Parker knew that many of her family members held conservative beliefs and lacked exposure to the LGBTQ+ community.

So for over 16 years, Parker kept her relationship a secret from everyone, not telling a single coworker, student, friend, or family member that she was dating Lyn.

Keeping her relationship hidden inevitably created a sense of distance between Parker and her relatives, but it also placed a burden on her life as a teacher.

What Parker describes as her most distinctive trait as an educator is her dedication to authenticity.

“I think kids enjoy my class because, one, they know that I care about them, and two, I authentically try to get to know them by asking them questions and checking in with them,” Parker said. “I’m really not trying to be fake with them, and that’s why I’ll talk about my family or what’s going on with me to connect with my kids. So to not be able to tell them about such a big part of my life, to not be able to go there — it was really, really hard for me.”

As much as Parker wanted to be transparent with her students, the difficult reality is that the job of a teacher doesn’t always leave room for complete openness, demanding a constant level of restraint instead.

Educators hold a unique kind of authority by having the capacity to shape how young, impressionable minds see the world, and as long as they are in this position of influence, teachers have to be careful of what they share, even if it isn’t inherently wrong or inappropriate.

“I don’t think people really understand how we’re held to a different standard. Teachers are kind of like political figures in the sense that we’re also in a position of influence. We’re in a position where we’re molding kids into being,” Parker said. “That’s why I took it really seriously, not sharing that part of me — I know not everybody has the same beliefs as I do, whether it’s culturally, religiously or just based on family ideals.”

Although it’s important for teachers to be mindful of what they share and how they share it, when it came to discussing her relationship, Parker couldn’t help but notice the double standard she faced as a queer educator — one that her heterosexual colleagues were rarely subjected to. 

While other teachers could cover their desk and classroom walls with framed photos of their partners or kids, include them in About Me presentations, and mention their families freely in any conversation, Parker felt she had to keep her relationship out of her classroom completely. Whether that meant referring to Lyn as an unnamed friend in stories or intentionally excluding any photos of them in her classroom, Parker constantly made an effort to erase that part of her life at school.

“Other teachers will have pictures of their family all over their classroom, but if I had a picture of Wendy, people would be like, ‘Who’s that? Why are you in the picture together?’ There are just different rules if you’re a heterosexual than if you’re not because society thinks of homosexuals as different, and people make fun of things that are different,” Parker said. “I think that was a big fear of mine. I hated that if I told someone, ‘Hey, I married a woman,’ there would automatically be some sort of judgment or stereotype.”

Although Parker worried about how her students might see her if she came out to them, it was their parents’ disapproval that concerned her more.

“Students are still learning. Their minds are being changed constantly by things like what they read, who they hang out with, or what their parents say,” Parker said. “But I think the parents are the ones I care about because they’re adults, and that’s why when they say anything that’s ignorant or judgmental, it hurts more. It almost feels like they should know better.”

Even though Parker often considered coming out to her family or students, her fear of judgment was perpetuated by a culture that treated LGBTQ+ identities as strange or different, reinforcing the unspoken expectation that while heterosexuals could be as open as they liked about their personal life, homosexuals should keep theirs hidden instead.

“I had a parent go up to one of my coworkers and ask if Wendy and I were gay, and I just thought that was so inappropriate because she was clearly trying to gossip, like she could’ve asked me to my face, but she chose to do it behind my back — so that was really hurtful,” Parker said. “I was always hiding. Even if some of my coworkers knew, none of my students knew, and that really sucked.” 

As she struggled with her identity in the workplace, Parker was also grappling with challenges beyond the classroom as her fear integrated itself into every part of her life. The longer she continued to keep her relationship with Lyn a secret, the more she felt that she was living a double life from everyone — she had one version of herself carefully curated for others and another she could only fully be when it was just the two of them.

“Sometimes, Wendy and I would walk the dog, and we’d be holding hands, but then if a car came by, I would hurry and let go of her hand,” Parker said. “Obviously I felt bad about it, but I just wasn’t ready.”

However, after 16 years of living a double life, keeping secrets from people she cared about, and not being able to openly express her affection for the woman she loved, Parker finally reached her breaking point and knew something had to change.

“I think everything just bubbled over, and I finally realized I’m tired of hiding. I was like, ‘Dude, I’m in my middle age, and I don’t want to do this anymore,” Parker said. “I’m tired of lying to everyone in my life.”

Parker began coming out to people one-by-one, starting with her family. While the reactions she faced varied, with some family members such as her mother and father being supportive and others acting shocked or responding inappropriately, Parker began to feel the weight of a 16-year-long secret lift from her shoulders, and it didn’t take long for her to notice the effects it had on her mental health as well.

“I got diagnosed with depression during the pandemic and started seeing a therapist. When I came out to her, she was literally like, “No wonder you have depression.” But seriously, before then, I didn’t associate depression with hiding — that idea didn’t register in my head,” Parker said. “Of course, it’s not like coming out cured my depression all of a sudden, but it really changed it and made it a lot better. I didn’t realize how much I was hurting myself by suppressing all this stuff.”

In 2023, a couple of months after coming out to her family, Parker decided to propose to Lyn, wanting to take the next steps in growing their relationship, and Lyn happily said yes.

That same year, Parker had grown particularly close with her students at Carlmont, and with the engagement in mind, she knew she was ready to come out to her students by sharing the good news.

Parker decided to have a conversation with Principal Gay Buckland-Murray about it, during which she asked Buckland-Murray how she might go about telling her students.

“She suggested that, since there were only two weeks left of school, I should make each of my students go around and share what they were excited about for the summer, and at the end, I would tell them about my engagement,” Parker said. “I thought that was easy enough, so I decided to go with that, and even though I was super nervous, I was also super excited.”

When she broke the news to her students, their response was nothing but positive as they showered her with congratulations and even asked for more details about the engagement, Lyn, and, half-jokingly, the possibility of receiving a wedding invite.

“I feel fortunate in the sense that many people here at Carlmont — even those at Ralston — already know me as a person. They liked me as a person, and I think that’s why my sexuality wasn’t as big of a deal. It doesn’t bother them, even if they don’t agree with it, because it doesn’t change who I am,” Parker said.

When it came to sharing her relationship and sexuality with others, Parker never intended to make it a big deal with some sort of grand announcement — instead, she sought to normalize it, to share the successes and joys of her personal life the same way any other person would.

“I think students forget teachers are human beings too. They’ll see us in the grocery store and be like, “Oh my god, that’s my Spanish teacher” and think it’s totally weird that we’re even out in public,” Parker said. “That’s why I think it’s really important for teachers to be able to talk about their lives outside of school sometimes with students. It’s a way of reminding them, “Hey, I’m human too.”

As Parker looks back on the time when she hid her identity from everyone, she realizes how keeping that part of her life a secret only worsened her depression, forcing her to constantly alter how she presented herself to others while costing her the support of those who valued her for the person she was.

“I’ve found that when most people are willing to actually talk to me and just hear my story that they’re less judgmental and more understanding,” Parker said.

Since coming out to her students two years ago, Parker has made a slight change to how she introduces herself at the beginning of each school year.

“On the first day, I’ll have a slideshow. I put my name, and then I have photos of all the things I like,” Parker said. “Like before, I’d go through it in Spanish, just saying things like, ‘Hi, my name is Mrs. Parker. I like cheeseburgers. I like playing volleyball and pickleball. Here’s some music I like. Here’s my favorite snack. And now, I include a photo of me and Wendy and say, ‘Here’s a photo of me and my wife.’”