Kevin Jennings

Kevin Brett Jennings (born May 8, 1963) is an American educator, author, and administrator.

Jennings then attended and received a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in history from Harvard University, where he delivered the Harvard Oration at the 1985 commencement.

He became a high school history teacher, first at Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island, from 1985 to 1987, and then at Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, from 1987 to 1995, where he was chair of the history department.

While at Concord Academy in 1988, Jennings started the nations' first gay-straight alliance together with a female student.

In 1990 he founded the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teachers Education Network (later changed to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network), which seeks to end discrimination, harassment, and bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Jennings then co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teacher Network (GLISTeN) in Boston in 1990, to address the problems facing LGBT students.

It held its first conference the following year, when it changed its name to the Gay and Lesbian School Teachers Network (GLSTN).

The organization started out as a small local one but gained a strong supportive reaction.

In 1992 he was named co-chair of the Education Committee of the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth in Massachusetts.

Jennings has authored seven books, including one which won the Lambda Literary Award.

Jennings was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

He was the youngest of five children to Chester Henry, an itinerant Southern Baptist preacher, and Alice Verna (Johnson) Jennings.

His family was poor and constantly moved around the South as his father sought a permanent post.

His father died when Jennings was eight and the family was living in a Lewisville, North Carolina trailer park.

From then on he grew up in a rural atmosphere that was intolerant of African Americans and gay people; several of his cousins and uncles were in the Ku Klux Klan.

He was constantly taunted and bullied.

In 1992 the Edward Calesa Foundation named Jennings one of fifty "Terrific Teachers Making a Difference".

Most of his students accepted him when he revealed his sexual identity after years of keeping it secret.

In 1992, Jennings was appointed by Governor William Weld to co-chair the Education Committee of the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth.

He was the principal author of, "Making Schools Safe for Gay & Lesbian Youth", a commission report.

The Massachusetts State Board of Education adopted the report as policy in May 1993 and the state became the first in the U.S. to outlaw discrimination of public school students on the basis of sexual orientation in December 1993.

In 1993, Jennings was named a Joseph Klingenstein Fellow at Columbia University's Teachers College, from which he received his master's degree in interdisciplinary studies in education in 1994.

In 1994 he wrote Becoming Visible: A Reader in Gay & Lesbian History for High School and College Students, the "first book of its kind" for a high school audience.

Jennings moved GLSTN to New York to accompany his studying, and decided to make the organization national in scope.

In doing so, he also changed its name to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), to give it a broader focus.

The organization seeks to end discrimination, harassment, and bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

In both 1995 and 1996 Jennings was in Out magazine's list of "Top 100 Newsmakers and Earthshakers".

In 1997, Newsweek magazine named Jennings to its "Century Club" of people likely to make a difference in the 21st century.

In 1998 he won the Lambda Literary Award in the Children's/Young Adult category for his book Telling Tales Out of School.

He has published six books on gay rights and education.

His works have described his own past as a closeted gay student.

Jennings earned an M.B.A. from New York University's Stern School of Business in 1999.

By that year, GLSEN was headquartered in the Chelsea, Manhattan neighborhood of New York City and had a staff of 18 and budget of $2.5 million.

In July 2004, Jennings received the National Education Association (NEA)'s Virginia Uribe Award for Creative Leadership in Human Rights.

He was the assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education from July 6, 2009 – June 2011.

Jennings holds degrees from Harvard University, Columbia University's Teachers College, and the Stern School of Business at New York University.

He became a teacher and was named one of fifty "Terrific Teachers Making a Difference" by the Edward Calesa Foundation; he also came out as gay to his students.

"The first day of 10th grade I actually refused to go back to school because I simply wasn't going to go back to a place where I was bullied every day."

He attended Paisley Magnet School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina where he did well academically, but was beaten by classmates for what they saw as effeminate behavior and attempted suicide after realizing he was gay.

After he and his mother moved to Hawaii he graduated from Radford High School in Honolulu.