MERSEYSIDE, England – High school drama teacher Emma Baldry thinks it’s important that her students know about her sexuality.

That’s because she’s a lesbian, and she thinks part of her job is to help students who might be questioning their gender identity. So now the 31-year-old “comes out every year” to her students, and shares her other experiences with being a lesbian, including the times attempted suicide, GayStarNews.com reports.

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Baldry told the Liverpool Echo she first told her students about her partner when she took her last name after their civil union in 2009.

“Many of the older pupils started to ask what my husband was called and I had a choice to make,” she said “Do I lie or do I tell the truth? I chose the latter because I’d gone through enough time living as not me so I promised myself that now I’d found who I truly was I would never ever hide my sexuality again.”

“When I first told them my form were adorable,” she told the news site. “They said ‘Miss, we still love you and if anyone says anything we’ll get them for you.’

She also went into more detail about how she introduces her situation to new students.

“It isn’t a question of me walking into a classroom and saying ‘hi, I’m Mrs Baldry and I’m a lesbian teacher’ but we talk about how all families are different and every one is special because of it. It’s my way of letting kids know that my room is a safe space to talk about anything, and that it is all-inclusive,” Baldry told the Echo.

“One of the first pieces of work I do with my new year sevens is about family. We talk about families coming in all shapes and sizes including adopted, foster, single parent, mixed race and same sex. I’d ask the kids to bring in a photo of their family and I brought in mine: of me, my wife and our cat!” she told Gay Star News.

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It all began her first teaching job in North Yorkshire, she said.

“I … met this other woman who happened to be a supply teacher at the same school,” Baldry said. “We’d go to the pub and play pool on a Friday night and one thing lead to another and we ended up sleeping with each other.”

Baldry now works as a teacher “on Merseyside, most recently in Newton-le-Willows,” as well as an ambassador for “Diversity Role Models” – a charity that “tackling homophobic bullying in schools.”

Baldry explains to students that she was bullied and harassed in school because she was gay and the country’s laws at the time prevented educators from talking much about gay stuff. She blames those laws for repeated suicide attempts, Gay Star News reports.

“Staff were fearful of doing anything because they could lose their job,” Baldry alleges. “So even the bullying I experienced wasn’t recognized because it was a problem they couldn’t talk about.

“I self-harmed and tried to overdose twice because I struggled to deal with the guilt and the feeling of who I was and how society saw that as something wrong,” she said.

Now, society celebrates gayness and Baldry feels more comfortable with herself. That’s allowed her to get more involved in gay advocacy, especially at her school.

In 2011 she helped organize a school assembly featuring Lance Corporal James Wharton, who talked about his experiences as a gay in the army. The Echo reports Baldry introduced Wharton and herself as gay, so students with sexuality issues knew who they could turn to.

“I knew James would come and talk but then he’d leave again and I wanted the kids to know they had somebody still in school who they could find if they were struggling,” she said.

Baldry is also working with kids at Liverpool’s upcoming gay pride celebration, “where there will be kids activities and story time area, talks and discussions and stalls aimed at young people and families,” according to the news site.

“It’s all very accessible and we’re expecting people to come along and get involved who have never been to a Pride before and that opens it up to a wider community, not just the LGBT one,” Baldry said.