{"id":32538,"date":"2017-06-17T09:19:35","date_gmt":"2017-06-17T09:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=32538"},"modified":"2017-06-17T09:19:35","modified_gmt":"2017-06-17T09:19:35","slug":"rhode-island-teacher-year-photo-trump-goes-viral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/rhode-island-teacher-year-photo-trump-goes-viral.html","title":{"rendered":"Rhode Island teacher of the year photo with Trump goes viral"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Rhode Island teacher of the year photo with Trump goes viral<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Rhode Island\u2019s 2017 teacher of the year went viral this week after he shared a photo from his meeting with President Trump and first lady Melania Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The photo shows Rhode Island teacher Nikos Giannopoulos holding a black lace fan and wearing a rainbow LGBTQ pin, while standing beside the president and the first lady.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cRhode Island Teacher of the Year 2017 meets the 45th President of the United States. That&#8217;s all,\u201d the photo\u2019s caption read alongside multiple rainbow emojis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">As of Friday afternoon, the photo had garnered thousands of likes and hundreds of shares.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cIt was a great honor to be received in the Oval Office, and it really meant a lot to me that I was able to express myself authentically and represent for my community,\u201d Giannopoulos told The Hill.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The Rhode Island teacher also described his meeting in a Facebook post shortly after it happened in April.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cFor my trip to the White House, I wore a rainbow pin to represent my gratitude for the LGBTQ community that has taught me to be proud, bold, and empowered by my identity \u2014 even when circumstances make that difficult,\u201d he wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cI wore a blue jacket with a bold print and carried a black lace fan to celebrate the joy and freedom of gender nonconformity,\u201d Giannopoulos continued.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">In the post, which does not mention Trump by name, Giannopoulos refers the president as \u201cthe person behind the desk.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cWhen I think back to my time in the White House, I will not remember the person seated at the desk,\u201d he wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Instead, the teacher said he will remember other teachers who have stood up to \u201cstructural barriers of race, gender, socioeconomic status, home language, immigration status, sexual orientation, and much more.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Giannopoulos\u2019s photo comes as the Trump administration continues to find itself under intense scrutiny for its handling of LGBTQ issues.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who met Giannopoulos during his visit, has not committed to banning discrimination against LGBTQ students in private school, despite saying schools that receive federal funding should follow the law during a Senate hearing in June.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Unlike his predecessor President Obama, Trump has yet to acknowledge June as LGBTQ Pride month.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 8pt\">Source:-\u00a0http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/blog-briefing-room\/news\/338203-rhode-island-teacher-of-the-years-photo-with-trump-goes-viral<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/rhode-island-teacher-year-photo-trump-goes-viral.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rhode Island teacher of the year photo with Trump goes viral Rhode Island\u2019s 2017 teacher of the year went viral this week after he shared a photo from his meeting with President Trump and first lady Melania Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office. The photo shows Rhode Island [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[20116],"class_list":["post-32538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-rhode-island-teacher-of-the-year-photo-with-trump-goes-viral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}