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ABSTRACT: In Fall 2009, the Reduction of Stigma in Schools (RSIS) program was approached by two Central New York elementary schools with reports that their teachers were “freaking out” over the presence of transgender children in their classrooms. They expressed high levels of fear and anxiety over the teaching of these children and fear of the community’s potential response to their providing a supportive environment for these students. RSIS is a research-based professional development program that trains educators to create affirming learning environments for LGBTQ youth (Payne & Smith, 2010) and is part of the Queering Education Research Institute (QuERI). In the absence of literature on the experiences of transgender children at any grade level and the absence of the experiences of teachers in supporting transgender students, we drew heavily from work on gender enculturation in childhood and elementary schools as gendered spaces (Thorne & Luria, 2002) and gender in elementary teacher practice (Korth, 2007) to begin to explore and better understand the reactions of educators to transgender children. Educators often rely on unnamed gender assumptions to interpret their students’ activity (Korth, 2007; Skelton & Read, 2006) and classrooms reflect a cultural assumption that girls and boys are essentially and naturally different (Rands, 2009). The presence of a transgendered child makes visible some of these assumptions and, we believe, disrupts teacher identity and sense of pedagogical competence. “If gender truly has such boundaries, then [a gender non-conforming child] is…some kind of failure who needs help….” If we understand such boundaries as not true but as “a function of a normalization of power…it is the description of gender that fails [the child] and not the child who fails gender” (Boldt, 1996, p. 120). We began interviewing elementary educators on their experiences with transgender children in 2009 and data collection continues. Preliminary data were utilized to generate a professional development workshop for teachers which piloted in the summer of 2010. Our data and in-schools experiences indicate that educators’ initial reaction to awareness of the presence of a transgender student is fear. Words most frequently used to describe their response to the awareness of a transgender child in school included: “freak out”; “panic”; “crisis”; “fear”; “un-prepared” with the fear related descriptors appearing in all interviews. Preliminary themes that emerged in the data related to the fear included: “The other kids”; “flirting”; The “bathroom issue”; “fixing” the child/”fear” of harming the child; threat of “puberty”; gender is/as sexuality; ways of teaching/framing the world; and “community backlash.” This will be the first paper generated from the data set. Carspecken’s (1996) critical ethnography has guided the development and execution of the study.
ABSTRACT: In American culture, “good girls” are not supposed to experience sexual desire, nor are they to be sexual outside of heterosexual, monogamous marriage (Tolman, 1994). The demands placed upon the adolescent “good girl” for managing her sexuality include: no sexual agency; no ownership of body and desire; control and containment of body; and an internalized male gaze which is then focused on evaluation of self and of other young women and their sexuality. Young women lack a public language of embodiment and this limits their agency in thinking about and experiencing their own bodies as sites of desire (Hillier & Harrison, 1999). The sexual discourse available to young women relies on the moral framing of sex through hegemonic femininity. Hegemonic femininity is linked not only with “proper” performance of gender and a rightful claim to “normalcy” but to a moral discourse surrounding what it means to be a “good” person – so that gender “properly” performed equates to “goodness” and to properly perform gender, one must be straight, so “straightness” too becomes a requirement for “good girl” status. Conflict, then, potentially exists as young lesbian identifying women wrestle with an identity sexualized by the culture that denies them claim to a position as a moral subject and yet tells them they “should” be “good girls”.
Young lesbian women in this study balance these tensions by narrating their lesbian attractions through an absence of desire. Linda recounts her attraction to one of several young woman she described with the characteristic “innocent:”
“ I had this crush on this girl in high school… I mean I was just knocked to the ground because she was so beautiful… She had these big innocent eyes and she was just absolutely beautiful.”
Linda talks about her embodied attraction not in terms of sexual desire and agency, but in terms of awe and weakness. So powerful was this beauty that she sapped the strength of Linda’s body. Her body is not charged, not poised to act, but crumbles to the safety of the ground. The mark of innocence further reduces the implication of sexual charge. This embodied narrative of attraction becomes instead a platonic ode to innocent beauty. It is beauty and innocence that is so powerful that Linda is rendered weak – not that her attraction to a woman is so strong that it impacts her body.
Lesbian as an identity is culturally defined not only by desire, but by deviant desire (Ussher and Mooney-Somers 2000). The young women in this study grappled with the identities of “lesbian” and of “good girl” and stretch the boundaries of these constructs, making strong, consistent claims to the “good girl” label – primarily through distancing their lesbian identities from sexual desire, denying the embodied experience of desire, and stressing their conformity to the heteronormative standards of goodgirldom.
The data presented in this paper are a subset of data from a larger critical life story research study with adolescent lesbians, ages 18-21, in a major metropolitan area of Texas.
PANEL ABSTRACT: For LGBTQ students, school can be a battleground where attempts to define themselves—through dating, academic work, or experimentation with self-expression—are regulated by cultural systems that stigmatize identities that transgress hegemonic gender norms. The social scene, curriculum, extra curricular activities and policy all contribute to school climates where “successful” performance of masculinity and femininity are rewarded and non-conformity is punished through silencing and exclusion. This panel aims to explore the complicated problem of creating more affirming environments for LGBTQ students by examining sites in which LGBTQ identities continue to be marginalized—sex education curriculum—as well as avenues for possible change—teacher training and policy reform. Collectively, these papers address the need to expand the definition of the “problem” of unsupportive schools beyond issues of violence and discrimination and toward comprehensive understanding of the cultural systems that persistently marginalize LGBTQ youth.
Abstract: Schools are the cultural sites in which youth “struggle to define themselves in relation to others” (Wilkinson & Pearson, 2009, p. 545), and as “sexuality becomes increasingly central to identity and social relationships…schools are critical social contexts in which dominant beliefs about sexuality are played out” (546). For LGBTQ youth, social relations are fraught not only with the usual adolescent tensions, but also include fears of having their sexual or gender identity discovered, of losing friends, of being outcast. Youth who are “out” or who are judged by peers to fail in their performance of heterosexuality or hegemonic gender experience frequent taunting and harassment (Adelman & Woods, 2006). The Reduction of Stigma in Schools Program (RSIS) is an innovative professional development program designed to educate school personnel about the stigma LGBTQ youth face in school and empower educators create more affirming school environments. This study explores which elements of program content were “taken up,” met with resistance, or absent from participants’ reported learning. Authors make recommendations for program revisions that aim to engage educators in recognition, critique and disruption of schools’ participation in the heteronormative cultural systems that marginalize LGBTQ students.
Abstract: Research has explored multicultural teacher education from multiple, sometimes divergent perspectives, yet these studies agree that what passes for multicultural teacher preparation is often “ not multicultural at all” and retains a focus on “celebrating diversity or understanding the cultural ‘other’ rather than a commitment to educational equity” (Gorski, 2009, p. 309). Interviews conducted with RSIS participants indicate that though the training utilizes a critical approach, what teachers embraced from the workshop was a call to understand and “protect” students harassed for gender or sexual identities through the “safety” discourse –a form of understanding and valuing the “cultural other”—and an investment in one time visibility events like participation in the annual Day of Silence as a symbol of improved school climate. Additionally, we found that educators frame LGBTQ issues as “risk” issues rather than as equity issues. These frames of thinking – safety from bullying; noting days of recognition highlighting school bullying and silencing, disease, and murder; and grouping LGBTQ issues with risky behaviors—continue to mark LGBTQ students as “victims” or “problems” in need of saving or solving. We posit that participant responses to the RSIS workshop content reflect educators’ understanding of their obligation to “diversity” as presented during their teacher preparation programs and that workshop content which resonated with them was that which they could easily fit into these familiar frameworks.
Abstract: Increasingly, efforts to improve school climate for LGBTQ students are turning to legislation, policy, and litigation. Researchers have asserted that in order to disrupt patterns of harassment, schools need “clear, comprehensive, and accessible…policies” that clearly communicate to the entire school community that LGBT students are afforded the same protections as their peers (Anagnostopoulos et al, 2009). However, inclusive policy does not equate to inclusive school culture, and policy without commitment to communication and enforcement is ineffective. This paper explores the limitations of policy and litigation as illuminated by a 2009 school harassment case in Upstate New York. We outline the inconsistencies and ambiguities in the school’s anti-discrimination policies and examine these policies alongside parent and student affidavits which indicate school officials did very little to disrupt the pattern of abuse. The administration’s reported indifference to the policies—which included sexual orientation—was central in supporting a school climate that actively tolerated LGBT harassment. In summary, the larger issues of legislation, litigation, and inclusive policy as tools for improving school climate for LGBT students are explored.
Abstract: Administrative support is necessary for any school change initiative to succeed and research indicates that principals substantially influence the impact of social justice initiatives in school, the availability of teacher training on diversity issues (Kose, 2009) and the extent to which faculty and staff feel they can participate in advocacy for and research studies on the school experiences of minority students. When the topic is LGBTQ students, that administrative support is often missing and our research reveals a pattern of blocking teachers from engaging in advocacy and research on LGBTQ issues to prevent “community backlash.” Preserving silence and hoping the “problem” will “go away” is positioned as a preferable approach to formally addressing the negative experience of LGBTQ youth thereby potentially raising community awareness of the school’s activity on their behalf and reproach for “supporting,” and/or “advocating” for LGBTQ students. Administrators name their communities “conservative” in justification for their resistance to allowing school engagement with LGBTQ issues and often framed their approach as response to a rational fear that the community will respond that a.) the school should not condone homosexuality and gender non-conformity and b) the school should not be talking about sex – particularly not deviant sex . One interview conducted with an educator breaking lines and participating in a study on school climate for transgender youth reported an administrator “panicked” and “freaked out” at the prospect that “people could find out” about the presence of a transgender student in the elementary school . This school principal forbade teachers participation in the research study and refused comprehensive professional development on LGBT issues for his staff (despite strong encouragement from the District office to engage in both). The stated goal was not to create the best environment for this transgender student, but to get through the school year without community awareness of the student’s presence and thus avoid the “backlash”. Based primarily on data collected on three schools in Central New York, this paper explores administrative and educator resistance to active engagement with LGBTQ in-schools issues through claimed acquiescence to conservative community standards. Implications for framing school’s responsibility not as educating all students equitably but rather conforming to the community expectations of discrimination are discussed.
Abstract: Since 2006, the Reduction of Stigma in Schools Program has been providing professional development programming to educators throughout the Central New York region, and this paper draws on data collected as part of a larger project evaluating the efficacy of the RSIS model. Specifically, this research aims to explore how teachers define the “problem” of LGBTQ youth school experiences, conceptualize possible solutions, and articulate their own their own positions as supporters or advocates for LGBTQ students. These teachers’ narratives shed light on the myriad positions educators might take in order to create space for the success of Queer youth. Using language of safety, inclusion, and empowerment, they articulated their understanding of their responsibilities and obligations to LGBTQ youth, their professional capacity to be supportive, and the limitations their institutions place on efforts to value the presence of sexual and gender diversity in the school environment. Thus, knowing where educators are in their professional position—how they identify themselves as educators and as Allies—offers important insight into how they and their schools are defining issues of justice, as well as how schools and teachers define their responsibilities for supporting Queer students. Ultimately, these finding lend implications for where teacher education’s responsibilities lie in better-equipping educators to take visible action in school contexts that may not support their efforts.
Abstract: Very little empirical research exists on why and how high school art classrooms (visual, music, theatre) can be safe, nurturing, and inclusive places for young LGBTQ students. However, there is a range of personal accounts from LGBTQ artists, to folklore, to media that informs LGBTQ youth that art classrooms are a place for them to feel more accepted and free to express their points of view. Ethnographic studies exist that tie art to social change but group together race, gender, and sexuality. Through interviews with art teachers throughout Onondaga County questions will be focused on what actions, activities, and interactions by teachers and students alike could or could not attribute to the assumption that art rooms are LGBTQ friendly and accepting. This research will help teachers better understand why art classrooms are considered safe spaces for LGBTQ youth, how they can deal with individual LGBTQ students, how they can establish better classroom management of homophobic bullying, and generate lesson plans with discussions around issues and misperceptions of gender and sexual identity.
Abstract: This paper is the story of a queer student teacher. Through autoethnographic data, I explore my journey from “student of queer” to “queer student teacher,” while critiquing the identity implications when positionality shifts from critical outsider to internal player within the public school system. As a visibly queer, white student teacher I reflect on the intersections between visible queer, teacher, and student teacher in an instrumental music classroom – a space feminized in cultural discourse (Green, 1997; McGregor & Mills, 2006 ) but in this particular school, was dominated by a hegemonic masculinity. As music educators, we often encounter an identity-cross-roads between the self as musician and the self as music teacher, constantly searching for ways to integrate the two through our own professional development and growth as musicians. For queer teachers, the cross-roads between the queer self and the teacher self is an ever present intersection that calls into question what parts of a queer teacher’s identity are permissible in the heteronormative school environment (Evans, 2002). Drawing on these shifts I hope to increase awareness of how the forced rupture between self as queer and self as teacher in the heteronormative school environment reduces queer teacher agency and efficacy both in and out of the classroom.
Abstract: Survey data from Polling for Justice indicated that youth in New York City experience great amounts of negative verbal and physical interactions. LGBTQ youth experienced extraordinarily high amounts of negative contact. Five youth and graduate student coresearchers formed Notifying Individuals to Never Justify Abusive Systems (NINJAS) in order lead participatory focus groups with school-aged youth in New York City to grapple with the context, meaning, and impact of these interactions. The common and startling lived experiences that the youth shared showed that LGBTQ youth feel policed and not protected. Youth are stopped and questioned on the way to and from school – in subways and on streets. If that youth is queer or non-gender conforming there tends to me more aggressive behavior from the police. Further, our results indicated that LGBTQ youth resist the cat calls, petty ticketing, pat-downs, and unprovoked use of force they constantly face. They speak our and question police back, laugh to retain power and stay grounded, remain focused on their goals, and defend each other and learn their rights.