Summer 2024
Instructor: Summer Pennell, Ph.D
Final Grade: A
Course Description from Syllabus:
This course is designed for educators, administrators, school staff, counselors, and others interested in queer issues in education. Readings will primarily come from birth-12 education, but there are also options to study higher education issues. This course is rigorous and will likely challenge your thinking.
Queer studies in education will give students an overview of four topics related to queer studies in education:
The history of LGBTQIA+ people and topics in education in the US. We will cover legislation against and in support of classroom teachers, as well as topics. Contemporary examples will also be discussed to critically examine how our past continues to impact our present, and consider how we can support colleagues, students, families, and ourselves.
Including LGBTQIA+ people and issues in curriculum, policies, and other school material. We will look at examples and frameworks for including people in the curriculum. This inclusivity can encompass classroom policies, indicating to families and students they are welcome, teaching about issues (civil rights, healthcare, family structures, etc.) and/or figures (historical figures, activists, etc.).
Using a queer pedagogy framework to rethink your professional approaches and materials. Queer pedagogy is an approach to teaching and education that questions norms, boundaries, and structures. It can be used to frame lessons on people, but it can also be used to rethink any topic taught in your classroom. This unit will include conceptual readings on queer pedagogy as a concept, and examples of it in practice.
Supporting LGBTQIA+ people in educational settings using the theoretical framework of queer cultural capital. This includes teachers and other education professionals, students, families, and communities.
Course Reflection/ Impact:
When I signed up for this course, I did not know what to expect. As a mathematics teacher, I was unsure how I could apply LGBTQIA+ topics within my lessons. I originally wanted to take this course in order to be a better ally to my students and colleagues, as well as to find ways to make my own classroom and school environment more inclusive. Throughout this course, I learned about different terminology, history, and different ways in which I can be more inclusive within my teaching.
One of the first projects that I completed was a partner project about LGBTQIA+ Education history project. Within this project, we looked at the history of discriminatory treatment and criminalization of schools for the LGBTQIA+ community. Through this project, I was able to learn about the statistics of school discipline on LGBTQIA+ students. According the the GLSEN's National School Climate Survey in the 2012/2013 school year, many LGBTQIA+ students, especially those of minority communities, were disproportionately disciplined to their white heterosexual classmates (GLSEN, 2016). Some of the reasons these students got varying levels of discipline were for public displays of affection, self-expression/ stereotypes, name calling, and self protection (Snapp et al., 2015). We ended our presentation giving ideas for how schools can become safe places for our LGBTQIA+ community.
I then had the opportunity to create a presentation for my current school with the goal of making my school more inclusive. Through my learning in the class, I was able to identify places within my school in which we could make some progress in order to make it more inclusive for everyone. I noted that there were systemic issues such as gendered bathrooms, gender segregated sports teams, and heteronormative curriculum. One of the ideas for change that I gave was for teachers and students to do a activity called the heteronormativity scavenger hunt ( Pennell, 2017). In this activity, individuals find heteronormative examples within schools and then think of different queer-affirmative examples that they could implement instead. I then went into detail about each issue I saw at the school and different ways in which we could make change. This is a presentation that I plan to show to my administration in order to help everyone feel safe and comfortable in school.
One of the hardest projects for me was the queer pedagogy project. I was intimidated by this project because I was unsure on how to implement ideas of queer pedagogy within my mathematics curriculum. I had a meeting with Dr. Summer Punnell to talk about my concerns and they clarified that I could make it so I have students find different ways in which to solve a problem versus the traditional one method thinking many people have. I also did some research and read an article by Kai Rands, which was included in the book Queer Pedagogies: Theory, praxis, politics by Cris Mayo and Nelson M. Rodriguez, in which he said "Mathematical inqueery, on the other hand, brings to the task the interrogatory edge of queer theory. In this case, the teacher and students could read the story with an eye toward the normative” (Rands, 2019, pg. 68). This helped me ground my thinking for the project in which I could help clean up a lesson I had in order to help students to think more flexibly and to find different ways in which to get the same solution.
My last project for this course was to make a support plan for an individual or group. I centered my project around creating a gay-straight alliance (GSA) club at my school. I used knowledge form the GLSEN and GSA network websites in order to find materials and resources for students and teachers who would be involved in starting the club. After I finished making this project, I was informed that they were bringing back the GSA club to my school for the following school year. I unfortunately have not been a part of the club, but I am happy to share any resources I have with the individuals running it.
Overall this course opened my eyes to the challenges my students and colleagues who are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community face. This course has made me want to do more research on how I can make my classroom a safe place for anyone who walks in, as well as help find ways to support the whole school. I particularly want to help educate other teachers on how to be more inclusive within their teaching. I also want to look into the statistics at my own school about the rate of discipline that may be affecting our students within the LGBTQIA+ community and see if their are trends and try to help find ways to help stop any discrimination that may be happening. This course as truly made me open my eyes and has made me want to be more aware of ways in which I can be supportive to everyone, but specifically the LGBTQIA+ community.
References:
GLSEN (2016). Educational exclusion: Drop out, push out, and school-to-prison pipeline among LGBTQ youth. New York: GLSEN.
Snapp, S. D., Hoenig, J. M., Fields, A., & Russell, S. T. (2015). Messy, Butch, and Queer: LGBTQ Youth and the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Journal of Adolescent Research, 30(1), 57-82 Messy-Butchand-Queer.pdf
Pennell, S.M. (2017). Training Secondary Teachers to Support LGBTQ+ Students: Practical Applications from Theory and Research. The High School Journal 101(1), 62-72.
Mayo, C., & Rodriguez, N. M. (Eds.). (2019). Queer pedagogies : Theory, praxis, politics. Springer International Publishing AG.