Queering the Curriculum, one Student at a time

By: Jessica Lorenzana

South Los Angeles

Vision/Mission

Our mission is to work towards a safer education setting for everyone including people who identify as LGBTQIA in which people are more accepting of others, open for new ideas, and advocate for more queer studies in the classroom. We believe that all students should receive the appropriate and equal education by teachers providing and challenging heteronormative text in the classroom. In addition, it is our responsibility to promote teacher training awareness on queering the curriculum by our education system providing professional developments for all staff members and provide administration training in supporting teachers, staff, parents, and students.

Queer Studies in South Los Angeles (History)

Queer studies has not been incorporated through every subject at my high school. This is not always because teachers do not wan’t to include it but because they do not feel supported enough by our education system and/or they have not received enough training in how to do so. Our school has a current GSA but is not fully promoted around the school for other students to be allies or attend the club. This is a major issue because students who would like to attend the club still do not feel 100% comfortable in attending.
Curriculum is still about 90% heteronormative across all subjects. Through this Praxis project, my main goal is to not only queer my own curriculum in my class, but provide support and professional development for other educators in my high school in order for them to include queer text in their won classroom. In addition, I wan’t to provide students and families with support groups where they feel comfortable and are able to be themselves. With the change in my curriculum, my main goal is to provide my students with the appropriate education that they can relate to and at the same time support their peers with accepting others no matter of their sexual orientation, gender, beliefs, culture, religion and social economic status.

Meet Ms. Lorenzana

Hello, my name is Jessica Lorenzana and I am a high school 9th grade Education Specialist in South Los Angeles. I currently teach a Resource Lab that focuses on supporting students needs in English and Math. My main focus this year it to educate my students on queer studies by challenging heteronormative text by incorporating and queering the main characters in text through a critical thinking lens. I have created lessons which incorporate societies views on gender roles, sexual orientations, queer text, and our current GSA program at our school.

Ms. Lorenzana's Classroom

Ms. Lorenzana’s 9^th grade classroom focuses on social justice topics. Students are encouraged and supported to be themselves and be supportive of peoples sexual orientation. Through this project, students learned about pronouns that they prefer to be called by, why they are so important to people, gender “roles” according to society and the implementation of queer studies in the classroom. For the first time for many of the students they felt not only supported but felt SAFE to express themselves and question why our education system has not implemented more queer text into our curriculum.

Queering the Curriculum

Unit 1: Queering the Curriculum/Social Justice

Week 1:

Queer Studies Introduction
What pronouns do you identify as?
Why are pronouns important?
What does queer mean to you?

Week 2-3

Gender “roles” according to society
Gender Stereotypes (Toys, colors, etc)
What roles do women need to accept and do according to our society
What roles do men need to accept and do according to our society
Are you acting like a man or woman? Activity.
Job roles

WEEK 3-4

GSA at our school?
Leaders who are LGBTQIA
Vocabulary
National Geographic Documentary, Gender Revolution with Katie Couric
Guided questions

Future Plans

Ms. Lorenzana's 9th grade classroom is working towards supporting other teachers in queering their curriculum. Students in Ms. Lorenzana's classroom are educating and supporting their peers in being accepting, open about differences, and challenging heteronormativity in the classroom. Our main goal is to establish a safe place in which students and teachers are supported in queering their curriculum through professional development, teacher training, student support groups, family support groups and training for administrators in order to best support their staff.

With love, A tired, supportive, empathetic, passionated and hopeful Educator

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