Affirm gender and sexual diversity within the school community

Most teachers want their classrooms to be safe places for all gender and sexual identities, but few have the training and skills to make that a reality.

LGBTQ people are more visible than ever, particularly in mainstream and online media. More youth are coming out and calling on their communities for positive recognition of who they are and who they are becoming. In this climate of increased visibility, schools and educators are scrambling to understand how best to support those students, and some are seeking help. Here’s some of what we know: Schools tend to be unsafe, unsupportive places for LGBTQ youth. Generally, teachers and administrators have little professional development focused on gender and sexual diversity. Preservice teachers move into the field largely unprepared to support LGBTQ students. In this article, we explore what’s involved in disrupting those trends and supporting educators to create affirming school communities.

High-quality professional development

School safety efforts have focused on antibullying and individual educator’s attitudes about LGBTQ topics. Supporting educators to challenge homophobic and transphobic attitudes and preparing them to intervene in anti-LGBTQ behaviors is crucial. (Transphobia: intense fear of or prejudice against people who are perceived to defy stereotypical gender norms.) Yet, interventions focused only on bullying do little to transform institutional practices and systems that encourage bullying on the basis of sex, gender, and sexuality (DePalma & Atkinson, 2010). Recently there has been a shift toward examining the web of factors — parent concerns, administrative support, and institutional policies — that influence how educators respond to LGBTQ issues and on building educator’s capacities to be affirming toward LGBTQ youth, for example, through curricular inclusion (Greytak & Kosciw, 2014). Findings from recent large-scale studies in Canada (Meyer, Taylor, & Peter, 2014) and the U.S. (Greytak & Kosciw, 2014) suggest that teachers generally want to ensure safe learning environments for LGBTQ youth but say they need more support to make that happen.

Teacher institutes

Efforts to provide educators with gender and sexual diversity-focused professional development are slowly expanding but still too focused on individuals rather than systems. Though we have worked with hundreds of educators, gaining access to whole-school staffs for sustained periods of time has been difficult. Challenges to develop more systemic professional development include limited resources, state- or district-mandated demands on professional development time, and competing conceptions about the need to devote critical attention to issues facing LGBTQ students. To navigate those challenges, we designed Teacher Institutes that unfold over two, 2.5-hour sessions. Hosted in our School of Education each semester, we invite local teachers, preservice teachers, educational leaders, and teacher educators to participate. To date, we have worked with 115 mainly K-12 classroom teachers from a range of schools.

There are many stakeholders at the school level whose engagement is crucial to bolstering the change necessary to transform school cultures.

Informed by perspectives on professional development that frame teacher learning as highly social and based in discourse and practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999), our institutes engage participants in knowledge building, critical self-reflection, dialogue, action, and practice. To provide context for our time together, we screen a locally produced documentary “Breaking the Silence” (Leonardi & Staley, 2015) that showcases a conversation between LGBTQ youth and allies and over 70 preservice and inservice teachers. In small and large groups, we engage participants in discussions that move beyond antibullying to cultivate awareness of how heteronormativity — the system of taken-for-granted norms of heterosexuality and binary gender — operates to silence LGBTQ identities and experiences in school. We support educators to practice taking action through curricula by taking stock of a hypothetical school context. Participants role-play activities so they can rehearse their responses to anticipated concerns of parents and administration. They leave the institutes with lesson and unit plans that they can use in their own classrooms.

What educators tell us

Before the institutes, educators overwhelmingly reported a desire to support LGBTQ youth by being more attentive to gender and sexual diversity. However, many pointed to gaps in their knowledge, motivating them to self-select into the institutes. When asked what they hoped to gain, participants prioritized developing knowledge of terminology and relevant issues. In addition to connecting with other educators, they also frequently requested practical strategies for creating inclusive curriculum; addressing parent, student, and administrative pushback; and intervening in anti-LGBTQ behaviors.

After the institutes, participants said they appreciated being part of a learning community constructed by their mutual engagement around gender and sexual diversity. For example, one participant responded, “Not only did we learn from one another but we also began our own community of educators that is consciously working to address this vitally important issue  . . . Our support for one another has just begun.” Engaging intellectually, emotionally, and professionally around a shared goal of supporting LGBTQ youth seemed to feed an undernourished part of their teaching identities. “The institute was profoundly refreshing for me. It brought back to surface my passion for social justice in the classroom,” one educator said.

Recent large-scale studies suggest that teachers want to ensure safe learning environments for LGBTQ youth but need more support to make that happen.

On the whole, participants reported feeling more knowledgeable, confident, and prepared to address gender and sexual diversity after the institutes. In particular, they noted the utility of resources such as LGBTQ-themed book lists, instructional ideas that they could enact in the short and long term, opportunities to rehearse in a low-stakes, supportive environment, and dialogue around how to persist when confronted with challenging aspects of the work, including feelings of discomfort, fear, and not knowing. Participants noted the positive effect of having time to think through some of those challenges. Several participants noted that they wanted more time to talk amongst themselves during the institute, brainstorm, and troubleshoot with colleagues.

Participants also later reported how their institute experience prepared them to seize teachable moments in their classrooms. For example, after a classmate was teased for wearing a purple scarf, which several students assumed was “just for girls,” a 1st-grade teacher reported initiating a conversation around gender norms. Several educators reported opening conversations with students around what makes a classroom space safe, particularly for students and families who identify as LGBTQ. Others reported heightened awareness around using inclusive language — for example, avoiding the use of “boys” and “girls” and language that assumes a heteronormative family structure of “mom” and “dad.” As one kindergarten teacher put it: “I would say that I am more comfortable bringing up LGBTQ topics in my classroom and speaking about issues facing this community.”

While these reports of successful enactments of inclusive practice are encouraging, many participants said it was challenging and isolating being the lone educator equipped to affirm LGBTQ youth in their schools. Uninformed and sometimes unsupportive colleagues and administrators presented barriers to some who wanted to move ahead with what they had learned in the institutes. “I find that while other adults in my building are not necessarily opposed to affirming [gender and sexual diversity], they also do not take active roles in stopping bullying and often subtly perpetuate negative stereotypes and attitudes.”

Said another participant, “I feel more prepared but would love to have more people attend the training from my school so as to have more support and people in my daily life to discuss how to actively move LGBTQ awareness and acceptance into our curriculum and social structures at school.”

Recommendations

Based on what we learned from participants, we offer three key recommendations to educational communities aiming to do right by LGBTQ youth:

#1. Support teachers.

Supporting teachers to be proactive requires high-quality, focused professional development. We invite other communities to explore similar approaches that focus on building knowledge, reflecting, sense-making, and practicing the work. To aid communities, we offer a set of curricular tools, which are available on our web site (www.aqueerendeavor.org).

Additionally, teachers need time to collaborate with colleagues grappling with the same issues. Ideally, all teachers in a school would receive support, but heterogeneous groupings of teachers from a range of contexts within a particular district or metropolitan area can also provide a valuable context for professional learning. In our experience, questions of what affirming gender and sexual diversity looks like in practice are many and varied, in part because the work depends so much on context.  One teacher who has administrative support may be able to accomplish far more than a teacher who has unsupportive leaders or oppositional parents. Bringing together teachers from diverse contexts enables them to imagine what’s possible beyond their current situation and to explore what factors enable and constrain their efforts. We encourage communities to start wherever they can, acknowledging that districts and schools face many challenges because of accountability and budget deficits. For example, in some contexts, PLCs may provide opportunities to explore issues of gender and sexual diversity.

#2. Engage teacher preparation programs.

Teacher education programs historically have been remiss in supporting candidates to understand topics of gender and sexuality. Attention to LGBTQ youth, the ways that heteronormative school cultures deny equal educational opportunities, and grappling with gender and sexual diversity needs to start in teacher education. Weaving these topics throughout coursework can improve candidates’ understanding of gender and sexuality and offer insights and strategies for noticing and disrupting heteronormativity in their classrooms and schools. Providing this type of support also positions novices as leaders, resources for colleagues, and allies to students.

#3. Build a whole-community engagement model.

Making schools safer requires looking beyond teachers to consider the community at large. What, for example, might entire school communities need by way of support? The sense of community fostered within the institutes was one factor that seemed to enable participants’ learning, motivation, and development. Afterward, however, the absence of community constrained some participants from continuing to explore and enact affirming practices. Teacher support is integral, but there are many school-level stakeholders whose engagement is crucial to bolstering the change necessary to transform school cultures. With this in mind, we argue for a whole-community model (Leonardi, 2014).

Teachers need collaboration with colleagues grappling with the same issues.

A whole-community model alters traditional teacher-centered professional development and ideas of accountability: It takes the focus off teachers as primary conduits for change and places responsibility also on school communities. This model is especially important to engage around topics considered “controversial” or that challenge what has historically been “normal” or “appropriate” in education. In a whole-community model, teachers, administrators, staff, parents, and students are both supported and held accountable for creating safer schools.

Employing a whole-community model requires a commitment from administration not only to support teachers but also to engage in the learning and “unlearning” (Kumashiro, 2001) involved in creating schools that affirm diverse gender identities and sexualities. This involves attention to policies, practices, and messages to the community at large about commitments to equity that explicitly include those related to gender and sexual diversity. This model requires support and time for collaboration. Given the social contexts of schools and the pervasive nature of gender and sexuality norms, engaging students in age-appropriate conversations through academic and social curricula is essential. Inquiries into the “rules” of the gender binary, what makes a family, and the safety and inclusivity of their own school climates via student-developed surveys are a few examples of how this might look. Finally, a whole-community model involves reframing the conversation with and about parents, not focusing on potential pushback but instead taking a proactive stance and inviting parents as part of the school community into conversations. Educating and holding accountable all stakeholders in these efforts will provide communities the best chance at creating safe, affirming, and equitable schools.

References

Cochran-Smith, M. & Lytle, S.L. (1999). Relationships of knowledge and practice: Teacher learning in communities. Review of research in education, 249-305.

DePalma, R. & Atkinson, E. (2010). The nature of institutional heteronormativity in primary schools and practice-based responses. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26 (8), 1669-1676.

Greytak, E.A. & Kosciw J. (2014). Predictors of U.S. teachers’ intervention in anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual bullying and harassment. Teaching Education, 25 (4), 410-426.

Kumashiro, K.K. (2001). “Posts” perspectives on anti-oppressive education in social studies, English, mathematics, and science classrooms. Educational Researcher, 30 (3), 3-12.

Leonardi, B. (2014). Tilling the soil for LGBTQ inclusive policies: A case study of one school’s attempt to bring policy into practice. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo.

Leonardi B. & Staley, S. (2015). Breaking the silence: Honoring the voices of LGBTQ youth and allies in supporting our teachers. Boulder, CO: A Queer Endeavor. www.aqueerendeavor.org.

Meyer, E.J., Taylor, C., & Peter, T. (2014). Perspectives on gender and sexual diversity (GSD)-inclusive education: Comparisons between gay/lesbian/bisexual and straight educators. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society, and Learning, 15 (3), 221-234.

Citation: Leonardi, B. & Staley, S. (2015). Affirm gender and sexual diversity within the school community. Phi Delta Kappan, 97 (3), 69-73.