Welcome back to Member2Member advice! This theme came from a suggestion from an A+ member! So many of you all are educators, and this is a space to share resources, swap advice, get temp checks on what you’re doing, and find support — especially in a political climate that is increasingly hostile to LGBTQ teachers and students. All educators of all kinds welcome! Ask questions in the comments, and feel free to bring answers, or if not answers, comaraderie and commiseration. Thank you for being members and for being there for each other. Thank you to the educators among us. Sending you so much love.
xoxo,
Nico
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I’m a Canadian working as a primary school teacher in London, England! Had anyone else here taught primary (or secondary) school in the UK? Curious to hear about your experiences!
Hellew! I just completed my PGCE, which means I have a year’s experience in 2 secondary schools in Cambridge. And I went to school in London. It can be stressful – and my Canadian friends tell me the school system, especially wrt to exams (tldr WE HAVE WAY TOO FUCKING MANY) is very different. Feel free to message or you can have my number.
What a great idea for a member2member post! Here’s a question I have been pondering: I’m a language teacher, currently teaching only adults, but a possible future option for me is to pursue teaching younger people, like in high school for example. I am mildly worried that somehow I will be outed as a non-monogamous, kinky person who does a bunch of Very Adult Activities with Various Other Adults. I’ve heard of teachers who do/did sex work getting fired in horrible ways before, does this also happen with kinky/non-monogamous people? Should I be worried? If I want to keep living this life should I just stick with teaching adults forever? I’d love to hear any insights or experiences.
While not speaking from personal experience, I know from knowing educators that at the very least, they tend to keep their social media accounts on private during the job search and during the period of their employment. It sucks that it’s necessary, but it’s at least a barrier to having parents / students / administrators encroach on your privacy. I hope more folks will chime in with thoughts here because this simply cannot be an uncommon concern?
I work in education and have done so in places where being queer / trans is illegal. Im also in the kink community so have had to be extra protective about my self and what I am willing to share not only professionally in person but online.
What kept me hired (and safe) was making sure my online presence was locked down. Having dual social media accounts also helped as students and colleagues of all ages will google you. If they find an acceptable profile, I found they were less likely to dig deeper.
Additionally, I had to weigh the pros and cons of realizing there were certain parts of my life that I could never speak of and made sure to “socialize” far away from the town I worked in.
I’m not as strict in the States, but found the locked down social media presence and willingness to mute parts of my self was also necessary, and especially dependent on the state/district/type of school you are working in.
Working with young learners has some intense benefits though, so I think it was worth it, although it has had some lasting negative (shame mindset) effects. It’s like others views of me internalized.
I work in Oakland and without giving too many details, have worked w several poly folks at my school. Think it depends on school culture but keeping social media private is definitely a great idea.
Agree to all of this. I basically deleted my Facebook account around the same time I started a leadership position in a school, and my Instagram account was always private. For a while, our school used Facebook to share photos from our daily adventures, so I started a new account using my work email address and did not accept any friend requests or join any groups on it so that there was literally nothing for parents to find about me on it.
I would also say that I definitely struggled not to internalize shame about my personal life from my work environment; while I knew that my personal life had absolutely nothing to do with my professionalism, I also knew that the kind of education I champion is not mainstream and I was very loathe to give anyone any reason whatsoever to doubt that I knew my stuff when it came to educating their kids. And unfortunately, even in the “liberal” northeast, there are plenty of families in the area where I live that would see me with my facial piercing and asymmetrical haircut and ring of keys and place me lower on the “trustworthy” ladder than the more typical person in my position who wears a scarf well and has a husband and children (and possibly grandchildren) of her own.
I did always find it fascinating, though, how in conversation before or after class, when families would ask me I would just say “we” (as in, “we did this over the weekend,” or “we are visiting family for the holiday”) and people would just fill in the blank however they wanted. That way I wasn’t technically lying about anything, but I also wasn’t putting my life out in full for anyone’s judgment.
I’m polyam and had a second long term partner while teaching elementary school, which was tricky. People have so many opinions about any kind of sexual identity that isn’t “the norm” and working with kids.
Some queer elders at my school (ie teaching 40+ years, but NEVER talked about their partners with most staff) talked about making themselves irreplaceable (ie helping run some major programs for the district, such as camp), so that it would be hard to fire them. I think a lot of minoritized staff take on those extra roles for the same reason.
I was only out to one co-worker and my affinity group. That was helpful though!
Thank you all SO MUCH for these insights. <3
Excited to meet some other teachers in this thread. I teach 6th grade art in the northeast US. I have a good number of out LGBTQ+ students and it’s really cool to see how students are having these conversations in middle school. I am lucky to be in district that is generally supportive when it comes to this kind of thing.
This is so great! Any other GSA advisors here? I am the advisor at my high school, and since Covid, I’ve had a lot of trouble getting students to show up or take leadership. It feels like I’m making most of the effort. It wasn’t this way pre-Covid.
I am a GSA advisor! My school’s GSA has always been very small and mostly geared toward the social/support aspects of GSA. But! This year, I am hopeful that we will break that cycle because a bunch of students are pretty fired up about wanting more awareness and acceptance around LGBTQ+ issues.
In general, although this year is definitely better than the previous two, the impact of Covid on the students is still very real. I’m having to provide more scaffolding and support academically than I did pre-Covid, not to mention supporting the students’ in terms of their mental health and wellbeing.
I hope that more GSA advisors chime in – thanks for being the first!
I’m also GSA advisor and have had the same problem. (Although last year was my first year at this high school and doing GSA so I don’t have pre-covid experience to compare it to). I got a good showing of students the first couple weeks, but found that I was doing all of the leading. We had a few holidays, etc, and attendance fell to a small handful. Not sure how to get student leaders to step up, and I feel like I don’t have more time to push it!
I’m a GSA advisor, but for middle school, so teachers take more of a leadership role and our attendance is impacted by who has support at home (and get get a ride).
Something I’m coming to terms with is that even though it’s (for me at least) our second year back of “normal” school, students are still recovering or remembering how to be engaged with school. It’s probably going to be a slow process–keep showing up and trying to get kids to show up and hopefully engagement/leadership will come from there.
hello educators! i currently work in early childhood ed part-time but have also tutored and done targeted intervention in schools with kids k-6, plus TAed various undergrad courses. i don’t have any questions other than ‘how do i convince my nonprofit employer that the reason we can’t retain teachers is that we pay garbage’ which isn’t so much a question as a scream into the void
instead here is a cute story from today! we were going on a walk around the school and talking about the things we saw. one of my kiddos picked up a branch that had some tiny pinecones on it, which made another kiddo extremely jealous. i found a pinecone for him and handed it over only for him to drop it with the most disgusted face- the pinecone had a slug! we now have salami the slug safely ensconced in a tupperware pending me figuring out how exactly to keep a slug as a pet
This may be a shitty answer to your non-question/scream into the void, but it is the truth: I did exactly that (convinced the powers that be at my non-profit employer that garbage wages kept people from sticking around), and they raised everybody’s wages! … and then when they had a budget gap the size of my salary, they laid me off. I’m not super sad about it – between covid and a decade of just regularsauce non-profit and early childhood education shenanigans I was pretty burnt out.
The problem of low wages in ECE and at non-profits is so much bigger than any single organization; I’m really done with the whole ecosystem of both! But I do miss moments like your pinecone story. The kids were always what made it magical.
I think slugs have been done well as classroom pets and are very low maintenance. Or maybe that was snails… Anyway, I have no doubt some teacher has posted about it on Pinterest or elsewhere. I think just some stuff it likes to eat (my garden) and places it likes to hide (see above). And I worked for one year in a charter school for low pay and horrible working conditions. When I got a chance to work in the NYC public school in the Teacher’s Union UFT, I went for it and got the job. I feel very fortunate! I’m a social worker, and there are very few jobs for us in schools…
my plan is whatever fruit i bring in with my lunch, a spray bottle misting, and hoping that salami is a sturdy little thing until i can get a more appropriate habitat set up. i figure if slugs are garden pests, they must be pretty hardy, right?
Kerri, totally agree this is systemic. this is my…third? fourth? discrete organization and i’ve never made anywhere close to a living wage, no matter my degree/experience/qualifications. there’s also some grossness going on with my site, which is a partnership with a local school district and my nonprofit (which does special education services). the school district remodeled most of the preschool building, but guess which classes are still in the older unrenovated wing? the inclusive classrooms! that’s an oversimplification of course but it feels real shitty
it’s amazing how we got a burst of ‘educators are amazing! teachers do so much!’ early in the pandemic when people were first figuring out zoom school but it translated to absolutely nothing tangible in terms of funding and resource allocation. if you think kids are the future, put your money where your mouth is!
Hey y’all! I teach first grade at a public school in the South. I’m always looking for ways to make my school more queer-friendly for kids and staff, in a sometimes not-so-friendly school district and state. Looking forward to connecting with others.
Hey Katie! Books are my big one, because it’s a more under the radar way to be inclusive. Having books with diverse family constellations and lots of types of people shows kids what life can be, but having cishet-acceptable books on the same shelf gives you some plausible deniability if needed
my other personal shift has been removing phrases like ‘mom and dad’ and even ‘parents’ from my vocab, because not every kid goes home to that kind of family. i usually say ‘grown ups’ when talking to kids and ‘caregivers’ when talking to adults and it makes a huge difference. and i’ve noticed coworkers making the same shift without having a conversation about it, which is awesome!
this may be less feasible/desirable for you but i’m a v butch person and make a point of not toning down at work. my kids see me with my short hair and ring of keys and neckties and it sparks a lot of conversations. it’s a nice way to flag to queer families as well
Just want to echo the verbiage Caitlin mentioned – I would always say “grown ups” in person (to both kids and adults) and every newsletter started, “Dear Families.”
Yeah, I have always said “family” my entire career. My current school is big on culturally responsive teaching and trying to be inclusive of all students’ families. But I struggle because there’s still this sense that teachers are held to a different standard. A heterosexual married couple with children is the ideal family, and teachers who don’t fit the mold don’t really talk about their personal lives. It was a bit scandalous when an unmarried staff member was pregnant two years ago!
I guess it’s reflective of our larger society. Schools can be very conventional places.
Hi everyone! As I mentioned in my comment on Caitlin’s slugs at the bottom and slugs at the top story, I am a school social worker in NYC. I am extremely fortunate to have a job that is covered by the UFT Teachers’ Union contract. I worked in a charter school for 1 year before this job and it was low pay and horrible working conditions in the form of long hours – at one point I was clocking 10.5 hours per day average, and also no rights. After a year of working very very hard, I was given a list of 14 things to improve on and was demoted with a huge pay cut. When I got a lead on a unionized public school I jumped at it and got the job. I encourage everyone to try your best to find a job that pays what you are worth and where you have rights and a union.
I just want to add that I know there are places where finding a job that pays a living wage and has a union is close to impossible and it’s not your fault, the education system in this country is so riddled with problems. Undervaluing educators is one of them, and dedicated educators (dedicators? I love a good portmanteau…) work so hard in a faulty system because they truly love their students and love teaching. Every time I see a problem in the schools I just get so angry and want to demand that the government tax the 1% and fund the schools properly so there will be plenty of staff and a great ratio and support of every kind and no more high-stakes testing and no more charter schools devouring the public schools.
Hi everyone! I’m an out bi middle school history teacher working at a very queer friendly school in Oakland for the last 8 years! Would love to share resources and advice around curriculum for both history and homeroom, as well as teaching in general :)
Yay middle school! I love Learning for Justice (used to be Teaching Tolerance) for lesson ideas. I’ve done the gender unicorn with 7th and 8th grade students in advisory and that’s gone over well.
Zinn Education Project is another fantastic resource!
Hey hey! Queer fifth grade teacher here in a historically conservative and rapidly diversifying suburb of Seattle.
One of the best things about my district is that HR started affinity groups, including an LGBTQ+ affinity group! We are a SUPER tight crew of teachers, admin assistants, paras, food service workers, you name it.
We proposed to our district that we would make LGBTQ+ 101 and Intersectionality trainings for staff to opt in to, and we got paid to make them! And people got paid to take them! So far almost 500 people have taken our classes — all asynchronous on google classroom, which I think has made it way easier for participants to engage about topics they might still feel nervous discussing IRL.
I hope y’all can find other queer folks in your own educating communities!
Hello Fellow Educators! I teach at a community college, and just yesterday, I used the wrong pronoun for a student during class! I was so mortified in the moment that my adhd-brain just started spitting out random words – but luckily, I did not embarrass them any further by making it a huge THING. I apologized to that student in private immediately after class, and they graciously accepted my apology. But now I’m worried out that a) The whole class thinks this student uses a different pronoun than what they prefer because I am an idiot, and b) What if I do it again???
So, that was my day yesterday!
Oh man, I’ve done this before (I’m also a community college teacher) and had the same ADHD panic, followed by guilt and worry spiral. I don’t have any specific advice, just wanted to say you are not alone in the mistake making.
You obviously care about your students and want them to feel safe and seen in your classroom. They will feel that even if you mess up. They will also see a person in authority who takes accountability for their actions. The worry you carry will help you not make the same mistake again in the future.
It sounds like you did what you could. I guess I’d just make sure to refer to the student using the correct pronoun in the next class or two, so their classmates get the idea.
On a related note, it took me longer than usual this year to learn my students’ names—longer, I think, than the semester where I had a “Hailee” and two students called “Hailey” in a single class! Getting students’ names confidently wrong feels more embarrassing than knowing I don’t know them yet. At my previous universities, I could print out a photo roster and make myself flashcards to learn their names and call on people at random, but I’m not sure how to do so at my current institution.
I’m really bad with names too. I don’t know how big your classes are, but I try to have a couple of early assignments done in class or on paper (not digital) because handing the graded assignments back helps me practice matching names to faces.
The student was gracious, so don’t beat yourself up. If you subtly use the right pronoun a few times aloud, it will reinforce the association w/the right one for you or others. If you are really worried about doing it again you could put a note for yourself with your class/ lecture notes, or repeat it to yourself as part of your pre-class routine, whenever you enter grades, etc. You are being conscientious so if you do accidentally say the wrong one some time, hopefully your student will recognize you are trying. Good luck!
Hi! I’m a CC prof too and I have DONE this and it SUCKS. My student also accepted my private apology, and what I did was just keep using the correct pronouns/name without flagging it. I figure the students who were even paying attention the first time will assume they heard correctly or, if they are particularly sharp, will just catch on to what happened and roll with it. It didn’t turn out to be an issue – hopefully yours won’t, either!
Hi! I think I am the member who suggested this, so I’m super glad that it’s happening. I teach 7th grade math in the Twin Cities at a school that is quite supportive of LGBTQ students and staff. I run the GSA in the middle school with my co-worker and we also have done trainings with the staff about how to support LGBTQ students. Would love to connect with other middle school teachers, or educators in Minnesota/the Twin Cities!
Thank you so much for suggesting <3 <3 <3
Community college instructor here. Anyone have recommendations or resources for running classroom discussions? It is one of my weak spots and it feels like it is getting harder every year. Students seem less comfortable engaging with topics that might lead to disagreement.
This has been a challenge for me lately too, though it seems more from shyness than from conflict avoidance in my courses (I teach Spanish literature). It often appears that my students are afraid their comments may not be good enough or may not be correct. It tends to work better if I have them discuss first in pairs or small groups before shifting to a full-class discussion. In particular, it seems that less is more: the best discussions have happened when I give students more time and/or fewer questions to discuss, so that they can delve into them more deeply. It seems to take them a while to find get going, so giving them fewer than 5 minutes tends not to work as well.
A couple of years ago, while teaching on Zoom, I got a couple of other suggestions from the teaching center that worked well and could be adapted back for in-person classes: 1) Having everyone wait 1 minute to gather and formulate their thoughts before anyone starts speaking. This gives students who are more shy or may need longer to process things more of an even chance to speak, not just students who are quickest to answer. 2) A “chatterfall”—similarly to the idea of waiting a minute, students respond to the question in writing but do not send their answers in the chat until you say so, then they all can share their responses. The idea is that then you invite students to elaborate aloud or respond to each other’s ideas.
Depending on what you’re teaching, you could also try framing it as a discussion about what a certain author argues (and possibly how that compares to what another author says, etc.), rather than a discussion of what your students themselves think about the issue. That could make it less personal.
If you haven’t done so yet, it may help to set the tone for the class discussions and emphasize that it’s a space for learning, that mistakes are part of the learning process, that sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know, etc. I like to share my own struggles with speaking up in class as an undergrad and how over time I pushed myself to participate more, to emphasize that I do understand it’s not easy. You could also try introducing “ouch”/”oops” as ways for students to respond if they are hurt by a comment someone makes or are alerted to the fact that their comment offended someone.
Thank you! Those are great suggestions.
Just wanted to second the above commenter’s suggestion to have students talk to each other and then share out to the whole class. In high school and at the undergrad level, the “think-pair/group-share” technique is tried and true because it works! If I have a larger class, I usually do small groups and ask each group to determine at least one member to share out the group’s ideas. This really helps students validate/affirm their ideas and also helps those that need more processing time.
Thank you! I did this just today and it worked well.
Hi! Fellow CCer here. Class discussion, especially on hot-button issues, is HARD, Y’ALL. I frequently reassure students that this is the place to talk about this stuff, and that it’s okay to ask questions, express opinions, and so on. I try to make them feel comfortable by giving them a glimpse at my own messiness – like the fact that I am not a vegan and I feel very conflicted about it, but I have no intention of not eating meat. I just like it too much. I try to be vulnerable, show them that I have my own questions, my own moral inconsistencies, and so on. I don’t know whether that’s actually helping or I’ve just been lucky, but that’s what I do.
Yeah, I’ve definitely shared my own messiness too.
Hi, I’m also a community college professor. Here are some of the strategies that I use for discussion:
1. Free-writing. I prime students for discussion by asking them to write for a given period of time, maybe 5 or 10 minutes, on a few questions that can help them put their thoughts together. Usually, by the end of the free-write, students have come up with questions or insights that they’d like to share.
2. Jigsaws. A jigsaw is a type of discussion in which you split the students into small groups. Each group works on a different concept, section of the reading, etc. Sort of like individual puzzle pieces. Then, the groups share back their most interesting thoughts to the class. In small group work, it can help to have students take on roles. For instance, one person reports back to the class, another takes notes, someone else moderates to make sure everyone is speaking, etc.
3. Social annotation. This can be done online or on a shared printout of the reading on paper. Have the students work together to identify important quotes and concepts in the reading, as well as interacting with the text. Ask them to agree and extend the author’s POV with an example from their own lives or something they’ve learned in your class or another class, if they disagree, ask them to find the flaw in the logic, encourage them to identify words that they don’t know or things that confused them in the reading, etc.
4. I like this list of discussion strategies from the blog titled “Lindsay Ann Learning.” I especially like #4 “Say Something” strategy, in which you go around the room and everyone has to respond directly to the person before them without repeating anything that’s already been said. I find that helpful for discussions in which students just want to keep agreeing with each other because it breaks the pattern. It forces them to think of something different to say. This strategy is also useful for getting the dominant voices to quiet down so that you can hear from the people who usually try to hide in class.
5. Sometimes, I have the students write a script for a discussion instead. I have them write dialogue for Amy who agrees with the author and Danny who disagrees. Then, the students do their best to make good faith arguments from each perspective, without setting up either to be a strawman. This can be done as a group activity or as an exquisite corpse, in which students keep passing the paper with the argument to each other and alternating viewpoints that way.
All that being said, I’ve noticed that in my intro to composition classes that students aren’t comfortable disagreeing in discussions because they haven’t yet developed the skills needed to express the opposing viewpoint. I always encourage my students to back up their perspectives with evidence, but sometimes their objections come from their own personal opinions or belief systems. They may also want to find evidence from other sources (with varying levels of credibility) to back up their point instead of engaging with the original argument on the level of finding logical fallacies or ineffective rhetoric. Especially when speaking to one another during class, they get very uncomfortable when they realize that they may be the person with the unpopular viewpoint in the group.
All that being said, I think you should give the students a little time to warm up to the idea of a discussion. Let them see that their fellow classmates are their friends, and it’s okay to make mistakes in front of them. Usually, they come around by the end of the semester.
You can also encourage students who really wanted to add a different viewpoint to discussion to write it in their notebooks instead. Let them know that they can expand it in an essay if they take notes on what the other perspectives from class are. That way, they are already aware of possible counter arguments.
I made a typo. It’s Andy who agrees with Danny who disagrees. Sort of like “yes, and” and “deny.” It’s also more gender neutral that way.
These are so good and thanks for the blog recommendation!
Hi, all.
I’m a high school teacher and undergrad instructor of history/gender studies. I’m very thankful to be in NJ with extremely supportive administrators and government leadership. It really keeps me safe as an openly queer teacher, especially teaching the content I teach.
I live in NJ too, but I teach in NYC.
Hi! Pansexual trans woman CC prof here. I teach in a relatively bluish part of a very red state. The reddest, just about. You’ve probably read about us in the papers lately, and nothing good from an LGBTQ perspective. SO THAT’S FUN.
The thing I’m wondering is, how do I present a “hey, this is a safe space and you can ask questions” kind of vibe without sounding condescending? On Coming Out Day, I realized the kids in my class probably know more queer people in real life than I do. I should be asking THEM questions. How do I handle this dynamic?
There was a teacher in my high school (20 years ago, but still) who had a sticker on the classroom door – it had a star and a comet and simply said “Safe Space.” She was also the GSA advisor and so any queer kid could put two and two together and know she was a safe person to talk with.
I’m not sure that answers your question, but something like that – a sticker, a pin, whatever – might be a good way to signal to your students that you are open to their questions, whatever those questions might be.
Several of our faculty have variations of “safe space” signs and stickers to signal that they are available to students.
If you feel like there is a lot you can learn from your students, why not just ask them the questions? It would be a great classroom discussion if it fits into your subject. I think students love opportunities to share their personal experiences and see how those experiences fit in to what they are learning in school.
If there are any GSA advisors here looking for more support in Massachusetts, you can register for the state’s regional GSAs where you can meet more advisors and your students can meet more kids in your area—and possibly join the state leadership council.
The statewide GSA is student-run, very active, and led by incredible youth, many of whom are trans and neurodivergent.
You can get resources or join using the contact form on this link: https://www.doe.mass.edu/sfs/lgbtq/gsalcouncil.html
Hi all, I’m curious about how much queer content you bring into your college classroom. Does it vary based on the level?
I used to always include some literature by queer writers in my intro to composition classes, but over the years, I’ve backed off from it in part because the response from the students was too negative. Most students could handle it, but the ones who couldn’t were sometimes the loudest, angriest, and most disruptive people in the classroom.
I feel sad to admit that, but I’m curious if anyone else has come across this, too?
For me it depends on the class and how it fits with the topic. In some of my classes, it is actually required content and covered in the textbooks. The majority of my students have been totally fine with it (as far as I know), but I’ve also had to deal with the occasional very negative response. Even though it is a small minority of the students who push back, it can be incredibly painful to deal with. And those voices can drown out all of the positive ones and make you feel like shit. Double whammy because they are protesting your teaching, and often subjecting you personally to homophobic remarks. When it happened, I found myself second guessing my resources and lectures. But I fall back on “this is community college, these are adults, and this is the appropriate place for this material.” I also try to remember those few queer students who may be so excited to feel represented. But I definitely feel nervous every time, and wish I was a braver, bolder teacher who gives zero fucks.