LLED 449 Blog

During my practicum, the GSA organized a pride week for the school—they were quite excited and had put thought and energy into it. The teachers were offered free pins for the week that had a rainbow heart on it. At the meeting when this was announced, almost every teacher took a pin. I eagerly accepted one and proudly wore it on my blazer. Despite the amount of teachers who took a pin, hardly any of them put it on. I can only think of a handful of teachers that actually wore their pin throughout the week.

Additionally, Joanne shared a story where teachers bought T-shirts from the GSA club, but draped them over their chair instead of actually wearing it.

These acts of passivity along with the acceptance (or purchase) of GSA/queer merchandise seems contradictory. The point is to clearly display the message to reduce stigma and foster an open acceptance of all people. However, it seems that teachers want to put a safe space rainbow sticker on the door and call it a day. They want to passively support students without being active about it. For me, it seems to be a sentiment of “I’ve taken the pin, isn’t that enough?”

I suggest that teachers reflect on what they are actually doing when they put a rainbow sticker on the door, but do not actually do anything for the cause. If they don’t address homophobic, transphobic, sexist, or racist language or if they take a button/shirt with no intention of wearing it… what message are they sending to students and fellow teachers?

Lastly, I find myself wondering what reservations the teachers had in openly supporting the GSA/pride week? After all, what’s so bad about being associated with the queer community (either as an ally or a part of it)? I think there is still a lot of unlearning and unpackin for us to do.

I have many more thoughts on this, but realize that I am much over the 1-3 sentence preference… thoughts?

Hi All,

First of all I wanted to thank everyone for the fruitful, thought-provoking conversation we had today.

Second, I wanted to reiterate what I said earlier about the importance of SOGI 123 from a biological standpoint.

As I said in class, SOGI education is not just about teaching the diversity of sexual orientation and gender expression. It is also about the physically diverse bodies people inhabit. And not just in reference to sexuality. As I stated in class, my high school experience was not one that promoted inclusiveness or diversity, and as a result I had no space in which to come forward about the complicated, stunted, painful, non-traditional puberty I experienced. I didn’t know anything about intersex health or where to go or who to talk to. I had no reason to believe my body would be understood or accepted, and as such, I waited years to seek medical help–years in which irreversible damage was done to my body. Years that ended in medical professionals telling me to my face that I should not divulge the realities of my body to anyone because the statistics said they would reject me and that rejection and bullying would likely lead to my suicide.

This was in 2004. The world in 2004 was–according to said professionals–too hostile to someone with my genetic and phenotypic makeup.

I proved those health professionals wrong by telling plenty of people about my diagnosis and being greeted with acceptance, but I was fortunate in how accepting those close to me turned out to be. As we’ve seen from opposition to SOGI implementation in some districts, not every intersex or trans youth (in our current climate) will necessarily be greeted with the same understanding.

It is this experience that has taught me the importance of creating inclusive classes where students have access to information about the broader spectrum of human existence. And I’m not just talking about in Sex Ed classes. If there had ever been an intersex character in a story in English class, or if there’d been a conversation about genotypic and phenotypic diversity in science class, or–yes–if there’d been education about intersex bodies and the risks inherent in Sex Ed (PHE these days), I could have been spared so much. So please, if ever you encounter resistance to SOGI curricula either in your own behaviour or in the behaviour of colleagues based on ideological resistance to orientations or anything else, please think of the biological sides of things that can also affect queer individuals in intersex, trans, or even cis bodies. There are plenty of pitfalls facing these individuals, and increased understanding can only be positive.

I love the concept of sketch-quotes, because I like it when information is presented to me visually. While reading the article, I immediately noted the reference to a John Mayer song, because as you can see from my laptop, I’m a big JM fan. I love the idea of incorporating lyrics and music into the English classroom, especially within a poetry unit. Sketch-quotes could be incorporated throughout a music/lyrics lesson. Perhaps students could be asked to visually depict a favourite lyric within a song, and explain their artistic choices/connections.

After the class discussion it made me think about ways I incorporate inclusion into my primary classroom. It made me think of a  few LGBTQ books for elementary that I’ve used (the first 3) and the others were recommended to me that I want to check out. My grade 2’s really enjoyed the books and none of them questioned the make up of families represented such as mom & mom or dad & dad, etc. I really want to learn more ways and educate myself on how to incorporate LGBTQ content in the younger years. The discussion that occurred today was incredible hearing everyone’s views and I appreciate those who shared their personal narratives. It would be great to hear what discussions occur at the elementary level and maybe this is something I will ask my colleagues in various schools and district.

Books: Worm loves Worm by J.J. Austrian, The Family Book by Todd Parr, In Our Mothers’ House by Patricia Polacco, Wings by Christopher Myers, and The Boy in the Dress by David Walliams.

This is the resource Aaron mentioned in the class literally just now:

https://loveintersections.com/

There is a fine line between succeeding or failing when it comes to presenting personal material. I found this especially relevant during my practicum. I never wanted to impose my own concerns, values, judgement on my students, however I knew that I would be most engaged and most passionate when I was teaching topics I found important. I experimented with sharing my  own experiences in a narrative format with students in one of my units and found it incredibly effective!

My SA was incredibly open and allowed me to experiment with new ideas, especially with the new English course: New Media. Since I had no experience with the course and limited resources to turn to, personal interests and experiences became incredibly important. So I created a unit concerned with misrepresentation and lack of representation in the media.

These past few years I have been branching out and seeking and thoroughly enjoying content that wouldn’t be canonical in books, movies, and television shows. As well as seeking out content in which I could identify aspects of myself in, which in high school I often found tough. This led me to believe that I was not made of a correct mold or felt my life experiences didn’t have the same value as the characters in the novels.

I wanted my students to understand that the canonical texts that they may have engaged with in high school so far was not an accurate representation of the reality they lived in. My concern of being over imposing quickly vanished with the engagement and interest that students showed throughout the unit. They were excited to challenge, question, and share their experiences through the unit and it was the most fun I had teaching as well!

At Tupper, for our HUM8 novel study, I used Touching Spirit Bear instead of The Outsiders (these were the class sets available – it was one or t’other). The kids loved it.

Without giving too much away, the story involves the protagonist discovering, performing, and learning through Tlingit animal dances – the whale dance; the wolf dance; the eagle dance; etc. They’re connected to the story’s major themes. They’re reflective of the protagonist’s personal journey. In a lot of ways, they’re at the heart of the novel.

18 students. 9 dances. Mana from planning heaven! I asked students to pair off, plan, rehearse, and perform a dance, then explain to their peers a) what the protagonist learned via their dance and b) what choices they’d made and why vis-à-vis interpreting their dance in the way that they did. I also gave them a sharp direction: “In doing this, we’re borrowing from and stepping into a culture not our own. Respect this…”

It went even better than I’d hoped…which was good, since FA and SA were observing. Straight up: kids love to move! – their dances were awesome; their explanations of the protagonist’s learnings and their own choices re. representing these learnings were inspired. More than this, though, the self-regulation and respect with which they participated blew me away – thinking about it, I think they took as much from negotiating this aspect of the activity as they learned about the novel through it. Maybe more.

Here is my go at playing with the idea of sketch quotes to match the Courageous Voices article. It quickly became enjoyable and the technique is effective for zeroing in on key points and big ideas, although it took a little while to start. A reader is forced to “close read” and consider what should be included. It allows for individuality and creativity, although it is more time-consuming than classic note-taking. One downfall is perhaps not having enough space to add as many details as I may with other formats as I was mindful of space and visual appeal (whereas my regular notes can look like a windstorm of words). I can see using this with students to pick out the big ideas, elements and key quotes for articles or story/poem/songs. It would be a helpful intro for further assignments which involve visual essays, infographics or detailed mind maps as a trial run to see what works well visually.

In thinking upon today’s class, I would like to introduce the idea of the current literary canon (in terms of both school and wider culture) as not necessarily in conflict with critical thinking. In other words, a wider canon exists that overlaps with the school environment that is the result of a back and forth between both the audience and the work. What I mean by this, is that a work cannot exist without an audience and in that work there can exist resonate themes that are recognizable by the audience. These themes and ideas would allow the survival and even reapplication of the work or just elements of it. Some examples of wider themes would be related to the concepts of the “heroes journey” and the “hero with a 1000 faces”. With this in mind, a significant amount of current literary canon could be seen as merely the result of years and even centuries of foundational work piling up to develop and create a larger story that resonates with the human condition. Using Shakespeare as an example of this, the more well known works (such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth) are better known for their larger themes then the actual events or multitude of characters in them (with unconditional love, revenge, and downfall as example themes). Even in the wider culture books like the Harry Potter series today do create a wider resonance with the audience that can be traced to both larger themes (coming of age and rebirth being the more obvious ones) and even basic and recognizable character structures (Dolores Umbridge being a ‘Tyrant with a smile’ similar to Anne Wilkes from Misery). Therefore, to expand upon some of the ideas in the “Courageous Voices” reading, would it be accurate to say that current literary canon is not so much the books themselves but the ideas and themes that exist within them. Do you agree or disagree?