“It’s a Great Day to Be Gay”: Localized Reimagining of Reading and Teaching LGBTQ+ Literature by Kelli Rushek, Sarah Abdella, Maya Manaster, & Hannah Myers

2/19/2024

As English educators and English Language Arts teachers, we know that teaching is never apolitical. When educators and curriculum writers fail to include texts, voices, and identity representations in curricular materials, they are making political moves by omission. Yet, for preservice and in-service teachers, navigating the local sociopolitical contexts of public schools can be tenuous when those spaces deem the existence of marginalized sexual identities - either by law or de facto - as topics that are ‘controversial.’ It is important for English educators to demystify the idea of what is ‘controversial’ in ELA spaces and engage preservice teachers in sensemaking around the particular threshold concept that teaching is inherently political in order to include every student - at every identity marker - in coordinated efforts of literacy engagement.

What is deemed controversial is often localized, and these spaces are governed by local laws and ethoses that can often be at odds with the educators’ personal philosophies and lived identities. Disrupting the dehumanizing status quo in these spaces can require a lot of bravery, especially for a teacher new to the district or local schooling context (e.g., Rushek, Vlach, and Phan, 2023). Therefore, it is the teacher educator’s job to address this praxial at–odds-ness with their preservice teachers. This Monday Motivator blog post explains how three preservice ELA teachers in Kelli’s Literature and Other Media for Adolescents course went about tackling this at–odds-ness in the reading and teaching of young adult literature that features LGTBQ+ protagonists.

In Weeks 13 and 14 of the course, students are engaged in a module entitled “Removing the ‘Controversy’ from Teaching LGTBQIA+ Literature,” in which they engage with critical scholarship about the topic [see Figure 1]. In Week 14, students chose between six YAL texts that feature protagonists that identify as LGTBQ+. Choices for those preparing to teach secondary ELA were Kacen Callender’s (2020) Felix Ever After, Isaac Fitsimmons’ (2021) The Passing Playbook (set in rural Ohio, so of particular interest to the context of our teacher education program), Adbi Nazemian’s (2019) Like a Love Story, and Gabby Rivera’s (2016) Juliet Takes a Breath (either graphic novel or prose version). Choices for those preparing to teach middle grades ELA included Alex Gino’s (2015) Melissa and Ashley Herring Blake’s (2018) Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World.

During Week 13 in the Fall of 2023, students were asked to come to class prepared to give a “one minute announcement” about their individual deep dive into the news and local law-making attempts surrounding gender and sexuality where our teacher preparation program is located in Ohio. Kelli purposefully did not assign news articles or readings onto the syllabus at the beginning of the semester, knowing that things were bound to change between August and November, for better or for worse. When the students entered the classroom, they were engaged in a turn and talk exoscaffolding activity [see Figure 2] before heading into student-designed-and-led Deep Discussion of the scholarly articles and an Application Activity to synthesize and apply the knowledge gained from the readings.

Sarah, Maya, and Hannah took the floor, and led the rest of their 20 preservice ELA preservice teacher colleagues in a Deep Dive into the Local Context of LGTBQ+ issues [See Figure 3]. They asked their peers to share and synthesize their “one minute announcements” of the news and local lawmaking in the state. A very deep discussion ensued, that left students both hopeful (particularly disparaging laws aren’t being passed) and dejected (certain school districts’ school boards queer censorship and book banning attempts raising fear in English teachers).

In Kelli’s experience as an ELA teacher and current teacher educator, after holding these and similar critical discussions, those who engage in them generally leave class with that same tenuous, joint hopeful-discouraging feeling. The world is hard, democracy is crumbling, young and old people are oppressed for their sexual identities, and somehow ELA teachers are supposed to wade through this mire and persevere, disrupt, and keep their jobs in order to do the disruption. It is the critical educator’s theory-to-practice conundrum.

However, after this particular evening, we did not leave with this feeling, as Maya, Hannah, and Sarah engaged us in a multimodal (re)framing activity that left us feeling empowered and hopeful, even if for the duration of the class period. Inspired by the previous module (Representation in the Reimagination of Worlds: Who Gets to Be Fantastical?), in which the preservice teachers engaged with speculative fiction scholarship by Toliver (2020), Toliver and Miller (2019), and Worlds and Miller (2019) as well read from a list of young adult speculative fiction, the preservice teachers facilitating the lesson decided to apply their understandings of possibilities within speculative fiction to that of fiction featuring LGTBQ+ protagonists and issues. They asked us to create the front page of a newspaper that we wished to see in the media surrounding queer education [see Figures 4 & 5], and they gave us a model [Figure 7]. The class was immediately abuzz, collaboratively working in groups, ideas, chart paper, and markers flowing.

“It’s a Great Day to be Gay! Local High School Students Stage Walkout to Oppose Anti-Queer Legislation”... “It was a beautiful thing to see,” says local conservative School Board member.
“The Rural Ohio Times: Integrating LGBTQIA+ Curriculum Into English Classes Welcomed”
“Local High School Board Unanimously Agrees to Add Gender-Inclusive Bathrooms in all Buildings”
“Rivera’s Juliet Takes a Breath Chosen for School-Wide Book Club”

When we presented our newspaper front pages (of which we left hanging in the classroom so all courses using the room could see… which is why we don’t have photographs, unfortunately), we were applauding, whooping, high fiving, smiling. We felt part of the same (literal) page. We felt weirdly hopeful, like we had changed a localized, anti-queer narrative, even if only in our space. Sarah, Hannah, and Maya led us in some application questions [See Figure 6], and we were able to name and identify why this matters for the teaching and learning of ELA, for our queer selves, our queer brethren, and our queer students.