A Month of Queer Thriving: Practical Suggestions for Fostering Queer Thriving via Teaching Practice
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Authors
Lewis, Tristan M.
Date
2024-05-16
Type
other
Language
en
Keyword
Alternative Title
A Month of Queer Thriving: 20 Ways to Queer Your Classroom
Abstract
This Master’s project provides teachers with a resource to foster queer thriving via teaching practice in the form of twenty cards which offer daily suggestions to promote a culture of queerness in the classroom. The marginalization of queer and trans students in schools is primarily being addressed through anti-homophobia efforts and “safe spaces” such as Gender and Sexuality Alliances (GSAs). This paper moves away from deficit discourses surrounding 2SLGBTQIA+ students and envisions a departure from reactive responses to homophobia and bullying as a way to aid queer and trans students in schools, while also inviting students who have not openly declared themselves to be part of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community to engage in queerness on their own terms. The initial portion of the paper serves as a scholarly foundation for the project and provides a conceptual framework built on conceptions of thriving, desire, hospitality, and queer pedagogies. The latter portion of the project is the resource for teachers, which draws on the conceptual framework in the paper to create guiding and reflection questions for the teacher-user, as well as twenty suggestions to foster queer thriving via one’s teacher practice in the form of double-sided cards. The resource presents teachers with an alternative pedagogical practice that imagines instruction beyond cisheteropatriarchal norms.