Moving Beyond Poor Educational Experiences to Empower Students with Casper Oliver

Teaching While Queer is a podcast for two S LGBTQ plus educational professionals to share their experiences in academia. Hi, I'm your host, brian Stanton, a theater pedagogy and educator in New York City, and my goal is to share stories from around the world from two S LGBTQ plus educators. I hope you enjoy Teaching While Queer. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Teaching While Queer. I'm so excited for you all to meet Casper Oliver. Hi, casper, how you doing? I'm doing quite well. How about yourself? I'm doing really well. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? How do you identify with the community? What do you teach?

Of course. So hello, I am Casper Oliver. My pronouns are he, him and they, them. I am originally from rural southeastern Indiana, but I am now living in rural northwestern Oregon. Yeah so, and I lived in Florida. That's where I've done. Most of my teaching was in Florida and I've mostly worked in very young childhood education, like newborns to five year olds. So I was. I was teaching kids how to walk, how to talk, I was teaching the parents how to, you know, properly administer tummy time and like sensory play and getting kids socializing. So that was my specialty. So, which is a little different from like elementary or high school or whatever, but it was still very rewarding as a queer person who was able to help queer parents work with their, their new kids, and so it was. It was really nice. I haven't done education in a hot minute because I've turned to activism work, but it is still very near and dear to my heart, which is why I wanted to come on and talk about it.

Awesome. We'll talk a little bit about your activism work as well as we go along the episode. But I think what's really cool about it is that my goal is to kind of give a well rounded view of what it's like for educators, and so this season is wonderful because we have everything from newborns and toddlers to graduate student or graduate teachers. So it's like super cool to have the span of academia on the podcast this season because you really get a feel for the entire journey for queer teachers and not just like, oh, this is a high school podcast or this is for elementary or whatever it might be.

Yeah, because teaching comes in many, many forms and we have a lot of very different struggles, but at the end we kind of have all that similar goal of we just want to help educate people and we want to help people learn, you know, and that's, that's our goal.

Yeah, and I'm not going to lie, I feel like each level of teacher, you have your own like skill set that you need to have, and they're they're vastly different, like I don't know that I could successfully go into an education or into an elementary or pre-K classroom and be able to, like even get through the day.

Having just high school.

You know it's like it's a whole different wheelhouse.

And my I. For me, I'm like the opposite. I adore high school kids. I work with them, especially in entertainment and stuff, but when it comes to teaching, I'm like my knee jerk is to go full pre-K All right, kids, let's all sit down and clap along. And so when I start doing that with older kids, they look at me like um no, thank you. And I'm like listen, I'm sorry, I also don't want to be doing this, but here we are.

I love that. It's like default into the. Into the pre-K voice.

Yeah, that happens when I work retail as well, but people aren't, as they don't take it nearly as well, um, but but no, I love working with kids genuinely. Um, and I kind of stumbled into it by accident. I've always loved kids and I, you know, had younger steps of Blaine's growing up I was one of the oldest of all the cousins, you know so I I've worked with kids a lot, um, and so when I was in Florida, I was just doing that thing of I had my resume and I was passing it out at various businesses when that was still a thing, um, and I went into this like it looked like a daycare, um, it was called Gymboree and. I went in, yeah, I went in there and I was like you know, hey, uh, I would love to be a teacher here, and they were desperate, desperately in need for teachers, and so I got interviewed pretty quickly, after there was a fairly rigorous background check. Um, I think that was what took the longest was the background check, um, which I appreciate I remember saying during that I would be very suspicious if they weren't checking me this thoroughly. Um, yeah, but, and that job was wonderful uh, worked there until I think it was Hurricane Irma knocked down one of the locations. Like no one was injured, but the building was destroyed and so they couldn't offer the classes and they couldn't offer that. So, you know, lose work, but, um, very wonderful experience. And uh, now out here in Oregon, I mostly work with, uh unhoused youth and it's less teaching and more just kind of like helping them get on their feet. Uh, yes, yes, so kind of more gone into the advocacy part, and all of that is inspired by, kind of like, my experiences as a child, but that is a future question, so I will uh carry on.

I'm not going to lie, I have like a tiny bit of FOMO Gymboree the , because I remember when my daughter was little I was like that place looks so cool, we should do it, and then we never did. Um, and then she got old Like well, we missed the chance yeah.

No, it was. It was super fun and because at the time I was diagnosed with like maybe only a handful of my actual neurodivergencies disabilities, um, I didn't realize at the time that I'm autistic. I just so happened to get all of the autistic children in my class because I did the best with them and that was one of my pride and joys at. Gymboree was like I kind of ended up having the like unofficial most sensory friendly class and just because I was like well, that's how I wanted to be treated as a kid. Two years later I learned I'm autistic. Um, but Gymboree no,, it was especially. Did you ever go to any of the birthday parties that they host? A Gym.

No, I didn't have the opportunity. I remember walking by in the mall being like yeah, it's.

It's kind of one of those like they have classes, so they're kind of separated by age groups, right, and then they have free play times which they just open up the the location to be a free play gym and then they can also host you can rent out the location for birthday parties, and so it was this weird like I was half teacher, half retail associate and it was this like Because I was never just one, like even when I was on the floor I might have to take phone calls for the front desk, or Someone is like I love these bubbles, can I buy these bubbles? And then I have to go from teacher to retail mode and be like yes, they're 350 at the front counter, you can get checked out after and it. I Didn't like that. I will admit I did not care for that, I just wanted to focus on teaching. But what are you gonna do? You know, and you need the money.

Yeah, the money is true. So let's take that journey back in time. We don't have to go quite as far, as you know pre-k, but what was it like for you growing up as a queer?

student. Well, thankfully I didn't realize I was queer and pre-k. I still thought I was like a cis-het Baptist girl in pre-k, jokes on all of that, um. But and then they kind of started more in junior high. So like seventh, eighth grade, um, and and for non-American folks that would be, oh gosh, what age range is that like that's?

like 12, 13?.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 12, 13. So, oh, that's what I put in the the. The questionnaire was, like my tweens so kind of like 12, 13 years old, and I was in very rural conservative Indiana, um, and Say it was tough. I Tried to remain in the closet but I ended up outed by a former friend of mine we'll put it that way and After that moment it was kind of just this whole. Well, everyone knows now and they don't believe me when I say it's not true. So I might as well just be it. You know, like I Can be myself. Everyone's gonna hate me anyway. I mean that's super like nihilistic, but it's like in that kind of situation. It was like, well, if they're gonna be mean either way, I might as well just be true to myself.

I, I feel that because I I think that's what my experience was like in high school. Like I was outed. I was outed very publicly in high school and also to my parents, and I was able to kind of like sneak back into the closet with my parents for a bit, but like at school, I Was just who I was. Because, because of that exact thing where, like, people aren't gonna believe me Even, if I told them it wasn't true, or like that. I was still trying to figure out which, in reality, that's what it was. I was still trying to figure things out, but yeah, no, I get that totally and so I did have.

I can't say that there were like no People that were supportive. You know there were some of the school guidance counselors, you know did their best but you know we all know severely underfunded, managing way too many students and Some of my teachers primarily Not strictly but ironically a lot of art teachers Like one of my English teachers was super, like it was that trope of oh, you're a queer kid, were you best friends with your English teacher or your theater teacher? And I didn't take theater in School as desperately as I wanted to. I was actually too gay For the theater and I was like you just wait, given about 20 years, it's gonna get so much worse, it's so much gayer. Um I. But yeah, I clung to a lot of like my English teachers and my mother was very supportive. Like I came out to her, she literally came out to me in return Was like, hey, do you want to know one of the reasons why your dad and I didn't work out? But you know, so like I had a. Yeah, so I had a supportive home life with her, with that Peers in school, not so much until late high school. I went to a lot of different schools I ended up going to a charter school as one of the three types of high schools I went to. I went to like you know, your kind of general way too massive high school that's got like 60 kids in a class with one teacher, that sort of thing. So I went to like two of those. And then I went to a new tech school so they were trying to like yeah, so it was like one of those in like small Bloomington Indiana. They were trying to like get kids more technologically literate before, you know, going into college loved that school Closed down, unfortunately, but I know that I'm still connected with a lot of my teachers and they ended up teaching elsewhere. And then I went to a charter school and the charter school was kind of known for taking in all the kids that got kicked out of the public schools. So while most of the kids that were in the school had and no judgment for me whatsoever like, had, like like criminal records or, you know, had gotten into a lot of fights and got kicked out of other schools, there were also a fair amount of other students similar to me who, while there weren't any like records or misbehavior, it was just we could not academically succeed in any of the other public schools. Like you know, being a disabled, you know child with ADHD, autism and all these other things I was dealing with my grades were horrendous in school and so I ended up going to this discharter school that was very accepting Like a cap of 150 students never anymore, they had like 12 or 13 staff members at all times. It shared a building with like a Sino-Rama and another building, so like it was in a building strip with multiple other businesses. Best school I ever went to, also the most amount of like violent altercations I witnessed in my lifetime in that building. Still, the best school I ever went to because the teachers cared, the teachers cared and were open and honest. And even if, like you know, two kids got into a fist fight in the hallway you know me and that same kid could go to Arby's and if some you know dude in a suit calls me a slur at the checkout line, that kid who just got into a fight with me is going to bat for me because it's like no, no, no, it's like I can make fun of them, I can fight them, but you do not get to. And that was the vibe of the students, because we were all surviving, we weren't thriving in a high school experience. None of us were looking forward to prom. We were all hoping that we could survive the year. You know we were. A lot of us were hoping that we could just survive high school, you know, and I lost a lot of friends who didn't survive high school, you know, and I think that's kind of one of the things that pushed me to working with kids was knowing that like I got through it, but a lot of my friends kind of like that Demi Lovato song Dead Friends, you know, it's kind of like I want to do something in honor of the kids who didn't make it and make sure that that number continues to go down. So yeah, my schooling was very rough and I am an open book about it, but I'd rather talk about the happier things right now. Oh for sure, but yeah. So my, my schooling experience overall sucked. Most of it took place in rural, conservative Indiana where, like abstinence was the only thing you were taught. Dare was still happening well into my, like, later school years. All of these things that are proven not to work, you know. But yeah. So thankfully, now that I'm stepping into education, while I'm not working with those same age ranges, I'm working with much younger kids With my activism work. That's kind of where I'm hoping to step back in with, like, older kids and help with youth groups and stuff like that. So that's kind of my personal buildup to why I'm here.

Yeah, I think it was. It's definitely interesting. Your story is a different route than most people here, especially the fact that you had not the greatest experiences in education and then you chose. You chose to come back and be an educator is like a huge deal, because it shows just the importance and the impact that the teachers had on you, who actually cared and connected with you, Because I'd be willing to say that without those people, you probably wouldn't have wanted to like be a teacher at that.

No, thank you, no literally like I had, and I'm very open about this because I feel there's no shame. I had to repeat my senior year, so I was one of those super seniors you know, I went throughout twice and because of like health issues and everything else, I actually dropped out and I ended up getting my GED before taking some college classes right. And so when I got out of high school I never imagined I would ever want to step back into any sort of educational facility, even though I loved the teachers I had had at that charter school. I was like I made it by the skin of my teeth. You cannot make me go back. But then I got the job at Gymboree and I realized that it felt better to jump in and help and be the adult that I needed as a kid for others. That felt infinitely better than just avoiding it. You know, like I didn't have anything else that was fulfilling me at the time and that did and it still does to this day. So yeah, I kind of I joke affectionately and I say this with as much lighthearted energy as possible. It's kind of like when I look at my dad and realize, ah, there's a checklist of all the things not to do as a dad. You know, that's kind of how I look at my educational experience Like all right, these are the check things of what not to do as a teacher. You know, don't let students throw lit matches at the one pagan kid in the class saying burn the witch. You know like wild fucking thought, sorry language, but it's just like I understand that teachers are underpaid and overstressed. I've been there, I get it. My wife is also in academia. She's in like higher education in colleges. We get it. At the same time, if you see students throwing lit matches at another student, stop them, please. I cannot. I'm like bare minimum. Or maybe I completely understand teaching kids how to light matches, to light the Benson burners, but maybe don't let just kids sit and play with a bunch of matches at the table either.

That's new. It's funny because, like when my this brought up two stories for me, one when I was in junior high school I had like I was like dating this girl could be. Now that's what you know, yeah. And when we broke up or whatever, at one point she slapped me like full on backhanded slap and it was like thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. And I was like, oh my God, she went full Catholic on me right now, like she's just like, so taken back, oh my God, because I was like here I am, you know 12 and 13, discovering that like I'm actually Wiccan and that is the belief system that I believe in. That makes the most sense to me. She's like pow, yeah. It was like I don't think I've ever been physically hit with the Bible, ever before or after that. It just felt like yeah, like the words came right out of her hand.

It was weird, gosh yeah, I was, I was for me. It was a lot of. I have this one friend I'm not going to say his name clearly, but I have this one friend when we were kids and he, I feel, genuinely meant so well and looking back I'm like, oh, you were indoctrinated hard and I hope you got out of it because, honestly, I would not be surprised if he later realized he was gay. But when he learned about, like me, being queer and me being pagan and practicing like witchcraft and stuff, he was so passively like write little Bible verses on paper and give it to me and he's like wave and then would walk away and I'd be standing there in the middle of the hallway wearing my Evanescence t-shirt with my lesbian butch hair cut and like my nightmare before Christmas sling bag and I'm like, uh, blessed be my dude. What?

Yeah, indeed, you just described Hot Topic right there for a moment, like that was Hot Topic during that time period.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, I miss I. I love what Hot Topic is now and I know that people still love it and I I love that for them. I personally miss what Hot Topic and GameStop were, both more like you know, because I I don't know how to explain it to someone who wasn't there but it just felt more like. It feels so more saturated, so much more like how do you like water down now? It feels much more watered down now.

It's sell out? Yes, it's kind of the vibe of it. Yeah, it's definitely for money, as opposed to the statements that there were being made in the past, at least Hot Topic is, and the thing for GameStop, because everything is incredibly expensive and you can, you know, sell your Switch for a dollar.

Yeah, that's why I just sell. Whenever I have a bunch of used games, I sell them for like a couple of bucks. Whenever I've ended events, I'm like these are perfectly good condition. I just didn't want to take them to GameStop. And it works, I sell these games.

They'll be like 50 cents yeah. And I'm like no this is like, and we'll put it on your account. You know, back in the day you gave me 50 bucks.

Yeah, literally. See if you have any indie game Literally Listeners. See if you have any indie game stores near you. I know not every town does, but see if you do. Also, check out your local library. A lot of libraries let you rent video games so to put your local library Anyway absolutely.

Yeah so let's PSA support your local library folks. Yes, so let's talk a little bit about your, your gender journey. So my in hearing your story, you were outed as a lesbian and then later on you have this whole gender transformation that happened. So let's talk a little bit about what that experience was like.

Yeah. So when I was a kid, the first label I ever used, ever was bisexual. I liked the term. I still like the term. Is it fitting anymore? Meh, but that's, that's where it all started, right. And then I got outed as a lesbian and I was kind of in this state of I know I'm queer, like I know that I'm not straight, so I must be a lesbian, right? Because I didn't have any of the language or the experience or whatever. And then I started getting into anime and I learned about Yowie and I would find those boy love comic books in like Barnes and Noble or whatever, like secondhand bookstore, and I got hooked. And it was this many, many, many, many, many, many year long battle of I once had a boy love comic book and I was like I want to have this in the sense of like this, that I'm reading this, like this boy love Yowie manga. I want to experience this kind of thing. I want to, I want to feel that this is the kind of like not in the whole, because like it's almost like looking at a romance novel and going, oh, I want something exactly like that. No, we all know that all of these are toxic or messy or whatever. But it's it's fiction, it's entertainment, it's fine. I'm just really wanting that to. Oh God, I'm fetishizing gay men. I'm just as bad as like straight girls with their gay best friends. I can't be fetishizing my own community. I'm blah, blah, blah. And so I kind of forced myself into this box of like lesbian or queer woman I dated I. It was fine. You know, I'm still friends with a lot of my exes and for a long time I thought like I kind of struggled with what was romantic attraction and what was platonic attraction and everyone around me was like, oh, the quintessential queer girl experience. So, since everyone around me seems to be dealing with that same kind of disconnect, I didn't think anything of it, you know. And then I met a trans woman in Indianapolis and that kind of started changing everything for me. And you know, when I realized that trans was not only a thing but it was an option, you know, and I, the first term I learned was gender queer. That was like I think this was before non binary really became like the cover word for it, because everyone was still using gender queer and that's the term I, that's my favorite gender term, because I just want everything about me is queer and I started to explore that and I started to. You know, I've always been doing cosplay and so I would usually cosplay male characters and I would typically role play male characters and whenever I wrote media as I got older the characters all started to become male, like all of my perspectives were going through like a male perspective and eventually I like realized, oh, I am non binary. And that was in high school, like early high school, so probably like my freshman or sophomore year, and at first I was just out with my friends my age because I learned about it at a place called IYG Indiana youth group. If you live near Indianapolis, it is a wonderful resource for queer youth. I think they also opened up in a location in Connorsville, indiana, so this is just for my Hoosier listeners, but yeah, so IYG was great. At the time it was just stationed out of some old house near downtown. That became this safe hub for queer kids between the ages of I think it was like 13 or 14 to like I think you aged out at 20. And they would have like adults there to run support groups and movie nights and dance parties and it was wonderful. And that was where I really got to start exploring my gender and really further exploring my sexuality because I finally knew other people. I wasn't just refined like, I wasn't restricted to the confines of Trevororg, those old chat rooms they had I don't know if they still do. Trevororg is amazing though, the Trevor Project phenomenal, but it's great to have in person connections when you can. I tried coming out first.

Can you hold on one second, chloe, open the door. What do you need? It's okay. What do you need? She? Says you can have a refill of Fanta. Can you find out, kevin next time? Yes, thank you, sorry. I couldn't.

And then a train.

Oh yeah, I live right next to a train station in New York City, so it's.

Yeah.

No worries, we all got to experience a little bit of my daughter, chloe. No, I love that, so you were out to your friends in High School.

Yes, yeah. So I was out to my friends. I came out to my mom and dad. Both have very different responses to me coming out. So, and all of this is saying, none of my teachers ever knew, because I didn't feel it mattered, because the survival mode that I was in, I just didn't care about what language like if they were calling me my birthday or whatever pronouns they were using for me. So it's not that the staff at my schools at the time didn't care, it was just I wasn't open about it to them. So my mom, she looked so confused when I told her I was like I don't think I'm a girl, I think I'm a boy, I don't know. My mom kind of just was like, so, like the Laverne Cox lady, but the other way, and I was like yeah, that was like a really great reference right. Yeah, and I was like that kind of shows, what kind of TV my mom watched. And so I was like, yeah, basically sure, yes, simplistic terms, yes, exactly. And she was the one who took me to get my first like boy haircut. She like walked me through the boy section of Goodwill and other thrift stores Like she tried she really did. My dad, on the other hand. I came out to him around my junior year of high school, yeah, and I was like I'm not a girl. I don't know if I'm a boy or not, but I know I'm not a girl and my dad was just like this sounds like it could also be like body image issues. Do you think if you maybe just lost some weight, you'd feel better? Keep in mind me and both of my parents. All three of us are fat. All three of us have chubby, stocky builds, like we're Scottish build. We are meant for like hearty weather. That was the last thing I expected from my dad ever, cause I was like you're the one who's always telling me to accept and love my fat and now you're telling me to lose weight cause you don't like what I'm. Make it make sense. So eventually I left Indiana and it was. It was kind of on and off. I ended up going back into the closet. Instead of being trans masculine, I was just feminine, non-binary, cause it was safer and, while feminine, non-binary super valid, I know so many people that that has been their identity for ages and will continue to be. It wasn't me, it wasn't right for me and it was very detrimental to shove myself back into the closet. When marriage came into the picture between my wife and I, I was like, hey, if I'm going to make this kind of commitment, I have to be my true and authentic self. I need to transition. And she's been one of my biggest cheerleaders and now with me working in activism and any time that I've worked with kids out in Oregon I've been like the one guy on staff working in these daycares, cause it's usually like women and other femmes, and then it's me. They're like super fruity, like just super queer gay guy on staff. But yeah, so that's kind of been my gender journey. And when I started to explore my non-binary journey and like being more open about it in college I went to an artsy school, so a lot of my professors were like super chill. They were like just tell me what to call you and I was like great which. Looking back I was like where did that energy go in Florida?

I mean, I know educators are still like that. I don't think it's the educators.

yeah, no no, it's the educators. I have hope for the educators. It's everything surrounding the educators that is concerning me. But yeah, and now out here in Oregon, I've been very lucky to have literally like no issues with that. I'm getting my top surgery in November, so I'm very excited and yeah, so I know that that wasn't super like education or school time heavy, but that was kind of a very brisk explanation of my gender journey, which still took a couple of minutes. But there you go.

This is good. Fair enough, it's your story, so that's what we're here for. What are the things that I I also don't know.

go ahead. I was just gonna say I don't know how to end a sentence so often. I'll just and yeah, I'll trail off waiting for, like you, to step back in and just take over, cause I don't know what a period is. I guess I wasn't an English teacher.

So this is where it's gonna be so fun for you to listen to this episode later on. So, thinking about having worked with such small kids, I know that there's this like push about young kids and queer people and there's a big push about like, basically, that we need to just stay away from children, right, and so did you ever deal with any queer phobia while you were working at Gymboree or with parents and any of the places that you've been working?

I have been very lucky and this is a privilege that I hold very dear to my heart that I have had some amazing parents. When I worked at Gymboree it actually kind of became this thing when they had someone who people could tell at a glance I was queer. I've kind of just always been like that, I guess, and because of that I think I just kind of attracted the queer parents of like the lesbian moms who have a baby and don't want to be judged for there not being a dad in the picture, or two dads who bring their kids in and are like no, it's me and my husband, we are the dads. No, there is no mom, just all of those little things Cause to me. I was like oh, are you the guardians? Great, come on in, let's play. I didn't care if it was Auntie, grandma, titha, whoever, babysitter, I didn't care, as long as the kids were happy to be here and the guardians were there to do their part of the job. You know they stay there to monitor the kids. I do the teaching, at least for the super young kids.

Yeah, yeah.

But I do have experience with like preparing for that. My manager at Gymboree was a beanpole level woman, but she was very tall and at first glance she's not very intimidating. But what you quickly realize when you start to get her energy is that she is a Australian military veteran, mother of two boys and she takes nothing. She and she was also very protective of her staff and her students and the parents of the students. There was actually this one time a guy off the street came in and like started flirting with me at the front counter and like backed me into a corner. It was this whole thing, right, and she threatened him with a shovel. She's like, if he ever steps back in here and starts harassing my teachers again, I'm getting that shovel from the back shed. I was like, oh, which, we love that energy. We need someone who's going to protect the people under their care, you know. But no, I more heard parents telling me about their experiences with queerphobia and I've dealt with harassment online. I'm a drag performer. I perform in front of children. Inevitably I get called very nasty things, even though my acts are family friendly, you know, yeah, or even if they're like PG-13, the parents knew Going in what was happening. All of the kids knew they're like, hey, you got five minutes until this thing happens If you want to leave. You know we got refreshments outside, we got the snacks and everyone had a great time, you know. So it's never come from parents. It's come, oh, at least parents of students. I've worked with Parents that have worked with me directly. It's been people who've never met me, people who make assumptions about what happens in my classroom, people who make assumptions about how queer people are, that show that they don't know a single queer person, you know. So, yeah, I take that as an immense privilege that I haven't had to worry about that specific regard when it's come to education. Thankfully, I left Florida and also kind of left teaching before it started to get really bad in Florida. But yeah, that's been my personal experience. I love that.

I think that it's a unique and different perspective to be able to like have other people sharing their stories of queerphobia with you. It's nice to not have your own kind of. From the educational realm I wanted to talk briefly about. You said you had the most sensory experience. About. You said you had the most sensory friendly classroom. And so for all my pre-K and kindergarten first second grade teachers out there, like, what tips do you have on making a sensory friendly classroom for students who may have autism?

So I was dealing within some pretty strict Gymboree because , while I worked at a franchise, is still a corporate business and so you have to do things within the very strict corporate way. You know, it's kind of the nature of things. But some of the things that he did do I actually stopped wearing very intense perfumes or colognes when I would teach. It would just be deodorant enough to cover the smell that my body is going to make over the course of the day, because very intense smells, especially to very young people who they'll smell a smell and, like you know, we're going to know, oh, that someone's perfume this four and a half year old isn't going to know that it's just, yeah, like very intense smell. They may even taste it, you know, and you don't know how that's going to affect. So a very easy role for me is being relatively fragrance free, that kind of that. That was actually genuinely a little tough. As an autistic person, I love smell sensory, so I love to smell very strongly of things. But I love my students more, so I will wear very intense smells while grocery shopping and only deodorant when I teach. Other things that I would do are make sure that the music isn't too loud, because we would always have music playing in the background. But I would always make sure that it was just loud enough to make sure that the room wasn't quiet, you know, because sometimes that deafening silence is just as bad, but just enough for a little background noise. You know, as I've gotten older and when I started to work at the daycare and I could actually choose what music I played, I actually chose music without any words to it when it was time for them to be focusing on other things. So it's like oh, we're doing play time, oh we're we're doing things that I want them to focus on in the music is strictly for ambiance. I don't want them to have to also mentally filter out the lyrics of the music. So I would play, like Stardew Valley soundtrack music, just very calm, ambient, you know, simple instruments. Also, if you are able to kind of figure out what toys you're able to have, making sure that you have a wide variety of toys that are kept clean and I know that I'm probably not going to have to get on any preschool teacher for keeping those stuff clean. Usually they're pretty good about that. But that is a huge thing is that you have to keep them clean, because if they get sticky, if that, if they are this unexpected sensory, then that's not going to help. Another thing if you're able to control snacks I do I am the first to encourage children to eat fruits and veggies. But if you're giving out snacks, you can give a handful of blueberries and all five of those blueberries can taste drastically different. But if you give them a handful of crackers, all five of those crackers are going to taste probably exactly the same. They're going to prefer the crackers because they know what to expect and it's not a risk, you know. So that's like that's kind of a snack inclusion. So, yeah, also lights. Make sure lights aren't too bright, especially if you have to deal with overhead, like fluorescent lighting or whatever that could really cause headaches, eye strain, not just in students, but also yourself, your peers and the parents. So, yeah, lighting, sound, fragrance, and I think I covered one of each of the five senses actually. But, yeah, so that would those would be my primary suggestions.

I love it. I think that's fantastic because I work on, like, how do I create sensory friendly performances and a lot of things you touched on where, like lights and the sound and how we do those things, and if there are any special effects, making sure that if we use them, that they don't smell, and whatnot, and so it's interesting to me that, like, the things that I'm looking at from a performance perspective are the same things we want to include just an everyday classroom, yeah, so that is. That's super fun. So I'm going to go ahead and get us wrapped up here. I have one question for you before I turn the table and let you ask me a question. But, in your opinion, what do you think that academia, just the school environment, the school community, can do to make schools safer for two SLGBTQ plus students?

So I sorry my brain thought of a couple of ways to word a potential joke. I guess I'll scrap the joke. Just one thing I'll use the term unionize, but more as shorthand, not like actually go and unionize, because while I love unions, I don't really know how they work. So I'm not going to touch on that. But what I will say is that coming together with fellow educators straight, queer, cis, trans, aro, alo, whatever polyamorous, monogamous If we can all come together and I'll, but for I forget, I've gotten more crap about being a polyamorous teacher than being a gay teacher Make that make sense. I could manage two healthy relationships and that's a bad thing, I don't know. Anyway, sorry, sorry, sorry. Everyone having a community to help each other with spreading and sharing resources, whether it's like hey, I used this in my classroom and it was a huge help. Or, you know, one of my students or one of my parents shared this with me and I thought, you know, someone else may be able to use this as well as educating ourselves. Listen, I am queer, trans, disabled, pagan, right, I could speak all about that, but I am white, super white. I will never know what it's like to have the color of my skin affect the way people treat me. So I have to actively educate myself on that so I can know how my students are going to be affected, because if I want to be there for queer kids, I have to be there for the queer kids of color, and I can only do that effectively if I educate myself on their experiences. We are educators, but that means that, more than anything, we should be constantly learning. Just because you're a teacher, I feel like it is more important for teachers to be continuously learning than anyone else maybe besides like scientists, you know, because that's like their job. But I feel like teachers, if you want to teach, you must constantly be updating yourself and constantly be like checking yourself. And you know, because there's been times that I was like, oh, did you know that the human body does X, Y and Z because of this, and I was so confident on it, only to learn that that got disproven, you know, like that was a theory, you know, and and if I was teaching that sort of stuff, I would have been spreading misinformation, even if I didn't mean to you know, and so holding yourself accountable and if you are safe and able, this is not a doable thing for everyone and this is a personal choice for everyone to make but something that I have found to be very rewarding and again I have had a very smooth time of it but being open about yourself with your kids, even if it's in little ways like I've met teachers who will have like those beaded bracelets that have, like pride, flag colors on it, but that's like it. And if the kids know, they know, because kids are smart, kids are real smart and if they pick up on those things, they'll know. And they'll know they're safe in your classroom. Even if they're not safe in the hallway, even if they're not safe in the lunchroom, even if they're not safe in the bathroom, they can be safe in your classroom. And, considering how dangerous schools can be nowadays in America, we desperately need for kids to feel any semblance of safety as well as teachers. If y'all don't, if we don't feel safe, the kids aren't gonna feel safe. So building, yeah, so making your classroom a safe space. If you are able to have queer friendly and other types of diverse books in your classroom, if you're able to do it, if you're able to promote banned books and, like you know, suggests, like you know your local library, or if you can't do any of these things, point them to your local library because your library probably is doing all of these things. So those would be kind of my suggestions on building safer spaces in communities for queer and otherwise marginalized students.

Awesome. So now, as your turn, you get to ask me a question before we wrap things up today.

I hope for the listeners' sake. You haven't already answered this one, so tell me if you have, and then I'll pick another one. Has anyone asked you about what your favorite thing about teaching is?

No, I haven't gotten that. It's funny because I've been a professional singer and actor and I've done a lot of directing and I've done some stage managing and all these things. But where I find myself thriving is like pulling the creativity out of other people, which is where the directing kind of comes into play as well. But that is my favorite part is when one of my students has been working on something and they finally get it and it's just brilliant and they have this moment of like oh, I got it this is it, this is what we've been working on, and that, for me, is like the moment that makes it worth it, because it's like allowing someone to see their full potential and like really grow into that. I also really enjoyed because I'm a high school teacher. I love watching the transition of the senior year happen, because I honestly believe that's the best year because I get to watch children become little adults. They're not full-fledged adults yet, but like there is definitely this maturity that happens in the senior year that even between the first semester and the second semester there's a whole shift in how those students behave, and so I think that's another thing, is just kind of like being able to watch these life transitions in real time and going dang. I had these same students for four years. I remember when they were like a pipsqueak 13 year old and now they're this adult. In fact, one of my friends her daughter, was one of my students and I moved to New York city and she lives here. And I'm just like you live here and I find that so amazing, just like I remember you when you were 13 or 14 and just getting going, and this now you're a person who lives in New York city by yourself. Yeah, so yeah, it's just been a fun thing to watch. It's just kind of like watching the evolution of my students. But hey, thank you so much for coming on the episode today. I really enjoyed it. You have such a unique perspective, not only because of your own experiences, but because of, like, the age range that you taught, which I think is so cool, and so thank you for coming on. And thank you all at home for joining us and this episode. Have a great day and thank you for joining us on this episode of teaching while queer. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, make sure to subscribe. Wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, Leave a review and that would help out tremendously. You can also support the podcast by going to wwwteachingwhilequeercom and hit support the show. Thanks so much and have a great day.