Creating Safe Classroom Spaces with Jake Noble

Teaching While Queer is a podcast 2SLGBTQ+ educational professionals to share their stories in academia. Hi, I'm Bryan Stanton, host of Teaching While Queer. We are a proud member of the educational podcast network and can't wait for you to hear our stories from around the world of LGBTQ educators, administrators and, well, anyone who works in academia. Hello everyone and welcome to Teaching While Queer. We are in a brand new season and I am so excited to bring to you Jake Noble. Hi, Jake, how are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty fantastic. Tell me a little bit about your yourself. What do you teach in how to identify within the community?

Yeah, totally. I am out in Williamsburg, Virginia, right now and I teach theater here in Williamsburg. I identify as non-binary my pronouns are they them. I also identify as queer within the queer community. I grew up in Indianapolis, all my life Indiana. I went to school at Ball State University for theater education and I just finished my first year of teaching back in June. We're still new to it. We're still pretty new to it.

Love that. I love it. My first year of teaching was five years ago, and so I don't know what's worse having to come into teaching after COVID or having to survive teaching during COVID. So maybe we'll dive a little into your experience this year, totally, maybe we can assess. Yeah, but talk about your childhood a little bit. What was it like for you growing up as a queer student?

Yeah, so I, from a really young age, I knew that something was just a little different about me, because I just I didn't really fit in well with a lot of the things that my family did. So I grew up in a really like we are a tight-knit family and we're very backwards, I would say, is a good way to describe them. So my whole life it was always, you know, sports, everything centered around sports and all these things that just didn't interest me. So I knew that for me something was just different and that it wasn't really something that I identified with my family. But I didn't really come to terms with what it was until about my senior year of high school. But growing up I never really fit in with a lot of the people around me and I did all the things that I thought I was expected to do, like play football and, you know, hang out with the bros and all that type of stuff. But it wasn't me. And so I did that all the way through high school and I just I kept building and building and building on you know, there's just something that I'm not talking about with myself and I joined theater. My sophomore year of high school I stopped doing sports and so once I joined theater it was kind of like the stepping stone into finding myself, because up until that point I had never really done anything for myself. That was an act of expression for myself. And I had a fantastic theater teacher. I got to student teach with her. It was great, I absolutely loved her. She was like one of the very first people to make me feel validated in who I was and she allowed that space for expression and things like that. And she knew before I knew we had this conversation all the time and when I was student teaching with her, but she always just was pushing me to be my best self and be my most authentic self. And on the back of it I now realize that she was looking out for me and just really wanted me to fully accept that. And you know, growing up I never really had any influences around me of the queer community. There was really no one around me that teachers, family and those who were in my family who did identify with the queer community. We never really talked about them. So going into this whole thing, I was just like I don't know what this is. And through my friends I had a bunch of friends in high school who we all kind of came out around the same time together, but up until then we didn't really have anyone to look to, and so that was hard for me and that was like something that I really needed when I was in high school and needed in middle school. And I think if I would have been exposed to someone sooner and talked about it sooner, I would have found myself so much sooner. And it was January of my senior year when I finally came out and it was just a moment in time that just led me on this path. That I am now, and it kind of is a big reason. Why I became a teacher too is because I wanted to show students and I love theater, I love teaching theater, but at the same time I wanted to show students in this space that I didn't have. I didn't have someone like me when I was in high school, and so I wanted to show kids that there is life when you're older as a queer person. We do these things that you see, you don't get to see us at doing a lot of times. So that was kind of my high school experience. It was kind of just like an unknown territory at first, and then just a full explosion into the world. And then it really wasn't until my junior year of college when I started really questioning my gender identity. All the way up until my junior year of college I had gone by he, him, and that just always felt like every time I would say it I'd be like, yeah, that's it, yeah, that's the one. And then it wasn't COVID. It started shut down school, my sophomore year of college, so junior year, we were fully online and I got COVID and was forced to be alone with myself for quite a long time and in there I had some reflections with myself and went back and forth. And when I came back to our apartment I told my roommates I was like, guys, I think my pronouns are going to be he day, my pronouns are he day. And that was just like my tiptoeing and I was like this feels right. And then, slowly, as that progressed all the way to senior year, I moved in with those same roommates and I was like, nope, guys, it's they them. So that was a more of a recent development. The last two, three years that's been a fun discovery for me and a fun journey, but that one came pretty later in life for me.

Absolutely. I actually had that same kind of journey during COVID of kind of just realizing for myself that my pronouns were he-they and I don't know whether or not I will eventually go by they-them. It doesn't feel 100% correct, because I do love the mix of he-they. I think it fits me, not to mention like I'm a dad which adds so many more layers to it, right, and so like that identity hasn't changed. I'm still a dad and I don't go by like parent or something else, and I'm not trying to uproot my kid's sense of I don't know inclusion by changing what they consider to be my identity, because I don't think that my identity as a dad has changed. So it's an interesting thing when you kind of discover more about yourself at later points than some and I guess earlier points than others, because there are people coming out as non-binary and trans who are much older than either of us. So yeah, self-discovery is just so wonderful it is. But how do you think that plays into being an educator? I mean, you were talking about zero representation for yourself as a high school student. So what was that like now being an educator? What is it like for you to actually be able to provide that kind of representation in a school.

Yeah, I was actually one of my kids. We were. It was during strike for our most recent musical we just did. We were talking about when they found out that their theater teacher before me was leaving, and the day that they found out who got the job, they were all, of course, because kids are little investigators, spies they were all over social media trying to find me and they said that they were worried because they were told my name and they you know Jake Noble, that's going to be your theater director. And they all thought, oh, we're getting some this is their words. We're getting some boring straight man who is going to, you know, not make us feel safe, not like this environment that we've created with all of us queer people. And then they were like, the moment that they found out that I was queer and non-binary, that they had like a celebration because they were happy to see the positivity that they've created and the accepting community they've created within the theater department was going to be carried on by someone of the community. And so, just from the get go, I have felt such a strong connection with these kids because it's very apparent when you meet me, when you walk into my room, like I'm not hiding anything, like I am who I am and like get over it, I don't care. And so I just I felt this instant connection with all of my students. Obviously being 23 with them helps a little bit too, and so with them, I just find that they are so open to me. All of my core theater kids and even I'm not my core theater kids I've just found this connection with them because I think when they see authenticity, it's like it's a breath of fresh air, because we are fit into this little box all the time with everything that we do, and so when there's a moment where we're not inside that box, it's kind of just like a oh, I want to jump right into it. So with my kids, like they are my rocks, I love them so much and they have really become a foundational part of my journey on this whole thing too, and I couldn't ask for a better situation to be in with these kids.

That's awesome. That really is amazing, because it's one it's difficult to know going into a new job, like if you're going to be safe to be yourself, and then, beyond that, for your students to have felt like they were in that same position, that they didn't know if they would be safe to be themselves, like the two of you are, the group and you being able to come together, is actually really exciting, because I think that if you were put in an environment where maybe it was not as accepting and they or they were like, that is a huge detriment to the community and so it's always I don't know. I've worked at two different schools and I've always felt nervous those first like couple of days, because I am not one to shy away from who I am. I'm also very out and proud, and I have been out and proud since I was in high school and so there's so much ingrained in me that's like no, I do not need to hide who I am. But working in Texas, the environments can be different. I mean, luckily I haven't experienced anything from the student perspective that is like super traumatic or upsetting. I mean, one student, one singular student, accused me of, you know, discriminating against cis white guys and I was like yes, obviously, that's, that's obviously what I'm doing? because we read one play that had a lesbian kiss and I don't mean to be stereotypical but like don't straight guys want to be? C to women.

Yeah, it's always the weirdest situations that set those things off.

Right, so let's dive a little bit into what it's like for you. Now You've got this group, core group of queer students. What's it like working with them and actually being able to like be a role model for the younger queer community?

Yeah, I just working with, like my queer and non queer students. I have a relationship with all of my students, don't get me wrong. Each one of them they walk in the door and we buddy it up. But with my queer students it's just like this on, like it's not talked about, but we definitely have a closer relationship because we're very similar in these types of terms. And so those kids come into my room during lunch, they come in after school, before school, during their classes. They get passes to come to my room all the time and it has just been every day. I get up and I get excited to go to work because I know that I'm making a difference for those kids and doing the thing that I needed the most when I was in high school and you know. So I have kids walk into my room who are gender fluid and so every time they walk in the room I'm like all right, what's the pronouns today? And they let me know and I just have been told, like by a student that is gender fluid, like they don't know other teacher does that for them. Like no other teacher bothers to ask, no other teacher bothers to get to know them, and that's just like. That's just common sense to me. If someone tells me that they go by different pronouns depending on the day, I'm gonna ask you every day what's the vibe, what are we feeling? And so, just with those students, every like, I can tell that they're excited to come to class and I can tell that they want to learn and they protect me and they fight back for me when situations come about. And they are some of my biggest supporters in the room. I try to be their biggest supporters, but really they're my biggest supporters in that room. And just working with them every day, I just I get a sense of fulfillment because it's just like those things that you know that you needed and I'm so glad that these kids don't have to go without it.

That's awesome, and have you ever had to deal with any, say, anti-queer attitudes or behaviors, whether from students, parents or?

administrators. I've never had to deal with it to my face, to my face. I've never been one-on-one with it. But I do have students who come to me and let me know like, hey, this kid was saying this about you and I let them have it and this teacher called you Mr Noble, not Mix Noble, and they know that that's not your name, and so we tell them that they better say it right until they we make them say it, until they say it right, and stuff like that. When I hear about that kind of stuff here and there, there was one time during student teaching a place that I was interviewing. It was at the place that I student taught at, actually. So I was interviewing for the job there and one of the people in the admin team told my high school theater director and the teacher I student taught with that I would never get a job there if I continued to paint my nails and that they weren't gonna hire me just based on how I dressed and all this other stuff. And so like that was like a okay, I don't wanna work here, I don't care, but I've never actually been one-on-one with people because they don't like to say it to your face.

Yeah, they don't. And also what I find interesting about the comments made by that person about hiring you is that, like, literally the fact that they had the audacity to say those things is a federal crime, right? Like I don't know what you're thinking.

It was very like sly to my theater directors like a comment, and she was like oh no, I'm gonna tell you this. Yeah, but yeah, I've never I'm like my parents that I have like with my students, like they go to bat for me for anything. My admin is so great, so accepting I'm sure there's been my principle has done things that I don't even know about. Has taken, like phone calls about me I've heard has taken phone calls about me that I never even knew were happening and she just brushes it off because she's a great human being.

Yep, absolutely. And do you work into your curriculum the idea of inclusion? Do you read plays or do you do anything with your students to help all the people, whether they're queer or not, feel like they can be represented and present? Yeah, totally so.

I try. It's like a part of my philosophy that if kids wanna go to school for theater, they're gonna learn about the classics there, and not every kid is going to go into theater in college. So I want them to have a good time with theater, even if they're not gonna go into it, and I think that there's a time and place to learn about the classics. So every piece of theater that I work with in my classroom is not like your traditional canon pieces. I try to incorporate all different musicals, all different plays, playwrights, designers. Especially, we do this thing in my intro level class. I call it Feature Friday, and we're a block schedule and I have a class every other day. Like they split my two sections up and so there was one class every week that was gonna get ahead of each of the other. So I do a thing called Feature Friday with them and every Friday that we have a full week I theme it and so it can be like Latinx playwrights, deaf playwrights, that type of stuff. So I'll do a musical, a play and an artist, and we started out the year by doing all three at once, but then that seemed to overwhelm them with all the stuff we had to do with it. So it was every other Friday was like a okay, we're gonna move on to the next one in this category and then we're gonna move on to the next one. So it's like every other Friday is like I teach the same stuff for the next class, that next Friday, but every Feature Friday is a spotlight on a different group of people.

That's awesome. I love that idea. I may actually steal it. So thanks, put that in my pocket. I appreciate that. So just a couple of questions for you. What made you decide to go into education, especially as someone who didn't see yourself represented in the educational field as a child?

Yeah. So it all and kind of I like in middle school I was thinking that like teaching was something that I wanted to do. I've always been told that I'd be a great teacher, but then I like I got into some other things and it was like maybe I'll try this, maybe I'll try this. And then I joined theater and got the theater bug and I was like I want to be an actor or a lighting designer. So I really I'm, lighting is like one of my biggest passions. I love lighting. And so I was like I'll go down that route Because, like you see that you have a theater teacher in high school but like I never connected the two, that you can go to school for that and that you like that is a job that people have. Like that's so weird, cause I never connected the two. So I was like going down the route of be like going to school to try to go to school for acting and I did all the college auditions and all that kind of stuff. But at my high school we did every year senior directed 1X and my senior year I got to direct a show and the big point of like the 1X for like now I'm looking at it from a pedagogical standpoint is getting those younger kids performance opportunities that maybe are not ready to go on to the full main stage they just want to do the black box show and giving more performance opportunities for younger kids that their older peers are directing them. And so my cast was made up of a lot of kids who never really done the main stage shows yet and I remember I had a girl in my group who at the beginning of it she was like she couldn't even like when we went around to introduce ourselves she was like on the verge of a panic attack having to say her name in front of people and just through the process of doing that 1X, by the time we got to opening night she was having, she had this monologue where she had to have a whole breakdown on the stage. And I just remember in that moment, like when I, after that night was over and she got the applause, she ended up doing the next show on our main stage and it was just like a reflection moment I had with my theater director where I just came to realize that theater did stuff for me. It did something for me. It was something that helped me become the best person I could possibly be and I knew the power that it had for me, but I never got to see the power that it had for others when you were facilitating that growth with theater. And so after those 1X, I like sat down with my theater director and I was like I think I want to teach theater. I called her Annie Her name is Ms Nickel, but I call her Annie. I was like Annie, I think I want to teach theater and she I just I remember she got this huge smile on her face and she was like I have been waiting for you to say this. I have been waiting for you. She's like I wasn't going to tell you that this is what I think you should do, but I have been waiting for you to say this because you would be a fantastic theater teacher. And then from there I did some TA stuff for her, where she let me teach things in her intro classes, and it just, it, just everything fell into place with those 1X, and so I'm forever grateful that I had that opportunity to do that.

Absolutely. There's two things that I think that you pointed out that are are worth repeating. One is the idea that you can grow up to be a theater teacher. I've been working with nonprofits in Texas to advocate for art education right, and one of the things that theater teachers always say is like wow, music, like whoever does the marketing for music and music teachers, they really have it down Now. It's like well, music teachers have future music teacher organizations on high school campuses. Music teachers have all this data showing that they can. That is impactful. And I think that theater, whether we like it or not, can be quantifiable. If we look at certain things Like we can talk projection and speech clarity and stuff like that, that's a quantifiable thing Because you can literally apply a number to number of words heard clearly the back of the auditorium beginning of the year to end of the year or whatever. We can do all these kind of database things and we can create those kind of future theater educator organizations. And if we don't do that, like it's not that theater is a dying genre, it's that theater teachers are dying position and we see so many of them being cut because people don't find them as necessary as a music teacher. So I'm with you, like, for when I was in high school I was a trifecta band, choir and theater geek and so I never considered the theater route. And I also heard a lot of like really, you're gonna want to go into theater, like it's not gonna make you money all of this stuff. And so I got a music degree because that's what you know would be more profitable. People said, and then when I got out of school, I just did a bunch of behind the scenes music or work in musical theater, like being music directors or being a stage manager or doing all these things and ended up, you know, teaching theater. And then the other thing that you mentioned that I think is so interesting is that idea of like theater teachers are very cognizant of the fact that, like we don't want to impose ourselves on other people, I think that we're very aware because what we do is develop really strong relationships with people. So I had a student who waited until after she graduated. She actually took the tour, like went to freshman orientation for her college and changed her major that same day to theater education and came back and was like I changed my major from history to theater education. I was like man, I was hoping you would do that because you would be so great at this, and so the fact that you had that same experience with your teacher being like we kind of have it in the back of our minds. We can see who would do this job really well, but we let them come to that decision on their own, I think is a wonderful thing, because so many kids in high school are pushed in specific directions or like you're good at this, so you should do this. You're good at this, so you should do this. And so I love that idea of like you can come to it. You can come to this idea on your own. And I don't think I will preface this. I don't think adding future theater teacher organizations to campus will apply enough pressure for people to be like oh, this is, this is what I have to do. I'm so stressed out Because it really could come down to their directing scenes or their designing Like they become leaders within the department. Um, as opposed to making a pay, like you're creating lessons this week for the class and and all the stuff that you know even the teachers hate. So yeah, tell me a little bit of advice that you might give to a brand new teacher. This, this is fantastic. You're actually one of the newest educators on the program and so, coming into this, you're coming into it post COVID. What advice would you give to a queer teacher who may not feel comfortable or confident enough to be their authentic self in the classroom?

I would say um, because during college I had a practicum that I taught in at a school, um, where this was at the time when I um, I was just come, like I had just come into the day them pronouns I started going by mixed noble instead of like Mr Noble, um, and when I did that practicum I kind of I kind of receded back into the closet a little bit for that, just because I that was my first ever like step into like being that teacher in the room with that identity, and so it scared me at first and I was like I'm not, I'm just, you know, it's not a big deal Um, like it's fine, I can bear through it. For a couple months, um, and I found that that was not. I was not being my best self, I was not being my best teacher, I wasn't being fully there mentally for the students because I was not being my true self. Um, and so for me, when I set out on the job search, I was like there's no way I'm ever doing that again. Um, and so I would say to someone if you are in a safe environment to be yourself, to do it, just full send, do it, because you will never. I have never been happier than I am now. Um, just going to work every day to be myself Um. And if you are somewhere where you are not safe to do that, protect yourself Um. Don't feel like um, because you know other teachers doing. Are you here that you know this podcast and you think, oh, all these teachers are out, I have to be out Um, you don't have to be. No one tells you when you have to be Um. You need to do that on your own terms. But I would also say you need to find somewhere that you feel that you are safe to do that and um, get your feet on the ground where you're at, but get somewhere where you can really be yourself Um, because you know we all don't land into these positions where you can be um or that everyone around you supports you. So I just you've got to protect yourself first, um, and part of that protection is for me was to be myself, um, and to be in an environment where I knew I could fully be myself. So, if you're safe, go for it. Um, that's one of my biggest things and just, the kids are so open to it, um, kids are so open to queer educators. Um, I have found, um, you know, a lot of teachers ask me, like how, how do you connect so well with your students? And I'm like I don't really know. I just kind of just kind of vibe with them. I don't know you talk to them like they're human beings, um, so I would just say to that, like to uh incoming teacher, like if you are safe and you know, and even if you you know, and even if, even if you have a small support system that'll back you up where you're at, go for it. Um, just because it's, it sounds like such a stigma, um, to come out as a teacher and it shouldn't be Um. So, um, if you just present yourself day one as this is just who I am, it's not about coming out, um, as the teacher. It's just, this is just who I am. It normalizes, it helps normalize it with students, with admin, who've never dealt with queer teachers before. It just normalizes everything, um, and it doesn't make it seem like it's so taboo because we're just human beings who want a job.

Awesome. I absolutely agree with that. I love the idea of knowing your environment. I think that is so crucial and doing, and I mean, never push yourself out of your comfort zone, in a sense, where it becomes unsafe. And as long as you feel safe, you be you baby, you know, uh, be yourself. And if you don't, then that that push to find the place Fantastic and it's just like.

It's just like even like when I tell the kids like you come to my room, like this is your safe space, like you be who you are, Um, even if you don't have anywhere else where you feel safe as this human that you are, you can come here and let your guard down and even if that's what it is for you as a teacher, like, if you know, like if you have an afterschool club where a majority of your kids are queer, like and you feel safe just being queer with those students, do it. You don't have to go full out and just fully be an out teacher there. It can start small and I think, like the same thing that we preach to our students about having that safe space is just as important for us as well.

Absolutely 100%. Final question before we do a new segment that I'm adding, which we'll get into in a moment Um, what do you believe that teachers, parents and administrators can do to help move the needle towards inclusivity for LGBTQ students?

Um, honestly, I just think talking to people, like, just the amount of learning that comes from actually talking with other people is just crazy. So, like my principal, when I first got hired here the last summer year ago, I was getting my classroom ready and she comes down to my room and she just starts asking me questions about myself and, like you know on your e-vow, so would you like me to call you? I'm not really. I never really worked with the non-binary teachers before like, and we like had that dialogue with each other. And so I think it all goes back to that like breaking down the taboo-ness of it all. Because, like people, just I you know, I have students on the first day of school I you know, turn around, I'm like hey, and they immediately dropped my class and like we know what that means, we know exactly what that means. But I have students, the same way, who are iffy at first because they've never seen a teacher like me before, and then the moment they realize, just through us talking, that I'm just another human being on this world who just wants the same things that you do, then, like, we find that common ground with each other. So, like, I'm sure there's some more like technical, some advanced way to like really shift that, but honestly, to me it just it comes all down to communication and just being open to communicating.

I I Agree. I think, in a society that is so Hell-bent on divisiveness, that actually sitting down and talking with people and finding commonality is so important Right and I mean you're never, you're never gonna.

You're gonna stay in that place of being like, what is this unless you talk about it? And so like, if we don't talk about it, we're not gonna go anywhere. So let's you know, let's just get rid of this awkward tension in the room. Yeah, I'm gay. You know what else? I'm a dog parent. I like plants, like there's so much more than just that to me. But Talk to me about it, rather than just sit in that awkward feeling of it.

Yeah, absolutely All right. New segment, season two Go crazy. This is your opportunity to ask me a question.

Hmm, let's see. So you said that your masters is in more of like LGBTQ theater stuff.

Yes, I'm. I'm getting a MFA in theater pedagogy, but I'm coupling that with a certificate in a culturally responsive pedagogy and universal design for learning. So my research areas are two-fold. I am Writing articles that will hopefully be published. I'm talking about the evolution of queer theater, and then I'm also writing curriculum that is, for technical theater courses that are universally designed so that they are inclusive of all students, regardless of their ability or disability. So it's a two-fold kind of focus that I have, but I absolutely love it, like everything that I'm learning and everything that I'm reading and writing. It's just like so okay, so this is finally where I've wanted to be for my whole life.

So I took an LGBTQ theater class in college. It was an elective and it was taught by one of my favorite professors, andy Walter, in at Ball State, and in that class it was a lot of us theater education majors who took that class and One of the biggest things that we all were coming down to was how can we incorporate this into our rooms in a world that is so where that's looked down upon, because a lot of the plays out there a lot of the most famous, like Queer plays have a lot of deeper, deep stuff in them and a lot of like Maybe not so high school friendly Material in it. So, like, in your opinion, what is the best way? I mean, there's probably there's so many answers to this, but how? How do you think we should go about? Or how do you think we can go about really bringing queer theater into the classroom without, you know, ruffling all those feathers of those people that don't want that there?

I Think that the way that we go about that is to, kind of one, assess our space, like you would as an employee, and how your own comfortability is, come to terms with what is your school district, your school district community, feel comfortable with, and then go from there. Beyond that, I would say Look at plays that most interests your students. We choose our main stage productions based off of the students we're going to have, and I think that we need to be more proactive as educators in choosing our curriculum for the students we currently have, as opposed to creating a curriculum and then just repeating it every year. And so, for instance, my first year teaching, I I worked on she kills monsters with my students, and, for those who don't know, she kills monsters is a play that's set in a D&D world dungeons and dragons. It's. There's a big dungeons and dragons adventure that happens throughout the game, and there is a lesbian kiss in the game, the very, the very same lesbian kiss that caused all me controversy my first year teaching. But it's not the primary storyline and the reality is Nobody knows if the characters actually a Lesbian, because it's in the game, not in real life, and so it's introducing a topic through something else, for those who are a little bit Maybe like that kiss is too far for your organization. The thing is that, like you can adapt it. It doesn't have to. It doesn't have to be that it needs to be someone walking in on these two Young women being close. And then I always look at new plays. I am lucky that I get to judge or adjudicate some playwriting contest each year, and so I've recently read a new play that I can't think of the name off the top of my head, but it combines a couple of things in there. It combines social justice, it combines Just non-binary identity, and what I love about it is that the character is just non-binary. But in the instructions it Clearly it says that this is open because the character is non-binary. If you have a male actor playing the character, the characters male. They have a female actor playing the character, the characters female. If you have a non-binary actor playing the character, the characters non-binary. The entire dialogue is written in they. But it introduces the concept, but the story is not about that person's identity. This story is about art and Artistry and social justice. With it comes to a mural and corporate greed, it's like about a lot of things, but the general premise of it and I will, in the show notes, write the play down once I publish the episode. But the general premise is that this young man in New York Always got like bullied into doing stupid stuff by his brothers who are much older than him and much taller than him. Well, they bullied him into jumping on the subway tracks and jumping out before the train came, but he is much shorter than them and he passed away because of it. And there was a mural put up on a grocery store. This new grocery chain was coming in and they wanted to tear everything down, including the mural. And so the main character, who is a street artist that does dance on the street, they are starting these protests to save the mural and continue to represent this person who had passed because of the subway accident, and so the story has nothing to do with their identity, and I think that's the things that we need to focus on is that you mentioned it even in our having conversations with other people. Yes, I'm queer, but I'm also this and I'm also this, and I'm also this and I'm also this. And so, as you're looking at plays for your curriculum, find plays where there's an assortment of things. This is a queer play because it's about queer people. This is a queer play because it was written by a queer person. This is a queer play because there's a queer person in it, and then you have an assortment of options that can help you kind of like baby step yourself into it. So maybe you start with plays written by queer people and then you move into plays that have queer people in it, but that's not the main storyline, and then you move into plays that are clearly about this queer person where identity is vitally important. That makes sense. Yeah, that's the way I see it. And if you have a chance to like get on one of those publishing there are a lot of publishing companies for theater that do like we're gonna send you a monthly box of plays and whatnot, like if they send new plays, read new plays, because there's so many great new plays out there but nobody knows about them because they're new. And I'm just so lucky that I get to adjudicate this playwriting contest for American Lions for theater and education. They do a playwriting contest every year and I get to adjudicate it for the last four years and I'm just like really blessed because I get to read brand new works that are a year or two old and kind of get to explore new elements of theater. And the other day I read a play that featured Hawaiian culture and I'd never seen that and I had a student that wasn't the other day. I say things like that all the time, but it was really like months ago and I have a student who is Hawaiian and we were working on our final project and I said, look, I know that you took another play from my play library for your project, but I'm gonna give you this and see if it works out for you and she's like I've literally never been represented in my curriculum in Texas. So that was an opportunity for her to see herself. And it doesn't have anything to do with queerness, it just has to do with showing up and allowing people to be seen in their own classroom. So your feature Fridays are on the right track. Right, that's how you get yourself into. There is that maybe you do a month that is LGBTQ themed and you can find whatever slogan or whatnot that you wanna use to identify that group. But maybe it's here's this playwright, here's this play and here's this musical. And I recommend Zana Don't for musicals. For those of you who don't know, zana Don't is a pop musical that is all about what would happen if we lived in a queer world and then this main character has magic powers and he tries to turn this one. He tries to turn the world into a place where it's okay for people to be straight, and then it kind of backfires and you're gonna have to listen to it in order to get the full story. But I don't wanna give it away, but it has been one of my favorite musicals and I'm like a huge musical theater buff for a decade. Like it is. It's cute, it is sometimes inappropriate, but it's also incredibly impactful, because it really is a caricature of what it's like for queer people to live in a heterosexual world.

Yeah, I love that. One thing that I like to do I like to like switch canon pieces with other pieces that are very similar and so, like, one of my favorite plays to read with my class is the Children's Hour by Lily and Kevin, because I love, I love watching the gears turn in their heads and they're like this is just like the crucible and I'm like it's the exact same storyline. And so when they start seeing those moments of like oh my gosh, we can have these same stories told by different people who have different representations and are, it's more accessible to us and like that's more of my identity, like it just cause, if I read the crucible with them, they talk about how much they hated it in their English classes. But we read this and, you know, we talk about it and we get really intense about it and they're like, oh, it's about the potential of lesbians, cause we never say if they actually were lesbians or not, but the potential that there could be a lesbian in this play. Like the kids eat it up and they love it. But I just I love watching those connections of being like this is just like that one play that's very white and straight, centric.

And so, yeah, absolutely White, straight, centric and Christian, even though you know he was fighting McCarthyism at the time. Like the lens in which the crucible was written is white, straight, christian. But you know Arthur Miller was doing other things in writing that play. But you know, this is really, really fantastic and I mentioned before we got on that I would totally geek out about theater stuff, cause we both teach theater. But I wanted to just thank you for being on the podcast today and I hope everyone at home had a good listen or wherever you're listening from. Have a great day y'all. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Teaching While Queer. Teaching While Queer is a member of the educational podcast network. I hope that you listen wherever you get your podcasts. Have a great day and don't forget to review us. Bye.