Embracing Pronouns and Queer Identity: James Young's Educational Insights on Inclusivity and Change

Bryan (he/they): 0:21

Content Warning. A portion of the conversation in this episode will discuss childhood sexual abuse. Be sure to make sure that you skip through that portion and or bypass this episode entirely for your own safety, if need be, and please make sure that, if you are in an abusive situation, that you are seeking the help that you need. Teaching While Queer is for 2SLGBBTQIA+ podcast for plus educational professionals to share their experiences in academia. Hi, I'm your host, Bryan Stanton, a theater pedagogy and educator in New York City, and my goal is to share stories from around the 2SLGBTQIA+ from 2S educators. I hope you enjoy Teaching While Queer. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Teaching While Queer. I am your host, brian Stanton, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with James Young. Hi, james, how are you doing?

James (he/they): 1:27

Alright, how are you?

Bryan (he/they): 1:29

I'm fantastic. It is a beautiful fall day. I know this recording is in January, but today it's a beautiful fall day. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what brings you on the podcast today?

James (he/they): 1:41

Yeah, thanks for asking. So I am James Young and I go by he. They pronouns, so that my simple little teach on that is if I left my phone behind, you can say yo, he left his phone or they left their phone. Either one works for me and I'm not going to go. I can't believe you said that, right? So, yeah, so that's how pronouns work and I'm a huge fan of pronouns, spreading pronouns, talking about pronouns. We all use pronouns and let's learn about that. And I teach at a college, monroe College in the Bronx and I do that in every one of my classes in the beginning of the semester, in the middle of the semester, at the end of the semester. Hey, this is the intro to psych class. Professor Young, he, they pronouns. I do that in every one of the classes because I think that allows us to develop a culture and get used to doing that. You know, we know what to do when people sneeze, right, we say bless you, even if we're not religious, and I just want to change the culture. On a pr was it primary violence prevention, right? You get all of the people to look at it and so, yeah, blah, blah blah.

Bryan (he/they): 2:42

I think that's. It's so fascinating because I was talking about this with my husband the other day that the fact that, like applications like Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, they all use pronouns in the sense that, like, they've decided that everybody is a they, them pronoun and so like, if someone comments on something, it'll say like they commented on you, and I'm like all these people who are like they cannot be a singular Literally. It is so commonly used and that's why it's wild. Yeah.

James (he/they): 3:16

And, by the way, I used to. When I first learned about this pronounced stuff, I was using he, him and all that, and then I realized that if I walked away and someone goes, they went that way. Obviously, I use they them pronouns too, right, I feel like we all do, or most of us do, and so I use they them pronouns to highlight that it is a singular pronoun and also being solidarity with anyone who only uses it. You know, exclusively right, and Shakespeare use they them pronouns, and I just learned this recently, and I think this is the awesomeness about learning and educating Did you know thou was the singular you? Oh, you know all about that, yeah, so, like I do, I'm a theater person.

Bryan (he/they): 3:56

I love Shakespeare and Shakespearean language.

James (he/they): 3:58

Yeah, so the idea that, oh, we're changing language. Well, first off, yes, language always evolves. But also, how many times are you calling me a thou when you're talking to me? You know what I mean. You don't say that right, like yeah, so it's, it's fine.

Bryan (he/they): 4:11

It's funny because if we went back to all that, like I actually shared a meme, gosh, a couple months ago that was about thou and the and just posting about how, like Shakespeare or like pronouns, you know, messing with people for centuries because so many people are struggling right now, and it's like this has been, it's been a thing forever how we refer to people, and so I just find it so fascinating that there's such a struggle.

James (he/they): 4:41

Yeah, and, to be fair, there are people who struggle with it because of well, for many reasons. But there are also people who struggle with it Like my, my parents, you know they're, you know 80s, 90s and speaking Chinese, there aren't pronouns, so they're always misgendering people all the time, but it's because they don't know the difference sometimes between she and he in the same sentence. You know what I mean. Oh yeah absolutely so I think that that, like, yeah, depending on who you talk to, there's some people who just don't want to try, and then there's people who just it's a challenge anyway.

Bryan (he/they): 5:13

Yeah, absolutely, what a great introduction, because I think that's such a hot topic within education right now is the use of pronouns and asking for pronouns and whatnot. But let's dive a little bit deeper into you. Can you tell me what it was like for you growing up as a queer student?

James (he/they): 5:30

You know, I my experience as a young person was 15, 16, I was living on my own and so my queerness was never really a major issue. It was more like, you know, making rent or you know like, yeah. So I pretty much was a high school dropout for the most part, and so I don't remember much of that. But what I do remember is that my Asianness and my queerness was not really like allowed. The classroom there was, there was such a, there was so many like. Looking back on it, I feel like there are so many micro or vert, micro aggressions or overt ridiculousness to happen Like. I remember my second grade teacher in Catholic school, sister Anansietta, said color, you know, use the yellow crayon to color your portrait. She said to me and I don't know if it was just because yellow is close enough to flesh color or if there was a racist, you know tone to it.

Bryan (he/they): 6:30

Yeah.

James (he/they): 6:30

But I also feel like queerness was very bizarre, because I'm going to say something a little triggering here. When I was in seventh grade, our religious priest came in and did you know trainings with us on, you know, was it religious studies, bible say, whatever it was? And he and I got very close and very close and to my experience, it was joyful and exciting. Right Like for me, I was like yes, yes, and you know, as an adult looking back, not so much right Like like this is clearly problematic, even though it really made me happy then. And he was removed from the, from the parish, but he went to another parish and then another parish, and this is like before the movie spotlight, before Boston, like that whole thing exploded. So, yeah, so like queerness was, was this foreign thing. And I lived in Westchester County in New York and when I went to the first men's group, in the first LGBT group at the loft, which is the local center there, they told me listen, you're 17 years old, you can't let you hear in because you know you're under 18, but just tell them you're 18, just tell them you're 18, they would say, so I'd show up. And then they were so wonderful and it was just like. It was like breathing air, finally right, like really taking a nice deep breath. And they encouraged me to start a youth group and I don't know what I was doing, but, like you know, I was a young person. There I was like sure, and so this is before GSA's and all that, so like in the late 80s, 90s, gosh, I don't remember. It was a billion years ago and yeah, so that's how that happened. So in school, I feel like queerness was not really on my radar, although I was queer, but I didn't have mentors or elders. Until I was a little older, like 17, 18 years old, I started meeting queer elders who were so afraid of me being so out at such a young age. They were afraid I was going to be bashed of you know all the stuff, rightfully so. But also I feel like their fears were a little different than mine because I didn't know enough to be afraid and I've been lucky to not have that kind of stuff happen to me, even though I was in a paper and all that.

Bryan (he/they): 8:44

Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot to unpack there, and I appreciate your candidness and explaining your background and whatnot, and what I think is so fascinating is just this idea of like you knowing that this kind of intersection intersectionality between your queerness and your Asian-ness and that, like both of those things were just not present and not okay in your spaces of education, and I think that there's so many people who can probably attest to the same kind of feelings, and so how do you see that playing out in your own education? Side quest here will go on an adventure we will get back to that question but I also love the idea that you, like you, are a high school dropout who now teaches college. So do you mind going on that journey with us? Because I think that a lot of people feel like, well, if I did crappy in high school, there's just no future for me and I and it's not true like everybody's journey is different- yeah, yeah, it was a lot of my handful of my students are also adult, returning adult students and there's that constant like can I do this?

James (he/they): 10:00

am I good enough, and all that. And I definitely felt that I Didn't get my high school diploma. I have no idea how. I Barely went to school, so I don't know how I got this diploma. And I I spent one semester at college I think Westchester Community College, and but yeah, life was just so much harder, you know, and I had so many other things to worry about that I was like it's fine, I'm done with school. I couldn't pay for school, I didn't know about financial, I didn't have the cultural capital of adults in my life saying, you know, you can get loans or we can work this out, or you know. And then there was dating. Too right, like as a young, young, hormonal teen, dating was exciting. Yeah yeah, just another side quest. There was something about growing up as an Asian gay boy at the time Thinking that I was broken and ugly and whatever right and that was the butt of everyone's jokes. And then when I started dating at first I thought it was like I found gold, like I was the ugly duckling and like all the boys were interested. All the men were interested in In me and they thought I was so beautiful in my eyes and I mean, obviously this is gonna go to the other end. Which is better size than it's out of size. But I didn't know that at the time and I was just like, wow, this is so cool, it's funny because your experiences really should speak to what I mean.

Bryan (he/they): 11:28

It speaks to youthfulness and I guess, like the idea of ignorance is bliss in some extent, because you're talking about two experiences that in retrospect you would look back at and be like, oh, that's, that's kind of gross, and and. But living those experiences as a youth, you were like, oh, this is great, this is wonderful, yeah. And so I think that there's so much to be said about that. When it comes to like Adults, kind of just kind of understanding youth is that we all have to remember that they don't have hindsight and they don't have that experience of like really looking back and reflecting and so like their experience is gonna be much different than your perceived experience for them. And so I think that's just a fascinating thing that you've brought into the conversation and that there's these two instances with the one with the priest and then these men where it could be Like the men are fetishizing you, the priest, in that, and since it's fetishizing and all these things are, are not okay, but like to a child, it's exciting, yeah. And so I think that when we, when we talk to Kids who are going through things like people need to be open-minded enough to realize that the child might not realize that there's something wrong, and so you have to have patience with them In order to get whatever you need out of them. When it comes to like what is the truth of a situation? Or if you say something like is this person touching you in a bad way and the person I know the kids? like no, this is not touching me in a bad way, and it's in. It's a perception that you have to be more clear With what you're trying to say in order to get the response that you want, as opposed to being General or vague, yeah anyway, yeah, and and.

James (he/they): 13:20

I'm not a psychologist, so I'm just speaking opinion but you bring up really important facts here, which is just that our Perception may be different. And also this is before the internet, before social media, so I didn't have anything to compare it to, I didn't have. You know, me too movements and social media blasting everywhere. You know, like my son, who's now 32, my son sometimes I can't escape what's going on in the world because it's filtering into all my tiktok feeds and all that. Right, like I think it's a different world today. I think if I had Means for a phone I mean that's an whole other thing but if I had, you know, the money for a phone and I had access, I think I would have seen the world a little bit differently too. Right, because I would have had more context. I think today's young people have more access in more context. You know, a lot of them know what Stonewall is and know what Soviet who's so we're rare is. You know, I didn't know what that was. I was just like pride gay. Yay, I feel affirmed right and not knowing more than that. Yeah, absolutely, and so okay, so as a go ahead, as a, as a, as a young person I grew up in that and then, as an older person, thinking about students, I Think about how I Can offer students Perspectives and questions, right, asking them questions to get them think about, to get them to think about the context in which they're growing up and experiencing the world, without judging, and I think that's the the powerful thing. As an educator, I work with a lot of students and college students, and some of them are 17 and some of them were 40 something you mentioned earlier, brian, that sometimes young people, kids, might experience the world differently, and then adults and whatnot. But I I've been in rooms with 40 50 year old men who say Some really horrific things because they have the storyline that they've told themselves that this was okay, this was not right, this was consensual. But as they tell the story, it's like whoa, like, how do I, how do I engage here without causing more trauma, right? So I think we all have we. I think, as a queer educator and now I don't mean just at the college I think one of the things I try to do is get us to think outside of the cishet norms and I'm not sure how you, how savvy your listeners are, y'all you're probably wonderful cisgender had had homosexual Right, those norms that like, like in queer culture, we have tops and bottoms right. So sometimes I talk to my students about that and you know, tops and bottoms is problematic to me at least the languages which is that it assumes that there's penetration for it to be Sex right, it assumes that. And also let's be for real, there's this idea in queer culture, at least gay male culture, that tops or more, whatever, dominance, strong, rich, what you know, all the ridiculous that's borrowed from a cishet culture. So I think I'm very lucky to have had Some of this handed to me or someone helped me and analyze this so I can pass that forward because as a young person understanding tops and bottoms and all that like, it was so important to like, pick a category and find myself in one and all that.

Bryan (he/they): 16:30

Yeah, it feels like you have to like constantly be labeling yourself over and over and over again and put in this kind of like box. That is also really uncomfortable and that's the whole like binary system. That's been set up by a predominantly cishet Culture. It's like so fine, you're not gonna play in this box. Then you have, you have to choose a box and you've got to be in that box, and and it goes to the idea of like oh, so then who's the woman in the relationship? Obviously it's the bottom or whatever. But that's not true, Because there is no like man woman binary that has to exist in a relationship.

James (he/they): 17:17

Yes, yes that that more of that. But I think that I think it's hard because I mean, let's be, I'm gonna be really honest here, which is, you know, I've been, I've been queer. I Maybe I've been queer for the last decade or so, maybe two decades, and I identified as just gay or bi before then. But I feel like Even today, because I live in New York and I live in this world where I see Media and I breathe and you know, whatever is happening around me, it's hard not to get sucked back in right and have these preconceived notions, this internalization of this, this, this system, this colonized. I like think about the colonization of my mind, right, how liberated am I to think outside of this binary? You know, yeah, and I still do it, I still catch myself.

Bryan (he/they): 18:10

Yeah, I'm there with you. I do enjoy the fact that there is a new term called a side, which is like a person who prefers oral sex as opposed to this top-bottom dichotomy, because penetration does not have to be the beyond-endal and that person who's aside might also just enjoy. You know, hand, there's no like hand sex phrase, but you know, yeah, yeah, and so there's this kind of development in in a cultural vocabulary, but it's still it's met with so much Frustration like I see so many people especially and and this is not like Agest or any like, I'm not meaning it to be ages, but there are definitely some people who are older, especially gay males, in the community who are so frustrated by the expanding vocabulary of sexuality. Just the other day is one of my friends on Facebook posted like just learned about demisexual. What do you all think and it was a comment on like a Reince rage from a bunch of people about like just more terminology and all this stuff, and like I'm just sitting there going like demisexual. You need to have some emotional attraction to somebody before you can have sex with them. I like me. Basically, this person just doesn't like casual sex. So, like Great, they have a word now that they can say that identifies them and helps them out, as opposed to being, like Ostracized and pushed aside because you know their profile doesn't Explicitly tell you that they're not gonna just hook up with you for a one-night stand.

James (he/they): 19:51

Yeah, I feel like Brian, we Like within the LG, within the legibate, the qua culture that lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, etc. I feel like we're just so many more conversations we need to continue having and it's gonna continue to evolve, right, and I'm gonna get to the point where I might get to that. Oh, just done, I'm just done. One more thing to learn. You know I do that with Instagram every day. Oh, my gosh, what did they change today? I want to have to learn today. But I I also think that breaking away from the cishet norm is freeing for everyone, right, not just queer folks. And I think that queer folks, when we if it works for us, great, right. If you're only in a relationship, you're like I'm the man of the relationship and I'm the woman of the relationship and that works for you, great, wonderful. But you don't have to do that to other people, right? So like, nothing wrong with cishet itself. But to take this sexist patriarchy, you know perspective and to move away from that, I think it's super important. This is why, if you're an educator and you teach high school and you teach sex in high school, you definitely need to check out the TED Talk from Al Vernacchio about pizza and sex, not sports and sex. Have you heard of this one? Have you seen this one?

Bryan (he/they): 21:11

No, I'll check it out and I'll put a link to it inside the show notes, for sure.

James (he/they): 21:14

Yeah, it's great. He says you know, most of sex is compared to baseball, right, Right and it's a competition and it's a competition, one team wins and one team loses. Like well, how is that sex if someone's losing, right? And he says you know you should think about pizza, you know pizzas. You get together and you're like what do you feel, like, what do you want? And then you know, you decide, you have conversations and and you don't always have to have the same thing just because you've had pizza before, right, or maybe you don't want to have pizza with this person today, and it's fine. I love that analogy.

Bryan (he/they): 21:46

Maybe they just want breadsticks. I love that analogy too, now that I'm thinking about it, because I'm just like, oh, what does it mean when you want to add jalapenos to your pizza, like you know, when you want to do something a little bit spicy, right, and?

James (he/they): 22:00

so like what a great language.

Bryan (he/they): 22:02

You know um to have for that Um. Continuing upon our previous sidequest, at what point did you decide to like go finish your education to be able to teach at the university?

James (he/they): 22:16

So I was working in childcare and I would hire staff that sometimes got paid more than me, and I was very confused by this. And so I learned oh, it's because they have a degree. They have a you know, they have a you know degree in psychology, or they have a masters in something. And I was like, oh gosh, this piece of paper makes a difference. And so I went to uh at 28,. I said I need to go full time, just get it done. I was lucky enough to finish, I think, in one year, get my associates at WCC and then transferred to Pace University where they sucker punched me into this you know info session where they said you can get your bachelors and your master's at the same time, and so that's how I got my math. I don't know if I would have got my masters otherwise. And so, yeah, it was brilliant, they, they, they helped me get there and yeah, and so I guess by the time I was 30, 32, something, that I had my degrees and then the world just opened up to me. Um, I think, even though I went to WCC and went to Pace, I, as a student at both locations, I was an adult returning, so I was pretty serious about the work. Um, I didn't feel any queerness, though I didn't feel any like GSA kind of stuff, like that was still separated for me. Um, it wasn't in the classroom conversations I always. I have a phrase I use which is I tend to elbow my way into everything, I tend to throw a little glitter here, a little rainbow here, and I felt like I had to do that, right? Um, you know it took counseling and psychology. How do you not talk about queer folks in counseling or psychology? Right? So, and not to um, put down the programs, but I feel like even today, there are a lot of schools that don't do that, to don't offer, uh, a more comprehensive conversation in all classes about queer folks.

Bryan (he/they): 24:03

Yeah, and I think, especially when it comes to psychology, that like, unless they're deaf, they're referring to like the DSM and like talking through changes to it, that they're probably not mentioning queerness, and I think that there is a fascinating world of queer psychology that can be explored. But again. I'm just offering wonderful opinions from a theater person, uh, who knows some things about law you know, like completely out of my wheelhouse.

James (he/they): 24:33

Yeah, but I think, like, in English class, right, clearly, it can come up, I mean any class, I mean maybe not math as much, but you know, I just feel like that there's a way to, uh, to add race and gender in class, um, and, and in regards to to gender, you know, to add queerness to it, right, like, and I'm going to do another sidetrack, which is, you know, one of the things we talk about in my classes is we bring up the idea of poverty a lot and the idea of, like, what does it mean to be impoverished? Right, I mean, I have students, some of my students are actually living in shelters for various reasons, whether it's a it's a financial issue, or if it's domestic violence, right. So I feel like these are people's real lives, and how are they not able to see themselves in the class? Right, if, if we don't allow that to happen. Powerpoints are we not including images? Right? I don't know what your PowerPoints are like, but with my PowerPoints, I like to include images, and when I include images, I make sure there are people of color in it and make sure there are queer coded people. You know what I mean? Like, because I feel like we need to make sure we have a vast array and not just having, you know the rich white male, you know view that.

Bryan (he/they): 25:45

That we see on the screen all the time this trope that's been around forever of like rich white males being the world and everybody else is just living.

James (he/they): 25:54

Yeah, yeah. And it's not always about efficiency in my classroom, right, it's about connection.

Bryan (he/they): 26:00

Yeah, that's a lot of the work that I do in graduate school right now is I'm focused on culturally responsive pedagogy. So it's like how do we show up for everybody in the classroom and how do they show up in their curriculum? And I find it so fascinating because it's really easy to do this work. It just takes planning and for many teachers, especially in public school settings, they don't have enough planning time. So I know it's really hard to be like it takes planning and and you know it's easy. But honestly, when you're going to look at books right now books are a hot topic, but if you're going to look at books, then you know, look for books that are written by a diverse group of people. You don't have to constantly teach the same people and over and over again. There are aristocrats that existed who are black throughout history, and why don't we see them showing up in history books and why don't we talk about them in and maybe like, expand your list of people that you want to teach during Black History Month? Because I think that's another thing that the world is struggling with and education is struggling with is that it's often times specific people in the process that get mentioned in major blasts and then everybody else is left to the wayside. So then those people are you know, these people are dead and they're holding the banner of what it means to be you know this culture, when there's so many other people in the world that were helping with that at that time. I'm really excited because there's a new movie coming out with Beard about Beard Rustin, who was like pivotal in the civil rights movement but he was a queer black individual and kind of gotten written out of history and kind of left to the wayside, whereas you know, dr Martin Luther King justifiably did an amazing amount of work but like he had help, who were the people helping him that we don't know about?

James (he/they): 28:06

Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that it definitely is easy to say, hey, just do it right, Just add it in. Yeah, but part of it is doing our own work, right? I mean, in social work, school, right, they always say you know you got to, you got to do your own work because if you don't, it's going to show up in that session, right, and I think the same thing for teachers, right? Like, I think that the more I do, the more I study, like share your pronouns, it's really not that hard. But until I learned it and really understood it and understood it as a violence prevention, changing culture, you know, like, to me it's easy. Now I do it without thinking, but in the beginning it wasn't easy. Hi, my name is Professor Young and I go by like it was just like weird to say, but you know, just like anything, just like anything, practice mastery. You know, as educators, we know that, right, so with practice, it was mastery and so we can. We can take a topic, we can watch that movie, we can watch another movie, you know, whatever, read a specific thing, follow a look on Instagram, or, you know, blurrimani, you're like, you know, find people that that will inspire us to add something to our curriculum and it doesn't have to be all at once. I think that's the other thing, educators, or at least I do, maybe I'm not. I'm projecting here. I feel like, oh my gosh, I have to include everyone. And yeah, just just give yourself a break and just find something that works for you, add it in, and then next semester or next year do another one.

Bryan (he/they): 29:31

That's the thing I was thinking about. Is that really? It's a matter of looking around your classroom, like you, as much as it would be great to be inclusive of everybody at all times and how fantastic that would be, what is most important is that you look around your classroom and you include all of the people in your classroom and then from there your classroom changes next semester, it changes next year and you look around again and you adjust based off of what's in your classroom. So if you're an English teacher or you're a social studies teacher or whatnot, find some assignments that are like I can plug different things into them and find those different things once you get to know your students.

James (he/they): 30:16

I can't help myself. I have a question for you now. Yeah if it's okay. So, but I guess I'm just playing devil's advocates. But, brian, listen, I have my curriculum. I don't have enough time. How do I make it so that it's really like I have my whole curriculum played out? I just, I just go day by day, just follow it, and I know it by heart. You know how do I do that.

Bryan (he/they): 30:40

So one of the things I would recommend is take at least one assignment from your curriculum and turn it into a choice assignment, and that choice assignment will allow not only for cultural diversity to happen, but it will also allow for accessibility for all students from different learning types. To kind of help them choose, and you can set the parameter of, like you can make a video or you can make a presentation, or you can write a paper or whatever the situation is, but the topic should be broad enough where the research that they're doing can be focused on their interests and who they are.

James (he/they): 31:14

Yeah.

Bryan (he/they): 31:15

And it doesn't take a lot away and it doesn't take a lot of time for you because, as long as you set a generic rubric of like okay, here's the general information that everybody needs to have, if you're doing this, you need to have these things also. If you're doing this, then these things are required. If you're doing this, I have a whole presentation that I use for sharing my rubric for a choice assignment with my students, where it breaks down everything repeatedly because they're students and and then I have that information available for them in their classroom, their digital classrooms, so that way they're able to to get to that and like, I've had students where, literally because I teach theater, I was like, choose any play you want, and I had my student, for the first time, have Hawaiian representation in her curriculum because I found a play that was written from a Hawaiian perspective about a Hawaiian boy, and she was like this is the first time I've read anything about my culture in a classroom. Um, and it had just happened to like come upon my desk because I was judging a playwriting contest. So, like, being aware of who your students are and knowing what to recommend to them or allowing them a choice to do something is essential. And that one choice assignment, put it into your curriculum and then let it evolve each year, because you're really not taking anything away. If you've got a final project, even if it's just the final project, and every year they do a final project, then bam, put it in as that final project. Let that be in the choice assignment.

James (he/they): 32:54

I love that. I love the idea of that. They can choose themselves, right? This is my first time coming back to education. Well, my type of education. Um, this is my first semester at Monroe College where we're teaching LGBTQ studies that's the name of the course, lgbtqi plus studies and one of the assignments early on is do a powerpoint of something that happened in LGBTQ history. You've got Google right, like it's possible, and I thought to myself, oh my gosh, what's gonna happen? And I think that I don't know if other teachers feel this like a lack of control, you know, and, of course, the present presentations were wonderful and they're and there's a buy-in, right. That's different than I have to listen to this lecture, right, like they're supporting each other and they're like, oh, I didn't know that and they picked topics that weren't you. Someone picked a specific military person that they wanted to talk about. Uh, someone talked about, um, the ballroom scene. You know, like things that I mean I've even thought of too right to include, and so allowing choice, I think is is brilliant. It reminds me of what was that? Palo Friere, am I saying that, right? I think the pedagogy of the oppressed, like he, he was teaching English and told people to pick topics they wanted to learn.

Bryan (he/they): 34:09

Yeah, Yep, and I mean it's a huge part of universal design for learning, which is all about accessibility, right being able to teach in a way that even your students with disabilities will have what they need from your pedagogical choices, as opposed to having to constantly come to you for a modification to their curriculum or an accommodation. And I think that is so fascinating because really, in my experience doing it, once you set up the parameters, there's not a lot of work for you. I mean, you're really just like letting it ride and then you go about the grading the way you would grade, whatever it was you were going to grade before. Yeah, the difference is you're going to have such a wide variety of responses and a lot more interesting things coming at you, because the students do have buy-in when it comes to doing a project like this. Now, I don't know how that's going to look in the next five years or six years, because the more that teachers work this into their pedagogy, students get bored with things and get frustrated with it, and so I would be interested to see and continue researching, like what is the thing that needs to happen six years from now. But I think that it's something that right now is incredibly helpful that it's kind of starting to circulate, because it really does create a more engaged classroom for people and allows for more autonomy and therefore more cultural representation in the classroom yeah, it hits so many wonderful points and I think that the for me as the educator, for me as the educator, I've become more interested and learn about the students lives in a way that I wouldn't have otherwise.

James (he/they): 36:01

Right, and, yeah, I think it's brilliant on so many fronts. However, coming full circle, it's another thing I have to learn and learn how to do, and I won't do it well, I think that's the pronoun thing, right, I'm going back to which is you know people, oh my gosh, you know something new, or another demisexual or whatever, even though demisexual has been around forever, but whatever, but like another term, I have to learn and, yeah, you know, I think that, just like anything, as educators like we are, I think we're lifelong learners, right, I mean, that's the point, but maybe some of us are not supposed to be the thing right but?

Bryan (he/they): 36:34

but you know, there are different identities so much professional development out there and like on my website soon I have a website for teaching, like teaching theater that is gonna be launching professional development soon that people could just like get a certificate for a few hours of doing doing work online, and one of them will be creating, you know, universally designed projects that allow accessibility for everybody, and so it's like it'll take you a couple hours to learn it. It'll take maybe 10 hours of planning and writing time, but then, when it's done, like you're gonna, find I need to make a couple edits here in there, but it's not gonna take much time and you can use over and over and over again. So it's like, yeah, we can complain, and rightfully so. I think. I saw a meme, uh, the other day that was like just get it done. You can cuss the entire time that you're doing it, but just get it done. And I'm like, yeah, do that. Like you can complain the whole time, but do the work because it's really important. We can't get stuck in a cookie cutter education, especially when we're fighting against that, when we as teachers are saying like the standardized tests aren't working, which is cookie cutter education. So if we really believe those things, then we need to make sure that we're taking the stands that we need to to provide the real educational opportunity yeah, I have so many students who come to the college level and they have this perspective of like but what do you want?

James (he/they): 38:10

like, how many pages? And I always tell them well, let me ask you a question how many pieces of rice would you need to make a meal? And they're looking at me, like what I'm like, well enough, right, whatever that means, but it's not just the rice, you have to do something with it, right, like it's. So, it's not really the pages or the paragraphs or how many words, it's what you put in, because you could put a lot of rice in a bowl and it's just rice, right? So, um, so, yeah, I helped them think about like, well, what is it about you that you want to learn? What is it about this topic that you're interested in, or whatever you know? Like, why are you in this course? And if you were dropped in this course which which I feel, like so many of our students are, you have to take this course, right? Um, well then, where can you find yourself in it? Because otherwise, what's the point? Right, we're alienating students before they even step in a classroom, and I try to get them to rethink that they they don't have to ask for the bathroom first off, which is a very common thing for new college students um, that you know you get to have your own, you get to be in charge your own life, right? Um, and so like, yeah, you're missing attendance, you're missing whatever. And they're like but you got me for attendance, right, I'm not a police officer here, right? Like, I'm not looking to do I want, I'm giving you assignments not to penalize you or to come after you. I'm giving you assignments to give you opportunities to learn how. We tell them that, and I think that approach is a different perspective than I created the assignment you have to do what I want you to do, which is more of that same colonized perspective, I think yeah, and I, honestly, I get that a lot in the high school level, but I teach in electives, so I'm like I'm not here to read your perfectly written APA style essay.

Bryan (he/they): 39:53

I am here to understand what you know about this topic and so, honestly, you're absolutely correct. How much rice do you need to make a meal? and I'm gonna figure out some like maybe it's rice crispy treats um so like what version for me to say, um, but like that's, that's the thing, like I need enough, I need enough information to know that you understand it right and it's. It's so frustrating because I think that as we prepare students for standardized tests, those tests all have like word counts. Especially now that we're going to computer for the the offering of those tests, they have word counts and page counts and things like that that have have changed students to believe that they have to get all of their thoughts out in a certain amount of space or they have to expand all of their thoughts so that they have a certain amount of space covered. Yeah, and I think, like there's a musical, your good man, charlie Brown, and they sing a song called a book report on peter rabbit, or book report, I think, and Lucy sits at the very end of her essay goes the very very, very, very, very, very, very, very end, because she needed to get the extra words to get to a hundred words on her book report. And I'm just like this is where we have people including like superfluous words. I mean I'm saying like an um, a lot right now in communication, but I'm thinking about how we use the word that so often, or just so often, in writing, and those words are absolutely unnecessary. But because we're trying to hit a workout, we're training people to use superfluous words.

James (he/they): 41:44

Yeah, yeah, and I think is it. Sir Ken Robinson has another TED Talk, talks about how creativity's been killed out of kids and because they've been educated right and they've learned to conform, and, yeah, and I think that waking them up to themselves is the most exciting part of my job, right, when they suddenly go oh, I didn't realize this is related to me in the kind of classes psychology, you know, like it brings me so much joy for them to wake up and go oh, I could apply this to my own life, like you know. And instead of like, how many words do I have to hit right that they are understanding, that they get to participate with their own learning, right? Yeah, anyway, thank you for all this, absolutely. And bringing it back to queer education, I feel like as a young person, I felt like I wasn't allowed in the room, or parts of me wasn't allowed in the room, and I think it's important to allow students to fully be in the room, whether it's their different identities with sex and gender, or whether it's a racial identity, right, or whatever, religious. I had a student in my sociology class. She said I'm faith-based and I believe in the gender stereotypes, and that's fine in all my class, right, of course. Right, like you go, do what works for you. Feminism, right, it's not about you know, down with men and right the rise of women. Feminism we all have a choice. We all get to play here, right. And so I think she said that because we were talking about gender and how we've been socialized, right. And she said I believe in this and that women should stay at home and cook and clean and take care of the kids and be married. And I also knew something about her, which is that she has three kids and she's a single mom. And I said, well, how do you hold that up together? Like, how do you hold your own faith and belief with that? Not trying to embarrass her, or like gotcha, right, but just really curious, how do you wrestle with both? And we had such a meaningful conversation there, right, because of it, and talking about how there are her expectations and what she wants out of life and why she's in school and what she wants to get out of school, right Again, I think that we both grew from that conversation and I think that's the magic. It's not. Here's the textbook. Did you learn this definition? Did you? Did you, because if you didn't, you didn't do well, it's about making the connections underneath it all and I can't make a connection, I think. I think I can't make a connection if I'm not allowed to be fully in the room. Yep, I had one student come to me this is back in a day. One student came to me who knew I was queer and he's like look, I created the speech for my speech class. It's the speech class, you know, for me at least, I think it's like an easy class, except for having to do the speech itself. But the student wrote a speech about what he wants to do and he wants to work with queer youth, da-da-da. And then he scrapped it. I was so proud of his speech and he scrapped it. He goes because I think my professor is so homophobic I'm afraid she's gonna grade me terribly for my topic and I think this is where we don't allow people to be fully in a room, and I think that happens in the workplace for faculty and staff, in the school right, but also other workplaces where if we don't feel like we can fully be present, then we're not really like. I feel like the organization is missing out right In that process and our students are missing out and the world is missing out because it's sold. You can only show up partly, yeah.

Bryan (he/they): 45:15

Absolutely. There's so much in that that I really appreciate it. I once had an experience where I dropped a class because the professor didn't have any respect for students, period. She was like okay, we're gonna start working on your resume. Why don't you just go ahead and make it as if you're gonna work at Enterprise, like most of you are anyway? And I was like, wow, you literally just like tried to put all of us in our place. And not that Enterprise is a bad place. They do require bachelor's degrees and whatnot to work there. But like who are you to tell us that what we're working so hard for is unachievable? Yeah, and the way that the professor or the teacher shows up in the classroom and presents themselves to their students and how they incorporate their students into that classroom is so important because it will literally won. I mean, I was at a lucky place where I get to drop right then and I'm an adult and I can make that choice, but kids really don't have that choice. There's so much hurdle work to try to drop off a class or change to a different teacher in a high school setting and I think that is so frustrating because personalities are important and relationships are important and I heard that so much at the schools I used to work at that like relationships are really important. You've got to build those solid relationships. But if you're stuck in a room with someone who blatantly will, seems as though they would not respect your autonomy and who you are, then the relationship is never gonna form and the education is not truly gonna happen.

James (he/they): 47:02

I had a student come to me this past week and, by the way, listeners, this was like months ago, because you're in January right now we're not. I feel like we're playing a time warp game here. It's kind of cool. So the student came to me in my class and she said I have to drop this other class and the long and short of it was I work on a Mac, it's an IT class, and she's like I don't. The professor said to her I don't know how to do that on a Mac, so you're gonna have to figure out on your own. And walked away from her Like I'm thinking first off, it's an IT class, like wouldn't it be your job to make sure you know you count works on a Mac a little bit? And even if you don't, like, let's figure this out together. But I think it just reminds me of like forgive me if this isn't right, but I think it reminds me of like old school ways of thinking and being right, like a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. Was that Carol DeWacht? Right? Look at me all being fancy. Member of people names. But the concept is that you know that maybe we don't need to fit ourselves into these boxes and that as a professor, teacher, whatever that I can join you instead of I have the power and I have to know everything, which I think a lot of professors still, and maybe teachers still feel like under that trap, like I'm supposed to know everything I don't know. Is that true?

Bryan (he/they): 48:18

I don't know. I feel like I really struggled with that the first maybe year or so of teaching and then I realized I don't like, there are experts out there and I can utilize them. Here's where the catch comes, and this is a post COVID, I think, phenomena, in the sense that, like I'm currently taking an asynchronous communications class where the communication from the professor is literally a copy and paste of the first page of the text that we're reading for that day, everything is pre-formatted I'm reading the text by myself, taking the quiz by myself, watching a TED talk by myself, writing a journal by myself, doing all these things by myself. I hate it because I'm teaching myself communication. They're really it's a curated course and if I would have realized that prior to joining the class, I probably wouldn't have taken it, because I think that there's something about engaging with other people and while there are video assignments and whatnot, there's no actual engagement. We just comment on some of the else's video and I mentioned something about an assignment recently in my journal saying how I thought that this assignment needed to be adjusted, and the professor's response was I wish you would have come to me and had a dialogue and I was like okay, except for this class is set up in a way where it doesn't facilitate dialogue. It's literally as if I'm taking a self-service course. So, anyways, we do need to wind down. So I'm gonna hit you with my last two questions, and since you've already asked me a question, we might just skip that round. The first one is kind of what advice would you give to someone who's going into education and they're unsure about how to show up as their authentic self?

James (he/they): 50:18

Ooh, yeah, I'm not sure I guess I would say trust that, right. I mean, I went to. My most recent degree was at Columbia University Teachers College and I thought I was at the best place, right, like what better? And racism and homophobia and like all the stuff happened in the classroom from the professors. We also learned about experiential learning through PowerPoints, like experiential learning through. I just I didn't understand that class. I was like this is experiential learning but we're not doing anything Anyway. So I think, trust in your gut. I think that's one of the things that I didn't do. I didn't trust my gut because part of it is understanding, I guess, the systems in which you're working in right, whether or not safe, because you want to be safe yourself, right. And then when you find yourself feeling confident and yet you can find the allies and the people you work with, then maybe you do more. But maybe you're not that kind of person, maybe you trust your gut and you just go for it and you're fine with that. Then do that right. I think you're underneath it all. I think that you are the educator and you have more power than you realize and if you want to take it slower, feel free to do that. I've been at Monroe for several years now couple decade and a half now and I'm just getting a pride space in the library, which I'm very excited about. But it's taken me some time to get there because, like there's out and then there's being, like you know, the one that keeps asking for things.

Bryan (he/they): 51:52

Yep the banner holder. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so, thinking about that, what are the things that you think that academia can do on a whole to be more inclusive of LGBTQIA plus people?

James (he/they): 52:06

Well, I think, obviously a paradigm shift, right, having queer people at the table when it comes to making decisions. Aside from that, let me go abstract, for so, dr Dorothy, riddle, the Riddle Scale. I love that scale, if you've not heard about it, and my organization, query Queryus, we have a updated intersectional Riddle Scale and at the lowest level is pity, repulsion and tolerance and acceptance. At the higher levels you're looking at support, admiration, appreciation and nurturance. Ooh, love that. I remember it. And so imagine your organization hits those levels instead, right. And so, yeah, having people on making decisions that are queer, you know queer, identified and learned about queer theories, whatever. I think that would be helpful, right, having regular workshops, because you know we're constantly being taught the other way. And then there's concrete stuff, like basic concrete stuff pronouns, having them on your emails, having the president of the college haven't you know for me, college, but maybe your institution introducing yourself with pronouns. We're gonna be cool if every morning announcements are with the person's name and pronouns, like if they felt comfortable doing that. The other thing I'm thinking about is also like bathrooms, right, I mean any single-store bathrooms. We're at the college level. I think I'm lucky we have a lot of single-store bathrooms on campus, so every one of them are now gender neutral bathrooms or gender inclusive firming bathrooms. But I guess the high school may be different, because they're usually rows and rows of stalls. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think having access to going to the bathroom is important, like basic needs. You know what I mean and so I know pronouns and bathrooms are not the full story, but those are concrete ways in which you can make it a little better. And what I learned from GLSEN over the years Gay and Lesbian and Straight Education Network is that having a GSA or QSA or having something like that in your school, even if queer kids don't end up going, makes a huge difference. So that's what I understand and I think those are some things that administrators can make sure happens.

Bryan (he/they): 54:21

Yes, absolutely. So many great things, and while they are not the be-all and end-all of what education can do, they are the very hot topics of today, the stand that we like, the line we absolutely need to draw on the ground right now. Yeah, so I appreciate that.

James (he/they): 54:39

Yeah, and if you're using PowerPoints or whatever showing images or movies, consider adding. Powerpoints are really easy. You can easily add in a queer coded something and it's not going to be that blatant, right. I mean, if you go and show milk or you know, read the book. I Am Jazz, right, like I feel like that's a little more out there, depending on how you feel. But like a PowerPoint, you can easily put queer coded stuff in there and the students will know, they will see it and they're like, oh my God, I feel seen. And wouldn't that be cool for someone to feel like they're seen in the classroom and that they belong in class?

Bryan (he/they): 55:11

Absolutely, Absolutely. Hey James, thank you so much for joining me on that episode today. I really appreciate it. I've really enjoyed our conversation.

James (he/they): 55:19

Thank you, I so appreciate being here too. If do we have seconds left?

Bryan (he/they): 55:24

Absolutely. Hey everyone, James is also a performer, so James tell us a little bit about that.

James (he/they): 55:30

So, as a professor, I learned to be an edutainer, and then I just went in the other direction and became an entertainer. So I'm a singer-songwriter named Identity, because I want to give everyone permission and an invite to continue exploring. It's I, dot, d, e, n, dot, t, dot T, and all my music is related to queer experiences, or my version of that, spreading queer joy. My hottest one this summer was called Queerphoria, which is a portmanteau combination of two words queer, euphoria. Who wouldn't want to spread more of that? So, yeah, you can find me on all the platforms and you can find me on Instagram if you actually want to ask me questions.

Bryan (he/they): 56:08

Awesome. I'm so glad we got to share that. Hey everyone, thank you for joining us on today's episode. Have a great day. Bye now. All right, let me 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 www. teachingwhilequeer. com and hit support the show. Thanks so much and have a great day.