Illuminating the Queer Educator's Journey: Autumn Sundt on Identity, Challenges, and Visibility in the Classroom

Bryan (he/they): 0:27

Teaching While Queer is a podcast for 2S LGBTQIA+ 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 world from 2S LGBTQIA+ educators. I hope you enjoy Teaching While Queer. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Teaching While Queer. I am your host, Bryan Stanton. My pronouns are he, they. Today, I have the pleasure to introduce you all to Autumn Sundt. Hi, Autumn, how are you doing?

Autumn (they/she): 1:08

Hi, I'm good.

Bryan (he/they): 1:09

How about you? I'm doing great thanks. I'm so glad that you were able to join me tonight, so why don't you take a moment to introduce yourself to everybody who's listening?

Autumn (they/she): 1:21

Hi, all right, I'm Autumn, I'm pronouns, are they she, he kind of in anything but it person. I'm a non-binary lesbian in the community and as an educator, I am a high school science teacher.

Bryan (he/they): 1:40

That's awesome. You're one of a few science teachers who've been on here and I always get fascinated because I like science, though I'm more of a history nut. If I was, if I was ranking core subjects. I would love history and then science. So I love having such a diverse group, because for a while I was honestly worried that this was going to be a theater podcast. Accidentally, because that's what I teach. So you know, you talk to the people, you know. Anywho, do you mind taking a journey back in time with me and talking a little bit about what it was like for you as a queer youth?

Autumn (they/she): 2:20

Sure, when I was in high school I largely didn't have the language to describe what I was feeling Like. I had an inkling that I wasn't entirely straight, but I didn't know what I was. It wasn't until I was in to stay kind of in the high school middle school realm. I think my peers knew that I wasn't straight before I did. There's kind of that you find your click and it's almost like heat seeking, like you find each other before you even know how to express to each other what you are For sure, like you've got this common ground that. Yeah, yeah exactly.

Bryan (he/they): 3:16

You've got this common ground, yeah.

Autumn (they/she): 3:18

But you don't even have the words for it yet. And it wasn't until I was an undergrad that I learned the term asexual, because for a long time I identified as such, or I was as such. I do believe that sexuality can be fluid, and a lot of that was strongly tied to my own body. Dysphoria, the idea that I could use my body for pleasure was just beyond me, and so the idea of being attracted to someone was completely bizarre, and so everything just felt foreign to me. And it wasn't until, like my sophomore year of college, that I learned that asexuality was a thing, and that's when a label first clicked for me. Since then I've learned more what non-binary is, and I've grown to be more comfortable in my own body, which is a very long and complicated journey.

Bryan (he/they): 4:30

But I guess, you know, as in my youth, there just there was not that vocabulary, there People were not talking about these different orientations, these different identities, and so I largely just ignored it because I felt so lost I can imagine, especially because you said that like the first term that you really kind of like took the identity of was asexual, and I can see how, like that terminology wasn't common period, like when I was growing up, you might hear about gay and lesbian but you didn't hear about anything else, and so if you fell somewhere else in the spectrum of gender and sexual orientation, like there was no representation in, and that's already saying something, considering there was practically no representation for gay and lesbian, yeah, what I think is interesting is so now you say you identify as non-binary lesbian, so which is kind of track yourself away from asexual.

Autumn (they/she): 5:44

Yeah, I've. As I've grown more comfortable with my gender identity, I've started exploring sexual identity more and I have found, oh hey, I am attracted to women and even though I am non-binary, I'm still female, hence lesbian, even though I know those two terms like might clash. But I don't know. That's just what I found seems to best fit. But it wasn't until.

Bryan (he/they): 6:16

I think that's the thing about identity markers is that you kind of find what fits you and everything isn't going to fit everybody.

Autumn (they/she): 6:26

Right, and I think my best friend put it best once when I was kind of in a small crisis about my own identity markers. She said labels are tools. They're meant to be picked up and put down as needed, and that that really called me down. That made a lot of sense to me.

Bryan (he/they): 6:49

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to me, especially because I think that sometimes you need to try it on to see if it fits, before you know whether or not it's the right choice.

Autumn (they/she): 7:00

Yeah, absolutely so, as I've grown comfortable with my own identity and you know, I've had that room to kind of explore and find that, oh hey, I do actually Experience attraction now, even though it took me and like my late 20s to do so, and and that's okay.

Bryan (he/they): 7:25

Yeah, a couple weeks ago so this episode, for those of you who are listening, is being recorded in November and a couple weeks ago there was a Asexual, a romantic week and it was all about, you know, just raising awareness for the ease of our group and and it was so fascinating to me to just kind of like Sit back and learn a little bit. And One of the things that somebody had mentioned was that like a sexual doesn't necessarily mean like no Sex. In like the idea of sex is like completely gone. It's more like what yours Describing to me. Kind of it makes perfect sense, that like it's about a comfort ability and that's like one person's perspective and it's one person's experience. And I don't want to say that's a blanket statement for everybody, but I just found it fascinating and your experience, I think, is also fascinating because there's something to be said about. You have to be comfortable with yourself to be comfortable with other people.

Autumn (they/she): 8:37

Absolutely, I think so. So I think the asexual umbrella is just so massive and can apply to so many situations. I mean, you know, we need to make room for those who are ace through their whole lives, those who you know, like I. Like at first I almost felt bad, like I was betraying my own identity when I started feeling attracted to women, and then it's like no, that that's okay, there's room for that too. There's room for people who are asexual due to trauma, like as much as that's kind of. You know, a lot of People outside of the community may think, oh well, if they're ace, they must have been abused or something that. And it's like well, no, not necessarily, but that is a possibility and there needs to be room for those people too. It's just such a wide net that can encompass so many situations.

Bryan (he/they): 9:39

Absolutely so. You kind of came into yourself in in your college years. Do you? Do? You feel like you See your, your past experiences impacting how you present as an educator?

Autumn (they/she): 9:57

Yeah, I, I, I do think that how, how, like how I am, how I present myself, how I talk about myself, is just being visible is, hey, I exist as who I am Because growing up I didn't really have anyone like that and and Like, especially in high school there was. We did have a GSA, but it was very limited, there was like four of us and it was kind of it was controversial to even have that at the time, and it was actually through my universities, at UNM, they have their LGBT resource center and it was through them that I learned a lot more of the terminology and how I Learned how to describe myself. Ultimately, and I like that we're seeing that kind of Come down and do high school environments, because that's when these students and these kids really need that. That's when they're starting to go through all of this and experience this, and Just having the terminology to describe themselves is very important, mm-hmm it's so interesting.

Bryan (he/they): 11:31

Last week I interviewed somebody who is a elementary school counselor and has GSA's for like fourth and fifth grade and we were talking about just how wonderful it is that these kids can kind of have experienced the majority of their young life as themselves.

Autumn (they/she): 11:53

Yeah absolutely.

Bryan (he/they): 11:56

Have you found yourself in situations where you've had to deal with anti-queer behavior, whether it's like in the classroom or from the community or parents?

Autumn (they/she): 12:07

There are some situations, hostile situations that I've been in that I wonder if were either caused by or exacerbated by being queer. I got into this. There was a parent that just really decided that they didn't like me that year, and apparently other teachers have faced this wrath too. But I was chosen that year and I just didn't understand why the things she was saying wasn't true. She was persistent and it wasn't until a friend of mine asked do you think it's because you're visibly queer? I'm like, oh, maybe I don't know for sure, but given how visible and kind of publicly out I am, I am also the sponsor for our high schools GSA. I was in a LGBT centered focus group. We were a test school for some policies and so I even get students they'll be working on like a human rights project. I've never seen them before they come up to me. You're the gay teacher, right?

Bryan (he/they): 13:32

Hello, yes.

Autumn (they/she): 13:33

How can I be of service?

Bryan (he/they): 13:35

Gay teacher, nice to meet you.

Autumn (they/she): 13:36

Yes, and for the most part it's been a positive response. But there are some situations that, like with some co-workers that might be a bit harsher on me, that for seemingly no reason, or like with that parent that the more I look back on it it's like oh yeah, that was probably reaction to that, but it's never been overt, which is kind of the weird thing. It's always just a well maybe.

Bryan (he/they): 14:15

Maybe, yeah, and I think that's almost harder sometimes, and this is coming from like. I lived in Texas for five years where, like, people are genuinely nice people to you and then you find out like that they were totally talking about you behind your back, like there's like a whole other, like vibe, and it's some of those situations, honestly, where I'm just like, oh, that's harder than somebody just being honest and like hateful.

Autumn (they/she): 14:46

I suppose yeah.

Bryan (he/they): 14:46

You know what I?

Autumn (they/she): 14:48

mean yeah, exactly.

Bryan (he/they): 14:49

Because the constantly wondering is like it's hard.

Autumn (they/she): 14:54

Yeah, like, overall, the community I'm in is pretty decent and there's some political higher ups that are in power that are pretty blatantly homophobic, transphobic. But within the school system I've, knock on wood, been pretty lucky and have worked for a pretty decent administration, with a few exceptions. There's one, one of our. There's a person that has quite a bit of power that all the students know is pretty homophobic, and I'm pretty sure that she either pretends to be nice to me or she's very oblivious, because I've seen her how she acts towards students and so I'm kind of, you know, I get concerned about what she's thinking about me, like you said, behind my back.

Bryan (he/they): 15:59

Yeah, that constant worrying is frustrating man, it really is. So it's so hard to deal with, like what is going to be presented at me today.

Autumn (they/she): 16:11

Yeah, exactly.

Bryan (he/they): 16:14

And what strikes me as most concerning about what you just said is that you've seen her and how she treats students and that drives me wild. Like why are we treating students regardless of who the student is and how different they might be from a teacher? Why would we treat a student differently? Yeah, like, imagine if we were like oh, not Christian students, like I'm going to go be so hateful towards them, like the hell that would be raised in that situation. But then, like, oftentimes these like either very aggressive statements or quote unquote micro aggressions. We know, listeners, that I hate that word because they're never micro, it's not, it's not micro, it doesn't feel micro. At least these quote unquote micro aggressions can happen and nobody will say anything.

Autumn (they/she): 17:19

Yeah, and that's why it's I find it so important to to call people out, like when I hear students even just in the hallway and they say, oh, that's gay. I just say gay is not an insult. Oh, sorry, like most the time, they don't even realize that they're being mean. Yeah, it's just so habitual that that's why it needs to be called out, because they don't. They don't even realize what it is that they're saying.

Bryan (he/they): 17:53

You're absolutely correct. You said you teach science. Do you teach a specific subject or do you teach kind of like all of it?

Autumn (they/she): 18:00

So I'm split between two classes. I teach 11th grade biology and then for my seniors I teach an elective. I teach forensic science and that's their like senior capstone science.

Bryan (he/they): 18:11

I gotta tell you that my favorite teachers are always the forensic science teachers. They have the coolest projects coming out of their classrooms, but I was hoping you would say biology, because I wanted to dive into that a little bit. So when it comes to kind of like our modern understanding quote-unquote, modern understanding of gender and whatnot, when you're teaching biology, does any of that get to be worked into your curriculum? Or is it really you know Gregor Mandel and you know X, y and this is it and that's all there is to it?

Autumn (they/she): 18:54

I do get to mention a little bit about that. There is a difference between sex and gender, and I do both in biology and in the anthropology section of my forensics class. I do kind of I don't know if soapbox is the right word but I do go on a tangent that intersects people exist and I go into like client-felters and androgen sensitivity syndrome and Turner syndrome and how it affects more of the population than you probably realize, up to 1%. So you know you're in a big lecture hall at you know 101 University class there's 300 people there. Two to three of those people were probably born intersex and you have no idea. And so I do get to go on that little tangent and so far I haven't received pushback for it. In fact, with the, the chromosome thing in biology client-felters and turners is actually part of the curriculum. They have to be able to recognize that and that's not just my class, sorry folks.

Bryan (he/they): 20:00

The train just came back. I appreciate that so much because I think that, like, curriculum does need to adjust, and that's where I get so frustrated because a lot of the arguments on online. You know when you read the comments. You never read the comments, but I always read the comments. A lot of the arguments are like if you had a basic understanding of biology but really what we're dealing with is an advanced understanding of biology, and so it's like, well, yeah, you can have a basic understanding, but also like that doesn't mean that an advanced understanding doesn't exist. So I love that. Now, our basic understanding includes recognizing other possibilities. And I'm in a gender and communication class and there was a whole chapter that dealt with, you know, gender identity and sex. And it was fascinating because it was like people have xxy and people have different chromosomal combinations, and if you're saying xx and xy are all that exists, but all these other people exist and that yeah, it doesn't make any sense Exactly, and I super, super super loved the term intersex, because it was not the words that were used when I was a kid, and the words that were used were not used in a. They were always kind of derogatory or shameful, I suppose. So I'm loving that change in terminology. For those of you who are younger, I suppose, than listening to this, the term unquestion was hermaphrodite, and so I just appreciate that there's kind of more inclusive terminology as opposed to something that sounds more like an anomaly as opposed to like an actual scientific reality.

Autumn (they/she): 22:01

Absolutely, because I'll even you know there we talk about. There are different species of animals and even plants that are considered hermaphrodites. But I always specify you use that word for animals, not people. You know, snails are hermaphroditic, people are intersex.

Bryan (he/they): 22:23

Yep, I always think about. Also like this is fascinating, because this information to me comes from the fact that I love historical science fiction and so one of my favorite book series is the All Souls series. It's about vampires and witches and and demons and whatnot, because I love all that kind of like spooky stuff and they talk about chimerism, which is basically like you have twins and one of them absorbs the other in the womb and they get the genetic code for both their fetuses, and so that's a similar situation as as being something that is outside of what we think, that our understanding or what our quote-unquote basic biology understanding of sex is, because this person could be female and have female sex parts, but also have chromosomal information from their fraternal twin that includes XY Kind of chromosomal identity or traits.

Autumn (they/she): 23:38

So science is so fascinating.

Bryan (he/they): 23:41

Yeah, I'm very lucky to be able to talk about stuff like this.

Autumn (they/she): 23:45

It's a scientific field and I think especially biology. The further you get into it, the more you realize we have no idea what's going on. Like the further, the more advanced you get, the more confusing it gets, not just because of level of content, but the more you realize we don't know. And I feel like that's especially true in biology and like, anytime you're working with living things, there's always going to be one-offs and weird things that happen that you're not expecting.

Bryan (he/they): 24:21

Yep, I like to think about all those images that appear of like the specs on your eye and stars and the structure of veins, and like leaves and how, like so many things from a biological perspective are connected or are paralleling each other, but they're completely different. It's just a parallel that exists, and all that stuff just fascinates me, and it's like this is why science exists to continually pursue that question of like, why, how? and what not and honestly, this kind of came to me. So, folks, I'm speaking in rough draft, be prepared, but I feel like it's a good argument for all those people who are like. You know, science is trying to prove the death of religion and I'm like, actually like when science is discovering that you know, we know all of this information and also we don't know a crap ton of other things. That seems like a justification to me of, like, higher powers whatever that higher power may be Like that. Science is just proving that there's so much more that we don't know. And for all those people who are people of some sort of faith, like I, feel like that aligns right, like they fit together and that they don't have to be mutually exclusive and I was good. I don't know a little when people say that. And I'm not a religious person, I'm a spiritual person, I'm not a religious person, and so me, I'm like everybody do whatever they want, as long as you're not hurting anybody. But there are some folks out there who are like, oh, science is like so wrong, it's against God, and I'm like, or like, how did we get science? You know really, really think about what your faith is. Your faith should be like God gave us scientists or whatever you know.

Autumn (they/she): 26:25

Yeah, no, I entirely agree with that. I think science is the exploration of the world we've been given. However, we got it.

Bryan (he/they): 26:36

And that's a great like definition.

Autumn (they/she): 26:42

And it's just like you said. There's so much out there that's yet to be explored and they're really not mutually exclusive. I think they go hand in hand, but often answer two different questions. You know the how versus the why, and, as a spiritual person myself, I'm fully on board with what you're saying, that it's there. They really do compliment each other, and that's also a pet peeve of mine, and I see it on both sides. I see a lot of anti theists trying to use science on their side and like, no, that don't speak for me. Yeah.

Bryan (he/they): 27:27

And then there's the other perspective of there might be, like you know, scientists being like anti faith, yeah, so it's kind of a mixed bag across the board. But thanks for indulging a little science and theology with me for a second.

Autumn (they/she): 27:45

Oh, you're very welcome. It was an interesting term.

Bryan (he/they): 27:50

So in your current role, do you feel like well, in any role for that matter have you consistently been in a place where you feel like there's good support for the queer students and teachers? From your administration standpoint?

Autumn (they/she): 28:06

For the most part, yes, I feel my administration is a good administration. There's a lot of pressure from our more recent school board, however. Yeah, yeah. It's the phenomenon folks who talked about it a few times sweeping and like something that recently went out district wide in response to students and teachers having pride flags is no flags allowed except the American flag and that, like I said, even though they didn't say it, that was specifically in response to suppressing pride flags because, you know, the student wanted to wear one as a cape or whatever. Then so be it. But there was, and for years that was fine until it suddenly wasn't. But that's not just at my school, that came out for the whole district. We haven't gotten to any book banning yet, but I'm kind of concerned about what might be ahead. I feel like at a district level there's been more pressure to be less out. Like I know, I've definitely felt less comfortable in the past year or two. I've been slightly concerned for my job, like not that, I think, not that anything has happened, but just with the whispers and the kind of things that aren't said, I felt like there's this pressure here to be silent. I do think the people in power at my location, at my school, have done a good job pushing back. I think our counselors and our principal. They've done as much as they can do and that's something I'm highly appreciative of. But it does concern me that it's kind of starting higher up and trickling down.

Bryan (he/they): 30:22

Absolutely One of the things. I was talking about this the other day with a friend, just like a friend, you know. We were out drinking and this is the conversation we had, because that's what we do, but it's mind boggling to me that educators are not allowed to be on school boards.

Autumn (they/she): 30:40

Yeah.

Bryan (he/they): 30:42

It just seems like these school boards which are made predominantly of parents, which means that they don't know about education, and if some of them do, like fantastic. But why are you making life harder for teachers? You know, teaching is already hard enough. Why are you adding things to make things more difficult for teacher? But like, the majority of school boards is like parents who run a company or manage this, this and that at some company, and so obviously they can manage a school. Like, while schools are businesses in the sense that they're given a budget and they have to like allocate those funds. You're dealing with education and children. You're not like running a Fortune 500 company.

Autumn (they/she): 31:29

Right, you're not trying to turn a profit, so somebody in the room should know about.

Bryan (he/they): 31:35

Yeah, somebody in the room should know how to handle education. Yeah, absolutely A lot of what's happening right now is this conservative push of people with opinions.

Autumn (they/she): 31:49

Yes, Reminder to go vote in your local elections. Yes, PSA.

Bryan (he/they): 31:55

Vote for the School Elections Honestly, the School Board Elections. If you want to be an advocate and an activist, the School Board Election is the most important election for you to make an immediate impact on your community. So you say that right now. At the last year or two, you start to feel like it is less safe to be as out as you were previously. There's a little bit more concern and more worry that you have. If you had a new teacher come to you who is getting ready to go into the classroom for the first time and they're queer and they don't know whether or not to be their authentic self, what kind of advice would you give to them?

Autumn (they/she): 32:49

It's tricky. I'd say, first and foremost, protect yourself. You want to stay safe above everything else. You kind of have to read the room, so it's going to depend on the students you have that year. As far as coworkers and administration, I'd say it's fine to be casually out, but I wouldn't be out to students until you know them pretty well and can kind of judge how they'll respond to that, because it's going to be the students who tell the parents that stir trouble and it's really coworkers that are causing trouble. It's people outside of the system trying to look in. I'd say it's walking a fine line between protecting yourself. It's a fine line between keeping yourself safe and being authentic, because I do, like I said, I think that visibility to students, even if it's really subtle and I'll say this too you can be really subtle and the students that need to pick up on it will pick up on it. You don't have to be really overtly out. I have a little rainbow beaded safety pin and that's like a beacon to some students and most students never even notice it. So, walking that line between being subtly out but still keeping yourself safe and I don't want everyone to say like, oh, you should suppress yourself, but I think subtly is a better option in this scenario.

Bryan (he/they): 34:48

Unfortunately, yeah, I tend to agree, especially as you get to know your environment. Once you have a good footing and you understand the environment you're working in, then you can be more open. And I also think it's circumstantial. You might have this really strong feeling or reason that you need to be fully out and authentic, and that's wonderful and fine, and if you feel like you need to not tell anybody, that is also wonderful and fine, because really it's about what you need to do for yourself, absolutely. So you've already mentioned one thing, which is school boards, but what do you think that the educational community, the actual school communities, administration, faculty students, parents, what can we all do to be more supportive of 2S, lgbtqia plus folks?

Autumn (they/she): 35:57

I think, like I kind of mentioned before calling out behaviors that are not okay, make it known that, hey, we don't support that kind of thing here and also just making your support visible. It's when someone seems to be kind of on the fence or wishy-washy about it. You're going to lose the trust of these people real quick. So those would be the two main things I would say is, if someone's not acting appropriately, call them out, correct the behavior in the moment, if you can, to just show your support, and that doesn't even have to be a grand gesture, and it kind of ties into the first one too. If you say, hey, it's not okay to use that slur, people are going to see that and they're going to know what side you're on. If you treat every situation like both sides are equal, when it's not always equal, when there is a right and a wrong, you're going to lose the trust of the community very quickly.

Bryan (he/they): 37:20

Yep, absolutely. So. At this point I want to kind of turn the mic over to you and allow you to ask me one question to kind of round out our interview.

Autumn (they/she): 37:37

I guess what, from your perspective, are you concerned about most for the future of education?

Bryan (he/they): 37:44

Oh, I know it's a big one. I mean one is the, the, the onslaught of the, the school board takeovers, because I watched a friend of mine leave education in South Dakota because the school board was taken over by conservative candidates and then they abolished this school board and their their goal was that, you know, they would hire conservative people to leave the schools and then the conservative values will win over the schools and that's like some weird, weird cases. But this kind of idea that because school boards have so much power that some really drastic changes could be happening at a local level. The other thing that I'm concerned about is that we have these state laws that are happening and because education for some reason was written into state sovereignty, these laws get to be made that basically reflect, like, the erasure of whole peoples and experiences. In my opinion, it is a form of like modern day colonization, in the sense that you're wiping out the experiences of a whole group of people because it doesn't fit your agenda, and so those things kind of are my biggest concerns at the moment, because it really is going to impact millions of children in a negative way, whether those children are white and Christian and straight or they're in a minority group. That has been erased, like from the curriculum. Not learning about other people does not erase the fact that other people exist and it only dooms us to complete or to repeat the atrocities of our past. And we're kind of dealing with some of that right now with calls for, like, the death of Jewish people and how, you know, world War II wasn't that long ago. But here we are experiencing kind of this rehashing of that kind of mentality and if we don't teach these things and if we don't acknowledge that different people exist, then this battle that's been happening for centuries, that has to deal with religious differences, whether it be Christian or Muslim or Jewish or whatever the situation is. I mean, I'm wicking and like the Christians killed a bunch of women that they believed to be witches. They weren't witches but they did kill them. You know a bunch of women that they believed to be witches. Saint Patrick, quote unquote like drove, the snakes, the pigs, the pagans out of Ireland. Um, there's all these stories that have to deal with not being able to accept that different people exist. But it's a reality. We have to understand that different people would exist and I'm concerned that education is being pushed away from that at the moment, at the moment, and so we're seeing a lack of empathy that is only exacerbated by the fact that we were in isolation three years ago yeah, yeah, there seems to be this mindset of we feel we're the best and we have to prove that everything's good.

Autumn (they/she): 41:54

We're the, we're the good group. All the time, we hide everything else and yeah.

Bryan (he/they): 42:00

I mean, I think about stuff that I learned, like manifest destiny and how like it was God that pushed the US to move westward. Like are you kidding me? Like that's wild. And to think that this thing it was like not that long ago. I I know I have an old soul because I think of history as a short period of time so like wow the civil war was not that long ago and this was not that long ago. That's how you know you're an old soul is when you're like. You know 1886 wasn't that long ago, but it wasn't like yeah, it really wasn't that long ago that all these things were happening and it's like we need to do a better job of like we're repeating and starting to see things repeated 70 years later, as opposed to centuries later like why are we closing that gap? Why are things getting more progressively divisive, as opposed to accepting that as the world becomes more diverse? We just need to accept that the world becomes more diverse it's a reality just accept it and I'm gonna get off my soapbox now thank you for listening. Adam, I wanted to thank you so much for coming on this journey with me today. I really enjoyed going down our little trails about science and our little soapbox about politics and history and whatnot you really like piqued a ton of my interest today and I appreciate that you were here and shared your experiences with me well.

Autumn (they/she): 43:39

Thank you for having me.

Bryan (he/they): 43:40

It's been a pleasure to be here and those of you at home you're so welcome, and those of you who are listening. Thank you for listening. Wherever you're listening from, I hope you have a great night, day, morning, whatever. Thank you for joining us on this episode of teaching while here. 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 www. teachingwhilequeer. com and hit support the show. Thanks so much and have a great day.