Navigating the Educational Currents: Julio Carpio on Being Queer A Educator in Today's Schools

Bryan (he/they): 0:27

Teaching While Queer is a podcast for two S LGBTQ plus educational professionals to share their experiences in academia. Hi, I'm your host, brian Stanton, a theater pedagogy and educator in New York City, and my goal is to share stories from around the world from two S LGBTQ plus educators. I hope you enjoy Teaching While Queer. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Teaching While Queer. I am your host, brian Stanton. My pronouns are he they. Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Julio Carpio. Hi, julio, how you doing?

Julio (he/they): 1:07

Hi Brian, again Julio Carpio, my pronouns are also he, they.

Bryan (he/they): 1:13

I'm so glad that you're here. You just told me before this call that you're a listener, so I'm glad to have you on the show.

Julio (he/they): 1:20

I'm excited to be included. You know, like I've, I discovered the podcast over Instagram a little bit ago and I was just like great something to do while I'm reading.

Bryan (he/they): 1:30

I love it. You know, I was like podcasts are always like my commute, my commute go to, so I love them, whether I'm driving or on the train or whatever. I'm just like podcast time. It's like my moment. Well, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself? Okay?

Julio (he/they): 1:49

so I am a queer, non-binary Latin X or Latin A, however you know, choose to swing on that spectrum. Teacher. I've been teaching this is my third year, and prior to that I was a college professor. Nothing fancy teaching college writing a couple of times a semester. It was a sweet gig, but I didn't have benefits, so I needed something more stable.

Bryan (he/they): 2:20

Fair enough, that adjunct to life. So you were teaching college writing, and what do you teach now at the high school level, middle?

Julio (he/they): 2:30

school I teach.

Bryan (he/they): 2:31

ELA.

Julio (he/they): 2:32

I'm currently teaching seventh grade.

Bryan (he/they): 2:34

Perfect. So you stayed within that writing realm and let's take a trip back in time. What was, what was school like for you, growing up as a queer youth, oh Jesus.

Julio (he/they): 2:45

Okay, so I grew up in Miami, so completely, completely different experience probably from where I'm currently to changes in Syracuse, new York. So my, my childhood, growing up, I was the first like out anything kid at the moment it was by and then I took like the bridge from by to gay and then wrote it all the way to college. I got bullied a lot, I got called basically every name in the book and I went through a lot of like suffering I guess you can say. But I paved the way for a lot of my friend group which were also young queer Latinx people to come out and embrace who they are as well. So like I don't regret it, but it was a lot of strife, you know.

Bryan (he/they): 3:37

Yeah, I get that as a youth I was also the. I wasn't out by choice, but I was outed, but I was also the one for a long time and then, like by my senior year, there were several and then five years later there were a whole bunch more, and so I get that it feels it's like a lot and it's like, yeah, no regrets, but it was definitely a journey. So I feel that with you, how do you feel about, like, what's going on with Florida now? I mean, your experience was before all this, so what's your thought on that?

Julio (he/they): 4:17

Um, I mean, I can say a lot of different things about Florida. I will never go back Now that I'm teaching. I will never go back, like the no union. But don't take a, there's a million different reasons not to go back to Florida. First and foremost, it's not a good place to be a teacher. No, let alone a gay or queer, non binary, whatever any kind of teacher that's not says head white, your screwed, frankly.

Bryan (he/they): 4:44

Yeah, honestly, I was feeling that same thing about Texas, and it's funny because Texas likes to pretend that it's like some um, like beacon of conservative, it's conservative ism, but like they're literally just copying Florida's playbook right now, so like uh, they're not even being original. I can tell you what's going to happen on the Texas legislator next year by watching Florida legislator this year. Oh my God.

Julio (he/they): 5:12

It's wild, it's pretty painful, especially because I have a lot of family there still and they're constantly nagging me like, oh, you should come back. Things are great, you can see it on my couch, you can do this, you can do that. I love you all so much, but I can't like put that part of myself away.

Bryan (he/they): 5:31

Yeah, I mean from one of those people who, like I, am boycotting events that happen in Florida, like there are lots of educational conferences and whatnot that were hosted in Florida this year and I was like Nope, absolutely not, I'm not going to spend my money there. I am a Disney person and I won't go back to Disney world until they kind of get their legislator in line. It's wild and into each their own. That's the great thing about life you can make your own decisions on what you want to do with your money. Like, yeah, welcome to freedom to that extent. So, working with the middle school group, do you find yourself working with a lot of queer students?

Julio (he/they): 6:18

Um, so, like I said, I've only been teaching for a few years. I work in a very I'm trying to say this like as nicely as possible, because you know stuff matters Underserved area, Okay, and they have a lot of different things going on. I feel like queerness is maybe one of like the million other things that they're juggling at once. I've seen some very, very interesting like cases of kids that are like baby gays or whatever, but for the most part they have so many other like mental, socioeconomic, physical, whatever things going on immigration, even like language acquisition, disability or what have you. There's, there's so many other other things going on that their sexuality or gender identity doesn't tend to come up as often because they have so many other like risk factors, I guess.

Bryan (he/they): 7:24

That that's so interesting, because I think something that you brought up there kind of is a lesson that the rest of the world needs to take in that the sexuality and gender identity doesn't always have to come up Right, like it doesn't always have to be the hot topic. You could literally be another person and dealing with so many other things that why is it that we're constantly having these conversations about sexuality and gender?

Julio (he/they): 7:48

Yeah, exactly, my kids are very multifaceted, they're survivors, they're fighters. But the ones that have, like, disclosed to me, like, oh, I identify as this, or my pronouns are bad. I'm just like I feel so much anguish and pain for you because your life is going to be so much harder and it's already so difficult and so painful and so so isolated. And again, these are COVID kids, you know. So they have a bunch of other things going on already. The odds are stacked against them. And then some of them are queer, or I have a child, I guess I can't, you know for a part, or whatever. I can't talk too much about it. But yeah, yeah, he identifies as Demian. I'm just like whoa, that's a different one. Like I had some kids tell me oh, I'm bi, or I like a girl, I'm, I identify as a girl. I don't know what that means and we've talked about that kind of stuff, but for the most part they asked me for, like life advice that's completely unrelated to gender sexuality issues, because queerness is unfortunately not a priority for us.

Bryan (he/they): 8:56

Yeah, absolutely. Do you think that your experience as a queer youth kind of influences how you interact with people as a queer teacher now?

Julio (he/they): 9:05

Oh, absolutely. I would say that my experience informs my outlook on things and it also, I think, gives me kind of an edge that other people don't have, because not everybody comes from, I guess I can say, not so well off background Like my my I'm. The upbringing wasn't exactly the easiest either, but in no way does it compare to what my students are going through here. But I have just a little bit of a bridge to them and that gives them the buy and they need to tell me that, because it's very like humbling to have a kid like oh, can I come in, can I stay after for a couple minutes, can we talk and I have lunch with you in your room or whatever, and they tell me these like really, really heart wrenching stories and I just have to sit there with my jaw like trying to keep it closed because I don't know what the heck else to say.

Bryan (he/they): 10:09

Yeah, I can. I can see that I've had situations like that in my in my classroom as well. The school that I worked for when I first started teaching was in an affluent area, but it like had a huge poverty gap, like massive people with millions of dollars versus people living on the street, and so like when you get those stories from students who are in a much worse off place than you are as a, as a teacher, which is also like not great. And so when you get these stories from from students who are in a much worse place and you're like gosh, you are 14 or or whatever, and you're having to deal with all these things and sometimes the life advice that they're asking for, it's like I have, I have no frame of reference on how to help you with this, because it could be completely out of your wheelhouse.

Julio (he/they): 11:08

Yeah, that's, that's literally it. I'm constantly like drawing straws and how I'm going to address the things that they say or the things that they ask me, because sometimes I don't have an answer. I started the year with this like activity where it's like, oh, ask the teacher any question. And I thought they would ask like about me, and some of them did. They were like, oh, it's like to be gay and they were like, how did you grow up? What makes you decide to become a teacher? Stuff like that. And then the questions got bigger and bigger and we did this for like a week where every day I would like take a question out of a box and they stopped being about me and they started being about the world and like how I perceive things and what my opinions are, things that I was just like, wow, these kids are, they're really like they. They have their hands on the, on the pulse of what's going on in the world. They, they are very aware they might not show it, but they, they are keen to a lot of different things, but sometimes I don't pay attention.

Bryan (he/they): 12:07

Yeah, it's funny because I think that I'm of the mind, like I'm in the world of a I don't really access news, yeah. And so then sometimes my kids will say something that they saw on a Tik Tok and I was like I'll be like huh, I'll have to go look that up because I have no idea, and it's just something that kind of like flew across their feed. And so I think it's interesting because, like, as a person who, like, grew up with this technology being created for me or for us, that generation of like we were the first straight and we're already starting to detach ourselves from, like, the central hub of that communication, I think it's interesting. Hopefully the younger folks will also get to a point where they're like yeah, I've had enough of this.

Julio (he/they): 13:04

It's funny that you say that, because I'm like my phone is on, do not disturb, right now I don't want any notifications. I have my outlook set to a way so I don't get any emails or anything from work, and I'm just like please, these are the three hours, hold on.

Bryan (he/they): 13:17

This is like a hard boundary that has to be set right now, especially in education, because it's like people want to get a hold of you at all hours and they expect a response and like that was the only way I got through. Teaching was putting on the away message, putting on do not disturb. I took email off of my phone. I could still access on it my browser if I wanted to, but I took it off of my phone to not give me easy access to it so I wouldn't see a notification. Because these are all things that were like yes, teachers are salaried, but it doesn't mean we're available 24 seven, and so these are like some hard boundaries as an educator that you need to set to make sure that you have time for yourself. I see these memes recently of like it's like a stack of grading or whatever, and it's like I'll do that at home while I'm drinking coffee, and then, when you get home, it's like I'll do that at school and that's all right. But also, let's get to the point where we don't think we have to take the grading home with us. Like let's get to a point where we feel confident in being able to do everything at school, and that has nothing to do with teachers needing to, you know, buck it up and get all your work done. It has to do with administrators and the system that is set up being more accessible for teachers to be able to get their work done during their work day.

Julio (he/they): 14:46

Yeah, stop giving me meetings. I don't need meetings, that can beat emails.

Bryan (he/they): 14:50

Oh God, meetings that are emails and like it's the bane of my existence Like a PD for something that I've been trained on in different times already. I really wish that, like there was a way to test out of things every year. Like you, know, like could I just test out of this? Can I just go right to the quiz at the end of this PD so I can be done with it, because I don't actually need this. In fact, I can leave this training right now. So thank you for this. You would like to learn about flood board and pathogens? Let me help you with that. Literally Well, I will absolutely teach this for you. But it's so funny because all this is mandated, right, like we're mandated to learn these things and it's like well, once we learn it, do we have to keep learning it, or can we just test and, if there's new things, make a tiny section of new things? You know what I mean, right?

Julio (he/they): 15:47

Why are we doing all this One module.

Bryan (he/they): 15:50

Yes, one singular that takes 10 minutes, not an hour and a half.

Julio (he/they): 15:57

That's the worst part. It's the menial thing of having to click through all the videos every summer because I refuse to have them sit in my thing until the day they're due, like my coworkers will, and I'm just like yo, you're planning and you have the video on in the background. How do you get anything?

Bryan (he/they): 16:13

done. I am one of those people, though I will not wait till the last minute. I will wait. I won't wait till the last minute. I'll get it done early, but I will definitely turn it on and being cleaning out my office at school or organizing the theater space, with it just playing in the background because it has to do its time thing. And then I'll answer the quiz question and go to the next video and I'll move on to the next section of sorting and cleaning or whatever that I'm preparing to do for the start of the school year. But I definitely am that person that has it on in the background. But I'm also one of those people who hates getting the notifications that I have things and so I get them done early. So I stop getting notifications. One thing that everybody should know about me my anxiety appears in the little red circle on my iPhone. If that red circle appears, I'm like I have to clear the circle right now, which is why I took my email off of my phone for school.

Julio (he/they): 17:14

That is honestly so brilliant. I'm going to do that immediately after we finish because that circle it drives me insane, like I have dreams with it. Sometimes there's a number just skyrocketing and I have to somehow find a way to juggle things that are on fire, while there's an electric circuit with my smart board that I have to repair or something, and kids are running in and out of the room and there's music playing and, for whatever reason, I can't find my jacket. Teacher nightmares are very overwhelming. I didn't know that that was a thing until this school year.

Bryan (he/they): 17:51

Yeah, I have the luxury of having theater teacher nightmares. And so theater teacher nightmares show up as literally everything that you built fell on top and killed people. You built this set and it fell on people and that is literally my worst nightmare Anything that has to do with being overhead. Even if I'm following all like not if, but because I'm following all of the guidelines and whatnot even with all the guidelines followed, I'm like it's going to fall. It's absolutely going to fall and it never does. But in my brain I'm like, oh, it's going to fall, it's going to fall on somebody until I take it down. And then I'm like I can breathe Teacher nightmares. Maybe that'll be a summer school session that I do Because I was thinking like teaching while queer summer school, two week sessions about stupid topics teacher nightmares that'll be one, I think. So in your short experience, have you ever had to deal with like anti-queer behavior in either your classrooms or in meetings?

Julio (he/they): 18:58

Yes, yes, all of the above. All of the above, so I can share this. My first week, my first year of teaching, I got sucker punched by a kid and called the F-Sloor. Sucker punched, yeah, like in the gut, like he did a fake out and boom. This is an audio medium, so the people who aren't watching the video are not getting the gesture, so this is like it's an uppercut to the stomach. It's an uppercut to the stomach with like everything the child had and knocked the wind out of me. I fell over. It was very like 1990s novella drama. I liked the women's movies. I spun downward, I fell like people thought I died. I was just like wait, wait, dude, this child just touched me. I had a dick, just to get a habit.

Bryan (he/they): 19:50

That's wild. What do?

Julio (he/they): 19:53

you do, you stay on the floor. I hope the kid goes away because legally can't do much. Otherwise I mean, if I engage I get in trouble and if I like don't do anything, you know the kid doesn't respect me and I have to deal with the consequences. So we had like a mediation and that kind of thing and then we became cool. But that first experience really opened my eyes to teaching me a contact sport. This is the thing that I think about all the time and I tell all of my friends like, yes, I teach language arts, but my job is still very physical because I have kids in my space constantly. Yep.

Bryan (he/they): 20:39

Even when I'm leaving a lesson or whatever.

Julio (he/they): 20:40

Like they're kids hugging me or like grabbing things or like playing with my hair or whatever.

Bryan (he/they): 20:47

Yep, consent and boundaries aren't necessarily, you know, keen at that age.

Julio (he/they): 20:51

Yet no, they don't respect anything because it's the first time they're around people since you know lockdown.

Bryan (he/they): 20:58

Absolutely, and so I went to a conference last March that was in Pleasanton, new York, and so it was basically an invitational conference where they had a bunch of GSAs from different schools around the state come and. Like you know, it was about pride and youth and education and whatnot, and I was talking with some teachers and I'd heard that, like, once you get out of the city, that there are portions of New York that can be incredibly conservative, and so have you had situations where you're dealing with conservative issues, not necessarily from the students but from, like, parents or administration.

Julio (he/they): 21:45

I can't speak to parents or administrator, but other colleagues.

Bryan (he/they): 21:49

Absolutely, I definitely had like the microaggressions because I was the one of I think I appreciate that term and I also hate that term like because nothing about it feels micro.

Julio (he/they): 22:02

It's like so passive, aggressive in that way, where it's like it's a micro thing and I'm really doing it like no, this hurts.

Bryan (he/they): 22:09

That's like when someone's like sticks in stones. Yeah, no, no, no, I mean words hurt, correct.

Julio (he/they): 22:18

The HR will say you know, it's a microaggression, that's still something that should be recorded, whatever Cool. But also it happens so frequently people don't do anything about it. It's just like the culture and I don't really appreciate that. I started the school as one of the only queer teachers. I'm still one of the only queer teachers, but now I'm like more vocal about things. We have a Deb committee now I'm a part of that. We're trying to get a GSA started in the school. I'm going to be the staff person for that. Like I'm sick and tired of just the like blatant disregard for queer people, regardless of whether they work with you or you service them as a teacher or educator or whatever. It's disgusting because like the pronouns are misgendering or just like the little things of you're a little fruity or different, or whatever common people make. It's not cute, it's not funny, it's very inappropriate, it's demeaning.

Bryan (he/they): 23:23

Yeah, absolutely. As you go on this journey being an advisor and whatnot for the GSA and kind of expanding the queer representation in your school I encourage you to look at like GLSEN has a lot of great resources for GSAs and also like education, like resources for educators. And then look at the Pride Works conference that's the one I mentioned. That's in West Chester County here in New York and it's in March and they have a lot of resources not only for teachers but for students and really great keynote speakers and have a lot of cool things happening there. So it's at least something local that you might be able to do. I mean, it's not exactly local. It's a long train ride, but I can try Something that is accessible in a physical realm as opposed to only seeing virtual resources for any of you who are in upstate New York or Connecticut or whatnot. If you want to come over, come on over. I don't know if I'll be back at the conference this year, but I'm hoping to go because it is actually like a short 30 minute drive from where my house is. Yeah, when you live in the Bronx, you can get to the mainland real quick because you're on the mainland Any who. So one of the things you're relatively new to teaching and one of the things that I always ask is like what advice would you give to that first-year teacher who's going in the classroom and they're unsure about how to be their authentic self or whether or not they should be their authentic self? What advice would you give that person?

Julio (he/they): 25:08

I was parsing, like my words, I think, when I answered this question initially a couple times, because I get this a lot like oh, what do you do when you're a queer teacher?

Bryan (he/they): 25:19

I have no freaking idea.

Julio (he/they): 25:22

I've played the game long enough, I think, to know where I fit it into this puzzle. But every school district is different, every building is different, every administration team is gonna be different and I can't tell anybody like, oh, you do this and that's it, because there's no magic right answer. I would say gauge the space that you're in, because not all spaces are safe spaces for queer educators and you need to realize that. Secondly, I would say make sure you have the contact people for whatever things might happen, either HR or your union or whatever additional supports you may have, either in the building or in the district or whatever, because if and when something goes down, you want to be prepared. You don't want to have to scramble to find these resources when you're also trying to defend yourself or you're suffering through whatever traumas are being brought back up. I would wholeheartedly say read your contract, find out what rights you have to.

Bryan (he/they): 26:38

I think that's a big one right there, and there's a lot of, you know, stereotype about how people nowadays just don't read the fine print, as it were and I'm a huge proponent of that as well like read your contract and know your rights, because only by doing that will you be able to then enforce your rights.

Julio (he/they): 26:59

Yeah, absolutely literally. I, I, I benefit so much from the fact that we have, like, no discrimination policy. Like I can be as gay and queer and non-binary and unapologetic as I want to. I can be loud and obnoxious, I can be my Spanish self, I can, whatever my pronouns are, in my everythings. I have rainbows everywhere, in my school, my classroom, outside my classroom, on my ID tags like I'm as gay and non-binary as I can be, and I need that to happen and work for my kids, because I know they don't have positive role models where they go home, if they go home. So I I have to put on whatever armor I have to like protect myself but also be there for them, because they're way more vulnerable than I was at that age.

Bryan (he/they): 27:53

Absolutely. The other thing I'm wondering is what would you like to see school communities and this is like everybody administration, parents, the general community, teachers, students what would you like to see school communities do to be more inclusive of 2SLGBTQIA plus people?

Julio (he/they): 28:16

There's so many things like the list doesn't end. First things first, like listen, listen to the people in the room, the people that are trying, the people that have gone through the stuff, because whatever information you get from a news article or a briefing on whatever media you consume is gonna be completely incomparable to first-hand accounts of any kind of homophobia or transphobia or any other kind of just straight-up abuse or terror being brought on to queer people. We need, we need allies, we need support, we need friends, we need people in our corner who are willing to take a hit when we can't I. I do a lot, but I can't do everything. I can't be a super hero. If you know, my cup is empty. There's there's too many things going on in the world and in my life for me to be everybody savior.

Bryan (he/they): 29:21

Yes, that part right there. You have your own life outside of teaching and you cannot be everything to everyone all the time. You cannot be the queer Latin, a savior to all, queer Latin, a people in your, your realm. And I think that I think about that so much because I feel like when I left my first school, I received all these messages saying you know, you were the reason my kid felt safe, and they were not even at my school yet and I'm like, thank you, but like that's a lot of responsibility to put on one person. It's the same thing when people tell me like, oh, you could have stayed in Texas and been a part of the solution, I'm like, well, I also have to. I have my own children to think about and I have my own life to deal with, and so I think that I, you know, made the right choice for myself.

Julio (he/they): 30:21

Yes, literally, literally that part, because I can't be the first everything for these kids in this community. A lot of my students have like admitted like, oh, you're the first thing person or the first person or first one binary person I've ever met and yeah, I appreciate that, that's flattering, thank you for telling me that but also brought in your horizons. Meet more people, talk to more people, that everybody should be a monolith.

Bryan (he/they): 30:47

Yes, that part. This is the stuff that gets me. I'm gonna pause for one second because my computer does not want to charge. Oh my god, like the phone, it's been plugged in this entire time but it is not charging and I'm like the battery or the charger works because was literally plugged in just a moment ago. Okay, the magic ding. So at this point I'm gonna go ahead and turn the mic over to you and you get to be the host of your own little mini interview with me. So take it away, julio.

Julio (he/they): 31:27

Okay so this has never happened before. I'm not used to having power, so I'm a teacher.

Bryan (he/they): 31:34

Oh, what a wish for.

Julio (he/they): 31:36

Okay, so I want to ask you, like no team of shade, I want to know how do you feel about teacher influencers, because I see this a lot on my social media feeds and I I'm trying to come up with opinions and I don't know if I have them yet there are some teacher influencers that I really love, and then there's some where it seems more self-serving and that's that bothers me.

Bryan (he/they): 32:03

I'm a huge like. I have a teachers pay teachers account and I sell stuff on it now, but for five years I was like I hate teachers pay teachers. I hate this idea that we're not just sharing knowledge but I'm, you know, gotta pay some bills, you know, and I totally get that. And so here I am now going against something that I was like against before. But there are some really fantastic teachers influence that are out there that I follow, that I, that I appreciate, and most of the time the ones that I love are the ones that are providing activism and or information, and it's not all buy this thing or participate in this raffle where you get to like everybody that I'm following and then also like follow everybody I'm following and you've got to leave a comment and you've got to like this post, and it's all cisgender, white women, and so I think that's where things can get a little bit of self-serving. I also think that it's an unrealistic expectation that's being set for teachers out there because they look at teacher influencers and the ones that I follow. That I think I really love are the ones that show the real side of things too, and it's not just like rainbows and butterflies all the time, and it's not toxic positivity, it's like man, today's rough. I'm literally sitting in my car on my lunch break just to get away for a bit, just to get some silence. Or today was rough. I just realized that I'm wearing two different shoes and like I've literally done that before, where I wore two different shoes and it wasn't until a colleague pointed it out to me that I even realized I had a blue shoe and a black shoe on and I was like, oh well, all right then. And I think that teacher influencers can be really fantastic as long as the information isn't just feeding into some sort of money machine, like, yeah, you can sell products, but if it's always about your product, then you're not so much influencing so much as you're just a salesperson and a brand.

Julio (he/they): 34:32

Yeah, that's a mic drop.

Bryan (he/they): 34:34

I think, oh, thank you, but there are some teacher influencers that I've been trying to get on this podcast, so we might be seeing some teacher influencers later in the season or something and. I'm still poking at their DMs going hey, remember when we talked about this and you were like, yeah, I'll come on your podcast. It's time to come on the podcast folks. Oh my God, that's exciting. Okay, come on the podcast.

Julio (he/they): 35:01

So, yeah, I think it's interesting.

Bryan (he/they): 35:04

I find influencers in general to be an interesting mix, because it's like I don't exactly know what you do and then there's a lot of negativity around it. See, I saw some sort of viral TikTok about a young woman who's an influencer, who's breaking down because she has to work a nine to five job and it's like I can't even. I wanna come home and shower and eat my dinner and sleep. I can't even cook my own meal. I have to order because I'm so tired and I'm just like okay, but that's just life, and so I think that we're teacher. Influencers are so intriguing to me is that they are teaching and also influencing, and it's not one or the other and it's like I don't know how the heck you do that, because that takes so much time.

Julio (he/they): 36:00

I think about that a lot too, because I see the videos of people setting up their classrooms, or I'll look at this new tip or my outfit of the day, whatever, and I'm just like how do you have this much time alone in your classroom uninterrupted, because there are constantly people bombarding me for any little thing at my school. I don't get a second of my planning time alone.

Bryan (he/they): 36:25

Yeah, no, absolutely. I used to turn the lights off in my classrooms because I worked in a black box, so if the lights are off and it's a black room, nobody can see you, oh my.

Julio (he/they): 36:37

God.

Bryan (he/they): 36:37

And so I used to turn the lights off during my planning period and just sit in the silence as a self-care tool. So those of you out there, if you are friends with a theater teacher and you have a black box on your campus, go sit in the dark in the theater. It is life-changing. It is definitely a moment of zen that you need, but always do it with permission, and you better be friends with that theater teacher, because if you just waltz into their room and try to sit in the dark, they're going to pull a fake prop on you or something and be like who are you and why are you in my space? We are very protective of our space. That's understandable too, because it's basically your classroom. It's my classroom, it's all the things, it's my sewing room, it's my building room, it's like all the things. Well, julio, I've really enjoyed talking with you today and I'm so glad that I got to have you on the podcast, especially because you have been an enthusiastic listener.

Julio (he/they): 37:47

Yes, of course.

Bryan (he/they): 37:49

All right, everyone. I hope that you also enjoyed the podcast at home. Have a great day Bye. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Teaching Wild 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 wwwteachingwildqueercom and hit support the show. Thanks so much and have a great day.