Transforming the Educational Landscape: A Pollicino's Proactive Advocacy for Queer Inclusivity in Academia

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, welcome back to another episode of Teaching While Queer. I am your host, Bryan Stanton. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with A Pollicino. Hi, how are you doing? Hi, nice to be with you. I'm glad to have you here. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself, how you identify within the community, what do you teach or how do you work within the educational field?

Sure. So I am a trans, non-binary person, specifically a gender, and I'm also on the A spectrum. I gender question back in 2017, when I was working as an educator in a museum that had reached within the school system. So I was doing educating in about 20 some-odd schools through the program that the museum that I worked for had. I was originally certified to teach art K through 12, so that's where I got my start being an art teacher. But, as the education field goes, sometimes you get a job that's a little bit in and outside of what you got your degree in. So I moved around a little bit and now I'm back in school to get my PhD in educational policy, because once I gender questioned, I knew that that was what I wanted to focus my career on making schools more inclusive for trans students and faculty.

Awesome. I love that. I am also currently on the questionable route of whether or not I fulfill a PhD after I'm done with my second masters Excellent. So it's like I'm having all these conversations with people who are in that process, and so it gives me a lot of insight to the amount of work and all that and whether or not I have the well the time with children to get it done. But there's one thing I did want to talk about and touch on really quickly before we start our journey back in time, and you had mentioned that you are a gender, and whenever a new term pops up in the podcast, I love for the person to explain what that term means, just because I feel like it's important to come from your own words. Sure so do you mind letting us know what a gender means.

Yeah, definitely, and I failed to mention that I use they then pronouns. So, in case you can't read my little professional pronoun pin, that's what I go by as an agender person. I first bumped into the term non binary when I first gender question. First I was, I was reading for a friend that came to work for us who was a trans man, and you know he was kind of a fish out of water, you know, with a bunch of cisgender people that skewed a little bit older and traditional. So I went home and I googled the term transgender and had to be a good ally for a trans person and that was like my crack moment where, like my head just exploded and a lot of memories came flooding in and I was like why didn't somebody tell me this when I was eight years old? Because I didn't have a correct definition of what trans was. So soon thereafter I got to non binary and I was like, yes, yes, this is, this sounds good, this sounds great. So then I was, you know, checking out YouTubers that were non binary and reading different books and things. I had grabbed Dara Hoffman's, foxes me and my gender identity workbook and that does a lot of identity unpacking and has a lot of different terms in it, and so when I bumped into the agender label, that feel felt really good for me, because some non binary people feel like a combination of masculine and feminine. I feel the complete absence of gender. I don't really understand when people are prescribing certain characteristics or sensibilities to masculine or feminine identity. I just really felt like most things that we attribute to one gender or the other or some of that, those in between genders I didn't really understand, like why people were coding certain things as male or female or gender queer. I really just feel a complete absence of anything that you could prescribe to any gender, whether it's a cisgender identity or a trans identity. So that's kind of where I'm at. You know, I'm happy for everybody else that loves to explore and express masculine and feminine things, but it's kind of all the same to me and I feel like everybody can play with everything.

Yeah, I get that. I bumped into the term non binary and wasn't sure whether or not that fits me. I kind of identify as queer because I like the umbrella term of it, just like I mean in reality it just means set apart or different. So like I'm here for that. But what I think is so fascinating is that, with gender being a social construct, like what you're saying makes absolute sense, like this is all make believe and you just don't believe in it, like you know what I mean, like it just makes so much sense. And so I'm glad to have another term to throw into our definitions here and to help educate folks because, like you, there might be people out there who are like oh, I didn't even know, I had no idea that existed and I love you had mentioned. Like why didn't anybody tell me? I feel like a lot of that, for there's a lot of that for all of us. I know that when I was younger, my one of my first girlfriend is now my best friend and her wife is lovely and my husband is lovely and we both looked at each other like 15 years after high school and we're like Well, why don't you tell me? Why don't you tell me I was gay. Why don't you tell me I was a lesbian? I was like best kept secret.

I was like literally, this is the coolest negative information that everybody had for me for 33 years Right.

You come to it later in your life and you're like oh well, that explains a whole ton of things right there, exactly. So let's take that journey back in time. What was it like for you? I mean, you said that up until your 30s you were identifying as a woman. I'm assuming you're a fab.

Yeah, I mean that's how people were perceiving me, so I didn't know any different. I didn't have the vocabulary for other options. So, yeah, I kind of went along with. You know, everybody in society including you know, my parents, extended family, school, faith, community everybody was coding me in this. You know, wrong gender. And since I didn't have any alternative models or understandings, I just thought I was a very uncomfortable girl or woman, which is why when I got those labels, I mean there was such relief, like a huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders. And I think, as a young person, I just attributed it to the way that society put women and girls in a very small box and what those boxes were. And I also would like think about like, well, it's also not fair for boys, like the way that we raise boys, and I just thought that I was super uncomfortable with this box. I knew I didn't want to be in that box. So there was just this frustration that I didn't know how to articulate or how to deal with. As a kid and I, you know, I had a fairly healthy, happy upbringing otherwise so there was a lot of mental, emotional turmoil that I couldn't quite pinpoint. So I would just attribute it to sexism or, you know, not like in the way that people thought about girls and women, like not all women are like that, not all girls are like that. Little did I know I was a trans kid saying like that's not how I feel, that's not how I identify. So I may have like some similar thinking to women and girls when it's just like societal stuff that doesn't fit them. However, it definitely goes a step beyond. That is, I totally don't identify with that at all and like, despite sharing some physicality, you know nothing in my heart or my mind syncs up with what most women and girls talk about and how they identify and what's important to their identities being who they are and you know, same thing with men and boys. So I was really glad that non-binary and agender and all those other terms for non-binary identities exist and are out there and being unpacked and explored. And I think that's a really exciting thing that our youth are contributing to older trans folks and older people in general is they're really exploring all of these terms and expanding them and questioning and figuring things out and maybe five, ten years from now we'll have a whole other set of vocabulary that may fit us even better than the terms we have now. So I'm really grateful to the youth of today working on all that terminology and pushing the consciousness level even further.

Absolutely. And there's something that you said that I think is really important because I feel like it really describes the experience for a lot of people is that here's society's box of male and here's society's box of female. And I know for myself I was like just the idea of being a man in the way that society has, like be a man kind of mentality, really irked me, like, really made me uncomfortable. And so that's when I knew I was like that ain't it, that's not me, but also like I'm not over here, and for me I was like I'm kind of floating between like if I'm gonna have to use these like socially constructed ideas, and I feel like I'm a mixture, right. And then what I love is that you just introduced me to like a whole other realm where it's like you don't have to do anything, you don't have to be either. So that is super, super fun and I love that. Like for those of us who are in our 30s and 40s, like all this, all this terminology, especially when it comes to like fluidity and like non binary or gender queer and a gender all of this terminology is relatively new, so it's like we're full grown adults getting to discover new things about ourselves because the terminology is catching up to what we're feeling and so I find that fascinating and I do also look forward to see, like, what happens next, because there are so many young people that are so comfortable with their identities from a young age that there's got to be there's going to be growth that comes out of that, because they have this time to process it, whereas, like those of us who are doing this in adulthood, you know we have life to deal with, plus you know what is our gender journey, plus you know bills and we've got to do therapy and we have jobs and all these other responsibilities. So to have these young people who still have a lot of stresses because teaching at a high school, like I need parents to understand high school is not what it was when we were in school and it is incredibly stressful and they've got their own stresses to deal with, but it's not as much, as you know, when you have to take care of everything and you're the sole person responsible for yourself, and so I think it's so wonderful that they're going to have this time to kind of process and then something new is going to like grow out of that.

Yeah, it's really awesome and, aside from the new, like at the same time, we're in such an interesting time of history because we do have all this new knowledge and consciousness rising to the top. But also, you know, we're restoring identities that were before all of this. You know relatively recent social constructs, so we're restoring, you know, pre colonial conceptions of gender identity and since we have the internet and sort of this global collectiveness, we're seeing that gender non conforming people have existed since the beginning of time and also on every continent. So we can look at so many different cultures that have either third gender or many genders and really researching and rethinking old texts, old history, tgnc, figures that have existed that we just generally didn't learn about, at least in our, you know, like history courses. But now kids are getting that in their curriculum. They're learning about people in the 1800s or back in the Greek and Roman days that were gender non conforming and we have a lot of here, like in the United States, on Turtle Island, we have lots of tribes restoring parts of their identity that were discriminated against and and you know that colonization tried to stomp out. Now we're we're coming back to okay, now to spirit. People can talk about gender identity and sexuality. That was the norm before colonization. So I think we're in this really interesting time. We've got the youth doing their thing, you know, giving us new terminology and trying on new labels, and then also this restoration of, you know, old knowledge that has either been forgotten or erased through different political movements and things like that.

So yeah, super interesting. It really is kind of like a sexual renaissance time and sexual gender identity, like renaissance, because we are, we are seeing that and one of the things that I love like I'm a huge mythology person and I can just look through pantheons and see how many gender non conforming people or gender queer or gender fluid and these are terminology you pull out of the pantheon that have existed for thousands and thousands of years like Christianity, and so I always struggle when people are like, well, this is new. No it's not new. It's just that you made us be quiet for a long time, and now we're tired of being quiet.

Exactly, yeah, they can't close the box, like you know, as much as they're trying to put things back in the closet, it's like kind of impossible.

like you know, it's been opened up and too many people know, you know yeah, and it's, and it's crazy to think of just how like colonialism really impacted I mean the fact that indigenous cultures could be so assimilated by colonialism that they've actually given up on a whole like gender identity that existed for centuries before this colonialism happened, and that there'd be this innate kind of like homophobia and bigotry that comes from the colonizer. And so it's just really sad to see how colonialism like really destroys culture, and then now it's lovely that we get to kind of piece it back together, and that's what is one of my goals actually on here, and so this is a call to action for all of you who are out there. If you know any two spirit educators, I would love to talk with them because I think that's one, you know, one facet of our wonderful, ever growing alphabet for the queer community that I haven't had the privilege to speak to, and I know, like, if you ask my grandmother, she's a very funny person. She's like you have Native American blood and I'm like that's really fantastic. You look at me and like it's way down in there, you know, but I've always been fascinated to learn more about it because, like I don't have any connection to that, because of the way that you know genetics have worked and who I ended up, you know coming out as I would love to connect with people who are really rooted in their indigenous culture and and and also experiencing what it's like to be a queer person and an educator, like there's so many things, and so, yeah, that's my call to action. If anybody out there knows somebody who is a two spirit educator, hey, send them my way. I'd love to have them on the show because I really want to see how many person commercials. Let's talk about you. So you started as an art teacher and then kind of, how does? How? Has your experience in education evolved since then?

Yeah, so I did. You know I got a lot of gigs trying, trying to get my foot in the door as an art teacher. I think when you're teaching things like art, music, dance, things that are considered extras in the United States education system that's not core curriculum it's a little bit more difficult landing that regular classroom teacher job. So a lot of times you know people are saying like, oh, you got to start substituting, get your foot in the door and then you'll work your way in. And a lot of times when I was doing that I started in upstate New York and then moved to Austin, texas, and then I moved to Oregon and in some places I started by substituting and getting my foot in the door and applying to gigs here and there. But art, the art teaching profession there's a lot of people that are around retirement age, that aren't quite retiring or there's like one position that will get filled once that person does retire. You may have a classroom or you may be art on a cart and you might be in one of those schools that just doesn't have the resources to have a regular art classroom and so you're, you know, teaching something that has a lot of materials and needs a lot of space on a little tiny cart that's getting unpacked and packed. So it was a little bit difficult breaking into what my degree had kind of like set me up to do. And from moving around I sort of got a taste for working in a regular school, whether that be a traditional public school, working in an art center that has courses and classes at their center, and then also have programming pulling you into the school system. And then when I moved to Oregon, I ended up landing a job at a regional history museum, which was really interesting, and I got it. You know, I got it through my art background because it was a brand new museum and they needed some sculptural work. So I actually did a proposal to make a sculpture for them, for their foyer. And then they realized I had an education background and they said oh, we're actually hiring an educator, why don't you apply for that too? So I went for that, even though it was a little outside of my realm as an art educator, but it ended up being really fun and interesting. It was history curriculum about the two local tribes that I was living near I was on the southern coast of Oregon, so that was right by the Coquell tribe and the coups Lauren Quantsayusla tribe and they had an interesting curriculum when I got there and I had the privilege of being able to work with the tribes in pushing the curriculum a little bit further. And it was also an interesting time for Oregon and Washington because prior to me getting there, washington had a bill that mandated more equitable history curriculum in their schools and Oregon, while I was there, was trying for an accomplished passing a similar bill. So that put out a bunch of funding for educators and school systems and tribes to work together on this new curriculum for a few grade levels with the idea that they would hit maybe like third grade and eighth graders and then in subsequent years when more funding came around, they would fill in other curriculum and other grade levels. So it was really interesting that I had this whole museum at my disposal with a lot of different artifacts and equipment that I can bring students in to do a little bit of a lesson. The two local tribes were very hospitable in taking us over onto their reservation and some of their facilities and some of their educators doing lessons there and then also I was able to, in my position, go into the schools and teach a regular classroom lesson. So this was a really interesting time for me to be able to try educating it in a lot of different settings and collaborating with a lot of different people that had very broad skill sets and having an art background. I'm always pulling in creative and artsy kinds of ways of of teaching, which is always good to be able to lean back on. But this job also kind of pushed my parameters as far as doing research and seeing what lessons were good, what needs to be reworked and what is the local community and the local schools and students actually need and want in their curriculum.

That is so fascinating. There's something about being an arts educator because I also teach theater, and so I feel a lot of what you're feeling. And. I was lucky in that when I started teaching, I was in Texas, and Texas has a ridiculous theater education program. It is wild, and so I was very lucky to be able to get that full-time position in a school very quickly. But so many people that I know who teach in the arts nationwide are a teaching artist for a while or a substitute teacher, or they're doing exactly what you said, where they're working for an arts facility and managing an education program. That's actually something I would love to do one day is to work for a big theater company where I'm responsible for the outreach to the schools and the education side of it. That would be a dream, and so I think it's fascinating your journey, because so many people who teach what the schools consider extracurricular activities or extracurricular, we're all in that similar boat of having to make it happen. It really is a gig life, even though teaching is supposed to be a career. It's solid, yeah Right. It's like oh, you're going to go into teaching. You should be set, except for, like, for art teachers. It really is. It's a gig life. You got to find what you can find. And I think that it's so cool that you got to work with the tribes. One of the things I do love about teaching arts is that you don't have to be the expert in everything. You can invite people in to come teach different subjects and whatnot. So I think the collaboration you're talking about sounds so fascinating and it's like that's a course I want to take. I want to go experience that that just sounds really fun. And so earlier you mentioned that, when you had done your research to be a good colleague and ally, you kind of discovered your age gender identity and then that shifted your experience in education. So do you mind talking a little bit about that?

Yeah, definitely. So, yeah, it was very unexpected and I guess prior to gender questioning, I was in this interesting space where I was going to a lot of teacher conferences and education conferences around decolonizing education or teaching for social justice, and so I was getting really excited about the amount of scholarship and discussion that's going on around that and around those topics, but a lot of the equity issues, you know. I felt like I was in the ally seat and just kind of like showing up for other communities or other people's stories, which is, you know, a good thing, and more and more teachers do have to step up for different people in that way and do like self educating and figuring out what's the best supportive role that you can be in. But I didn't feel like anything was quite my story. And then, after gender questioning, I was like, oh, this is it Like this is, you know, this is the puzzle piece that I needed for so long and this is the equity and justice issue that I want to pursue and that I can represent and that really speaks to my personal lived experience. And around that time I was, fortunate enough, I was also teaching a college course and a lot of my colleagues within that college. They had their PhD already and they would. They would tell me all the time oh, go for your PhD, go do it. And I thought that higher ed stuff was, hey, just like cost prohibitive because I knew that I couldn't afford to go back for my masters. I would have gone back for my masters, you know, teaching for social justice or something like that, if I thought it was affordable. But then the people that had their PhDs were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can get a fully funded position. And I was like what? And they're like yeah, school is like completely paid for at that level. And I was like, oh, I had, you know. Then that was a big game changer. So knowing that higher ed was accessible and then also having that gender questioning piece really just like converged at the exact right moment for me. And that's when I told myself that you know, it's time to go back to school. And previously I had also been thinking about I love my job, it's a good job, I feel very happy and comfortable here, but if I don't change something, I'm going to be in the same place five years from now. And I was thinking to myself like, how does it. You know like it is a great job. I love what you know, how the program is growing. But on the other hand I, you know I wanted to do more and I knew that there was something that would be a better fit. So once this gender questioning piece came in, and then also those friends encouraging and saying, of course you can do a PhD, go and do it, it was kind of a no brainer. So I quietly was doing some of the you know, while I was doing all of my gender like deep dive stuff secretly, I even had that you know that workbook for my gender identity. I covered it with brown paper like you used to cover your school books with. So I could like bring it to work and bring it home and, like nobody know would know what I'm working on. So I was doing like this internal unpacking of my gender identity and then also thinking who would be good in the community to take my job so that when I did resign I could suggest a good person for the position. So I was doing a little bit of like feeling out other people in the community that would be good for the job and maybe available for the job, and kind of seeing like where are they at? Would they possibly want to do that? There was some personal life stuff that I just had to deal with. I was, you know, in a relationship for eight years so I had to be doing a lot of discussions with my partner at the time as far as, like, what does this mean for our future, for my future, for their future, and then thinking about going home and coming out. So I was in Oregon, I had been away from the East Coast for about nine years and you know there was different things that happened in my life and my family's life that I felt like. You know, there was that disconnect, being in a different time zone and only flying home for weddings or funerals and things like that. So I did think to myself, if I am going to pursue a PhD that could be five to seven years I should probably go back home to do it. So there was a limit of programs that do have a queer studies or trans related scholarship. So there's very few in the country. And then, knowing that I wanted to be somewhat closer to the Northeast, that like zeroed in my options even further. So I was juggling a couple of different things and also wondering, like so when do I come out at work and how do I balance coming out with also resigning and getting into a PhD program? So I was thinking I should probably get in somewhere first and then do the job, the job coming out stuff. So that's what I was doing. I was, you know, like on the side, dropping applications and just asking folks at different institutions. This is what I want to do, where do I go? How do I do it? So, like on my lunch break I would be running out to my car and I would be doing like an interview with somebody at an institution, asking them about PhD programs, and then I would hang up and I would go back inside and, like you know still to a staff. You know where I wasn't out and they didn't really know that I was. You know, setting things up to possibly transition to another chapter of life and the new museum had had been through a lot of growing pains and changes over time and was kind of like plateauing a little bit as far as their capacity and their mission and what they wanted to, you know, be and do in the community, and I didn't want to disrupt that equilibrium that they were kind of leveling out in. So I did plan a lot of my timing around getting into a program but also situating someone in my position that I knew would work well with the museum and its mission and then also the community partners that we were collaborating with, because that was such like a huge piece was community partners and the balance of all the educational programming that developed and being able to just say like, yes, this person's going to come in and there, if they change it, they're going to improve it, not change it to just, you know, do something their way or make things easier. I really wanted to have a positive person that was going to like pick things up and push it forward. So you know, a bunch of different things were kind of being juggled, but it ended up working out. I got into two schools initially and one was cost prohibitive and the other one like the timing actually. So I applied to two. I got into one. I didn't get into the one that I really wanted, the one that I'm in right now. So I emailed the person that I wanted to be my advisor and I said what can I do to be a better candidate if I want to reapply? And she said just go get your masters in anything, because I didn't have a master's degree, I just had my undergrad and other PhDs that were encouraging me to do this. They said well, you don't need your masters. It certainly helps, but you could just try it without your masters. So I followed that person's advice. I moved back home. I got my masters during COVID at Queens College in New York. That ended up being a pretty. It was a great program and it was interesting timing the timing kind of worked out. And then I reapplied to the program that I'm in now at Rutgers in their Ed Policy Department and the second time around dropping the application. It worked out great. They're like oh, you have your masters, that's good, you have a little more experience, having just gone through a master's program to get back into higher ed and hone your writing skills and all of that. And so now fast forward to 2023. I'm two years into the program that I had originally had my eyes on back in 2017, when I was working at that museum and thinking like well, that would be like the best ever. So that was kind of the timeline from 2017 to now that got me here.

That's a dream. Wow, to be able to get into that dream school that's one of my things is like do I continue to try for those dreams that I had, especially because they can be very cost prohibitive? And I just think it's funny. I interviewed to work at a school that's in the same system as Queens College, so just sitting there looking at the options, it's the only other university in that system that offers master's degrees, so it's super fun. Just that connection and the fact that you were able to get that done and then achieve something. I'm not monstrous but gigantic. It's a big deal when you get to go where you wanted to go, what you're really striving for. And so now you're working on your PhD. What kind of is your goal Like? What do you hope your PhD is going to get you the ability to do when you're done?

That's a really good question, and so I basically, when I started pursuing this, I just knew that again, like going back to that idea of like if I don't change something, I'm going to be in the same place in five years. I'm not exactly sure what is going to come out of this program, but I knew that I wanted to position myself to grow as much as I could personally and just to set myself up to be the best advocate and the best professional for the needs that trans students and trans faculty have in K-12, which is why I specifically chose this program and this person as my advisor, because my advisor has already published two really great books on making K-12 schools more inclusive for trans students and faculty. So after reading her work I was just like, oh wow, if I could follow up with my own book that continues that scholarship. I think just going through that program, surrounding myself with people that are related to that research and that scholarship, will put me into a better position. I don't know what that position will be yet. Odds are I will end up being, hopefully teaching at the university level and doing research, publishing work, and hopefully my research will have me working with K-12 schools, but it's uncertain at this time. When I first stepped in I was like maybe I'll be working for a think tank, or maybe I'll be doing consulting work or I'll be working with a non-profit. So I'm not really sure exactly where I will land. But I just knew, if I kind of like pushed myself into this environment, I'm going to get that professional development, that personal development, and be meeting like-minded people that are curious about this issue of how do we improve schools for all genders, but specifically trans students and faculty.

I love that. So that is a great transition for us, because I kind of like wrap up the episodes with discussions on authenticity and inclusion, and so the first of my two wrap up questions would be like if you were to talk with a brand new educator, someone who's going to work in education for the first time, and they are queer and they are concerned about being their authentic self, what kind of advice would you give them as they step into that new space?

Yeah. So that's a great question and I think the person really needs to think about what environment do they want to work in, especially teachers? You're going to be in the same place with the same people five days a week and you're going to be thinking and prepping for your job. When you're not on your job and odds are, if you're hanging out with anybody outside of your job, it's probably going to be coworkers and people related to your job. So that is a lot of your life with that particular school or that particular institution and thinking about. You know, if you're not out, what would it mean to come out to those people at that particular school or institution? Or if you are out, how are you going to be received? And something that I tell people is, when they're interviewing you, you should be interviewing them. What's the language that they're using? What terminology kind of speaks to their awareness level of queer identity? What materials are up in the hallway, you know? Is there clear visibility that they are accepting and welcoming of LGBT students and faculty? And what sort of signaling are you getting Like? If your pronouns are in your email signature, are they also in the email signature of the people that are hiring you, or do they even ask your pronouns, or do they mention inclusive curriculum or that it's important to cultivate inclusive school culture. These are all different things that they're going to signal to you that either they're very aware and inclusive or they're not so aware. And I guess, deciding like, do you want to step into a school system or a nonprofit and be the change? That's certainly like something I'm comfortable with. I'm comfortable like coming in and being like, oh, you've never met somebody with. They then pronouns this is how you do it. You can mess up, it's fine, you can practice on me and I'm willing to kind of do that, that like pushing of their awareness and pushing of their inclusive practices. If that's not something that you want to do or that you're not comfortable with, maybe you want to get hired at a school that's already done that cultural competence work and has already kind of stumbled through being aware and being welcoming of queer identity. So really, I guess, where's your comfort level? Who do you want to be working with? And where do people end in the interview process when you're really like looking around and deciding do I want to be here?

Absolutely. And you said something that I think makes a conversation that I've had with many educators when we asked this question. You said something that made it really clear, which is, when they are interviewing you, you should be interviewing them. And I just think to my most recent interview, the one that I mentioned. It's my first like university level interview, so already, like my nerves are like super crazy, going wild, and I walked in and about halfway through the day, because it was a full day process they were like, yeah, how's it going? I was like you know, honestly, this has been the least scary interview process. Like we've talked about all the things that were on my list of things to talk about. And I think there's there's merit in prepping yourself for the interview on what you will ask. When they ask you, what do you need to know from us? Or? Do you? have any questions for us, like, if they haven't hit on things without prompting, you'd need to prompt them to make sure that you get your questions asked. And. I was fortunate in that, like my, conversations centered around diversity and inclusion and culturally responsive teaching. And how do we? work with all students, regardless of income and and culture and whatever situations they may have going on at home or ability level, and, like they just brought it up, and so I was super fortunate in that, but it was definitely one of those things I kept in my back pocket of, like, if I don't hear about these things, I need to know about these things because they are so important to me and I need to know that I'm working for a place that that I feel comfortable in, in that my own research and my own interest will thrive, and so I think you just put it like really clear. You know, while they're interviewing you, you should be interviewing them. It really is a collaboration and I think more people need to realize that, like, while it doesn't feel like it, especially if you have financial constraints, you do have a choice, and so you have to be willing to know whether or not, like, the paycheck is going to balance out the mental and emotional toll Because, like you said, you're going to be constantly surrounded with your job. You think about it, you have nightmares, like they're going to be things that happen, where you are constantly thinking about your job and so going in. Making sure that you're in a comfortable space from the start is so important, and so, thinking about your research and your advisor and whatnot, what do you think that academia, like the general school community, can do to make schools more inclusive for 2s, lgbtq, plus students?

Yeah, that's a really good question and there's a lot of practical things that we can do. My advisor, within her work, she researched schools, like I think you know, dozens of schools I forget the exact number maybe, like you know, 30 or 60 schools that had affirming principles, that did want to be doing this work and did want to have an inclusive environment, and the commonality that she found across the board in those schools was that they were trying to reduce the amount of times they had gendered practices. So when teachers are saying things like boys and girls, instead of doing that, just saying scholars, students, ones, whatever gender neutral term you want to use. So, reducing gendered practices, increasing times that you are talking about gender and identity and, if we want to expand this to orientation, just you know, increasing those times where you're opening up dialogue and normalize talking about it. We're having visibility within your curriculum and then affirming students identities. And this is a tricky one. State by state, there's a lot of different laws and rhetoric going around around what teachers can and can't say, what they can and can't teach. But if you do want to be creating an inclusive environment, seeing your students, letting them know, like wherever you are at in your journey. I'm going to honor your pronouns. I'm going to honor your name. I'm going to honor how you identify in the moment and when you learn and grow and maybe shift and change over time. I'm still going to honor you where you're at, in that part of your journey, because it is a process unpacking who you are and how you want to express yourself. And schools, you know, hopefully, are that safe environment where kids can be doing that, exploring in a safe and healthy way. They may not feel safe and healthy to do that quite yet at home or within their faith communities or just other settings that they have access to. So as classroom teachers, you've got this kiddo. For a big chunk of their day they're there with their friends and so allowing them that safe space to do that self-exploration. And even if they end up switching their pronouns back and forth or switching their name or deciding, ah, this label doesn't fit, let them do that in a safe environment and really affirm them and let them know that you're fine with what they're doing and if it shifts and changes over time, it doesn't invalidate any parts of their journey. It's just part of growing and learning about yourself.

That is absolutely on point, and what I think is so impactful and I need more people to realize is that it doesn't have to be a huge deal of a deal what we're doing in schools. While I appreciate people, I saw a post recently that was about the lives of TikTok, which is an account that just drives me crazy, because they're just targeting all of us right and creating real violence against people and they were going after people who have giant rainbow flags. And if you feel comfortable in doing that in your space and your school, absolutely do that. But if you don't feel comfortable. It could literally just be having a conversation with a student that you know identifies different than what is listed on your roll sheet and have a private conversation with them about what they expect from you and then honoring that it really is a conversation. And then consistency, and so when people get so frustrated about pronouns and pronouns are going to ruin the world and whatnot, I'm like it's a 30 second conversation once a year. Once a year, it's a 30 second conversation, and if you teach high school and you teach the same kids over and over again, it's like a 30 second conversation every other year or whatever, or once every four years for that specific student, because you've already learned, unless they do change and swap their pronouns around to try to figure out who their identity is. And. I've seen that and it's just like let them do their thing. It's honestly hurting no one. But I love it because you give very practical things and sometimes it could be hard to pinpoint like specific things that we can do. So I really appreciate that. At this point in the episode I'm going to turn it over to you and you get to ask me a question, so take it away.

Awesome. So I'm curious since you are, you know, a queer teacher yourself and you are interviewing a lot of LGBT QIA plus educators, do you get a sense of you know, like, what are some of the changes that we're not seeing happening or things that we can be doing on a policy level or on a broad level across schools to make school culture more inclusive for LGBTQIA plus students?

So the things that I've noticed, one this year specifically. It is when we're recording. This is October 1st. Just for those of you because the episode is not going to come out so later, it's October 1st. School has been in session for some people three weeks, for some people just over a month, for some people two months Already. Teachers are tired. It has been not that long into the school year and I'm seeing from teachers like the exhaustion that happens at the end of the school year. And it's one or two months into the school year, and I think that, from an educational policy standpoint, we do need to make better workplace policies, because I think what drives me crazy is that educational institutions believe that they're educational institutions and forget they are also employment institutions. And so when I work in, I work in theater and there are a lot of OSHA policies that have to do with safety in theater and they get left at the wayside because it's an educational institute, not an employment institute, and I'm like but it's my employment, like. I work here and those policies should be in place to protect me, and so some of the things that I would love to see from an educational leadership standpoint is policies that really protect the teachers, because there has been a huge shift, like I could not imagine my parents behaving like some of the parents that are coming in today, and the teachers feel like they don't have any protection. So, that's one thing, because when the teachers feel safe to work with their students, the students are going to feel safe to be themselves in school. But when you've got, like teachers, full of anxiety, everybody can read the room. We can all feel each other's energy. I'm a huge spiritual person. I truly believe you can walk into a room and feel it immediately, whether or not everybody's in a good place or who's in the bad place, and so that's one thing where, like, we need to do more to protect the teachers. From another standpoint, when we're talking specifically about the students, we do need to have educational policy, where Title IX needs to address that gender identity and sexual orientation are protected, period. It can't be something that's up for interpretation. When we look at what happened with Title VII and marriage, equality and employment law, it lumps gender identity and sexual orientation under sex. But it very clearly we need to have policy that states you will not be discriminated based off of, you know, age, disability, race, gender, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, like we can't just be lumped in with other. We need to be clear with what we're saying, and I brought this up to a superintendent in the past because they were updating the extracurricular code of conduct for students and they were changing some terminology and it specifically said something about like, about Title IX and not discriminating based off of sex. And I raised my hand and I said you need to write the term sexual orientation and gender identity in there or include a parentheses where it says sex, sexual orientation and gender identity, that it's included in this because they're not going to know. And the superintendent was like but you know, you know that we would protect them. And I was like yeah, I do, but you're asking 14 to 18 year olds to read this. And they don't understand the law like I do. Like I'm fortunate in that. I went online and got a master's degree in which I learned how to read the law, you know, and so I understand that it's all umbrella there, but a high school student is not going to understand that. And I think we need to be very direct and clear with the terminology that we're using, because, one, it sends a message to the people who were protecting and, two, it sends a message to the people who are persecuting them that, like, this is not okay and if you are doing this, you are wrong and that's all there is to it. Like, if we want to live in a world where right and wrong exist, you need to understand that you are wrong in this instance and it's because you are breaking the law, because this law specifically says you cannot discriminate against these people. Yeah, so that's kind of what I would like to see happen, and it's a lot different than what people say when they're on the show. Because I have a legal mind because of that master's degree, I think about that stuff and as much as like we don't want to be considered to be like we're just numbers in a census or whatever. We need the protection that comes from being numbers in the census. We need people to know that we are here, because then it makes us validated and important. And there's a couple of episodes this season where I talked about it TikTok. I saw where this woman was like if you put all the queer people into one state, it would be bigger, it would be the fifth largest state in the nation, right? And so this idea that we're separated and isolated and there's not a lot of us that mentality exists because no one's counting. And as much as I want to be a human being and not a number on a page, I also need to be the number on a page, because that's the way you protect the human being. So that's where I'm sitting at.

Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense and there's kind of like this disconnect between policy that's happening in higher ed and policy that's happening in K-12. And I sort of get the sense that as far as numbers and technical policies, higher ed is a little bit ahead of the game and I think part of that is that queer people in this space are adults and can advocate for themselves and have specified, you have to say, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation and even gender expression. So there's a lot of scholarship that checks what inclusive policies have, all of those terms, and it's certainly, like you know, there was a little bit of work in the 90s and then in the early 2000s up to now, where there's more and more higher ed institutions that have all of those specific wordings for when an instance comes up, whether it's being fired incorrectly or being harassed or any of those things that do address, like your expression or your orientation or your gender identity or your sex, and really so you have a lot of leverage. And then where I think K-12 schools are doing a little bit better is their, their school culture and thinking a little bit beyond the binary or traditional gender or orientation roles, but they're lacking in some of those legal protections and some of that legal wording. And even here in New Jersey people are arguing about whether there should be equity or equality used in some of their policies, and schools that have switched over to equity have a lot of the opposition showing up at school board meetings and saying, no, we wanted to say equality, because they know when you change the semantics to equity, that covers LGBTQ students. So it's really interesting and we do have to be on top of it. And this even reaches back to when we were talking about what kind of school environment do you want to work in? And seem like what signaling they're doing. But also looking at like is your principal going to go to bat for you? Is your superintendent going to go to bat for you if push comes to shove? And so not only just like interviewing at one school for that one little position, really looking at your district and what's happening at those school board meetings and what's happening with all those higher ups that would, you know, come to bat for you if something did happen where you know a parent or someone else tried to make a problem about one of your students or about your own identity, whether it be your gender identity or your orientation and really having that broad policy view of like okay, where is this district at and are they going to be protecting my students, the curriculum that I want to be teaching and also my own personal identity as a queer professional?

Yeah, and one of the things that I've seen is that, like when I started teaching I started teaching five years ago and the school that I was working at was doing a lot of work they even created an equity council to like assess where there were inequities and whatnot. And they got so much community opposition to that equity council that once the findings existed, that was it, they didn't do anything else. And then I started to see that school district and other school districts nearby just kind of go backwards, where they started stepping back and not standing up. That the way they were for anybody who was in a minority setting. And if you weren't straight and white specifically for that community, then well, straight, white and Christian you weren't, you weren't, you didn't matter. And it's funny because I talked to someone last night who was like, oh, you left Texas and you came to New York, but we need you in Texas is the only way it's going to change. And I'm like, yeah, here's the thing. That was my role for five years. I was the savior for all the queer kids for five years, the sole person responsible for protecting the queer kids. It is a lot of responsibility that should not be placed on individuals. It's a systemic change that needs to happen and when you have that kind of mentality of like oh you need to, you should have stayed there because you would help solve the problem like or you could move there and help solve the problem Like you don't need to be putting these things on individuals who are also trying to protect themselves, because that's hugely important, and especially in work environments. There's not enough of me having to take care of myself. I mean, it's built in from a very young age. I saw it with my 20 year old when he was in high school, thinking that he had to go to work because they called him on his day off and he had to do it. And so this like hustle culture is built in that, like your only worth comes from pleasing your job, and I've worked for environments where they will literally lay you off, no matter how great to your work is. So it really is something where, like, we all need to step back, and that's why I love all the unionizing that's happening right now. We all need to step back and be like I need to take care of myself first, like I should come before the company, my family should come before the company, regardless of the company is a company or a school. And so, like I got a lot of crap from like students and parents because, like I didn't rehearse really late into the night and I didn't like allow being a theater teacher to be my only thing. And when and when I did allow that to happen, I saw my own children crumble, and then there was this expectation that I would just take care of everybody else's children before my own. And so, like all of these, this where it goes back to like protecting the teachers, like and having policies for the teachers, like we have to not be afraid to use our time off. And in my last year teaching, I use every single day, even though I knew like halfway through the year I knew I was going to be leaving and I could bank all of that and have a bigger paycheck at the end. I use every single day I had available to me, because I needed to make sure that throughout the year I took care of my own mental health and my own physical health and my children, and sometimes I just took a day off to go on a date with my husband because that's what we needed, and so I think that we're in a place right now. Also, you know, fun times were on this like Renaissance time, but we're also in this like new growth from the younger community. We're in this time also where unions and people are starting to assess like is all the work we're putting into these jobs, where these CEOs are making three, four times the salary of their average employee in a day, worth it? Is it worth it Because, ultimately, you need to live a life, you're not just a worker.

Mm, hmm, definitely, yeah. I mean it's just like balancing what is a healthy relationship and what's not, you know, and definitely that self care is important and if somebody is not prioritizing your health and well being to be the best teacher that you can be every day that you show up on the job, yeah that's very telling to that institution or that, that district. So yeah, really managing what is a healthy, what does it look like to be in a healthy environment? That's really going to honor you for what you're bringing and what you're contributing.

Absolutely, and like along the lines of interviewing those folks. If they start gaslighting you with self care, like oh, you need to self care, like make sure you self care, and if they're not providing you the resources to do it, like just give them a finger and walk away because all they're doing is like making you feel guilty that you're not taking care of yourself, but they're also not giving you the time to take care of yourself. Especially right now, I see so many teachers, whether it's online or through these interviews, who are like I don't really have a prep period because I'm constantly covering other people's classes and so I'm expected to do planning for an entire week of lessons while I'm also teaching the entire time, and then I go home and I just want to be with my kids, but really I have to do another eight hours of work at home because I couldn't do it at work. Yeah, so yes, we need more educational policy that protects the teachers and that literally lays things out. Like I started documenting when I stopped having planning time because in the state of Texas, there was a minimum amount of time I was supposed to have each week to be able to plan, and so I just started documenting it and being like. You can't ask me to do this because you're supposed to give me X amount of time to plan and I don't need to work at home because you've asked me to. And it's unfortunate that we have to like keep the receipts, but if you don't like, you will be walked on because you're being nice, and that doesn't mean like keeping the receipts makes you a mean or bad person, though some people might want you to feel that way. It just means that you're doing what you need to do to protect yourself.

So yeah, that was a long soapbox. Healthy boundaries, everybody. In a nutshell, healthy boundaries. Stay authentic.

Thank you so much for joining me on the episode today. I really enjoyed our conversation. You gave me a lot to think about, especially in my own. Like am I gonna get a PhD journey? Do it, why are?

all of you like that, do it All the people with PhDs are like If you can, if you can do it.

So I just I really enjoyed our conversation and I hope all of you at home enjoy the conversation too. Have a great day everyone. 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.