Safety and Gay Day: The Limits of Safe Schools and Inclusion Discourses in Creating Affirming Environments for LGBTQ Students

Elizabethe Payne & Melissa Smith

Paper Title: Safety and Gay Day: The Limits of Safe Schools and Inclusion Discourses in Creating Affirming Environments for LGBTQ Students.

Abstract: Research has explored multicultural teacher education from multiple, sometimes divergent perspectives, yet these studies agree that what passes for multicultural teacher preparation is often “ not multicultural at all” and retains a focus on “celebrating diversity or understanding the cultural  ‘other’ rather than a commitment to educational equity” (Gorski, 2009, p. 309). Interviews conducted with RSIS participants indicate that though the training utilizes a critical approach, what teachers embraced from the workshop was a call to understand and “protect” students harassed for gender or sexual identities through the “safety” discourse –a form of understanding and valuing the “cultural other”—and an investment in one time visibility events like participation in the annual Day of Silence as a symbol of improved school climate.  Additionally, we found that educators frame LGBTQ issues as “risk” issues rather than as equity issues. These frames of thinking – safety from bullying; noting days of recognition highlighting school bullying and silencing, disease, and murder; and grouping LGBTQ issues with risky behaviors—continue to mark LGBTQ students as “victims” or “problems” in need of saving or solving.  We posit that participant responses to the RSIS workshop content reflect educators’ understanding of their obligation to “diversity” as presented during their teacher preparation programs and that workshop content which resonated with them was that which they could easily fit into these familiar frameworks.