An Exploration of Heternormativity in Sex Education Curricula

Katherine Seiger

Paper Title: An Exploration of Heternormativity in Sex Education Curricula

Abstract: Between 2000 and 2009, conservative US government control over sex education dramatically increased. This control can be categorized into three areas: control over dissemination of sex and sexuality information; control of federal funding for sexuality education and research (Irvine, 2004) and control over what “counts” as legitimate sexual expression: heterosexual intercourse. From 1988 to 2003 the percentage of public school teachers utilizing abstinence only curriculum with no information on condoms or contraception escalated 28% (Irvine, 2004), and in 2003 the National Institutes of Health increased scrutiny of federally funded research around same-sex sexual behaviors and HIV prevention in response to conservative claims that these were a “waste” of public funding. This cultural re-entrenchment in heteronormative sexuality further distanced LGBTQ youth from the possibility of comprehensive, accurate, non-stigmatizing sexual education. Continuing to the present, the United States has seen a consistent rise in the number of HIV and STI cases in youth—the largest concentration in young men who have sex with men. In an effort to better understand the heteronorms that inform sex education, four popular curricula were explored using textual analysis. The review suggests that heteronormative messages and assumptions underlying sexuality education impede efforts to empower youth sexual health in general, and LGBTQ identifying youth sexual health specifically. Furthermore, both gendered messages and fear tactics serve to marginalize and disengage LGBTQ youth. Implications for development of an LGBTQ youth affirming curricula are discussed.

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.

No ‘Gay’ Left Behind: Exploring Multiple Points of Exclusion and Possibilities for Change in the School Lives of LGBTQ Youth

Panel Title: No ‘Gay’ Left Behind: Exploring Multiple Points of Exclusion and Possibilities for Change in the School Lives of LGBTQ Youth, American Education Studies Association (AESA), Denver, CO: 2010

Abstract: For LGBTQ students, school can be a battleground where attempts to define themselves—through dating, academic work, or experimentation with self-expression—are regulated by cultural systems that stigmatize identities that transgress hegemonic gender norms.  The social scene, curriculum, extra curricular activities and policy all contribute to school climates where “successful” performance of masculinity and femininity are rewarded and non-conformity is punished through silencing and exclusion.  This panel aims to explore the complicated problem of creating more affirming environments for LGBTQ students by examining sites in which LGBTQ identities continue to be marginalized—sex education curriculum—as well as avenues for possible change—teacher training and policy reform.  Collectively, these papers address the need to expand the definition of the “problem” of unsupportive schools beyond issues of violence and discrimination and toward comprehensive understanding of the cultural systems that persistently marginalize LGBTQ youth.

“These are Dangerous Words”: Teacher LGBT Advocates and an Ecology of Fear.

Elizabethe Payne

Paper Title: “These are Dangerous Words”: Teacher LGBT Advocates and an Ecology of Fear.

As she rose from the conference table, Jamie spoke of her trip to her school that summer morning to pick up her folder on LGBT issues for the afternoon meeting we had just adjourned. “I started thinking that I was being watched,” she said, “that there were cameras and that they (the school administration) were tracking me.” She holds up her paper two pocket folder with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender handwritten in marker on the front cover. “These are dangerous words,” she said. This paper will explore the stories of fear and surveillance told by middle and high school teachers in a Central New York suburban school district who participated in a teacher in-service program, The Reduction of Stigma in Schools, in support of LGBTQ students. After attending the district sanctioned workshop, teachers posted “Safe Space” stickers in their classrooms. Within two days, they were ordered to remove the stickers. As teachers wrestled with their response to this administrative action, they shared their stories through individual and group interviews. Fear of the district and school administration emerged as a central theme in the stories of teachers who felt they “should” be advocating and actively supporting LGBTQ students but believed that they would suffer personal and professional consequences for speaking out, for pressing the administration for change, for giving LGBTQ students “safe space.” Studies show discrepancy between administrator and teacher perceptions of school climate for LGBTQ youth, with administrators confident that it is “just fine” and teachers asserting that their schools did not promote tolerance and acceptance (MacGillivary, 2000, p. 319). There is, however, little research on the harmful consequences of school administrations’ use of fear as a tool for controlling teachers’ speech and advocacy, and little research on teachers’ experience of administration abuse of power (Blasé & Blasé, 2002). This study seeks to explore teacher experiences of fear as an impediment to creating affirming environments for LGBTQ students and as an administrative tool in maintaining school as a heteronormative space. Data for this paper are a sub-set of data from a larger evaluative study conducted in 2008 and 2009 on educator experiences of the Reduction of Stigma in Schools Program (research in collaboration with Melissa Smith). This participant subset is composed of educators from a single district who attended the workshop in the spring of 2009. Individual interviews, focus group interviews, and field notes from the workshop were collected. Teacher stories were explored using a critical life story approach (Payne, 2009) combining an understanding of the narration of self (Linde, 1993) with critical theory and methodology (Carspecken, 1996). Analyses of the data for this study is on-going.

“I’m a professional, I’m an educator and I care”: Stories of care and support for the LGBTQ student

Melissa Smith

Paper Title: “I’m a professional, I’m an educator and I care”: Stories of care and support for the LGBTQ student

We have expectations of our educators. We expect them to impart knowledge, create safe environments, and support students’ growth and development. However, discussions around the purpose of schooling are narrowly focused on academic achievement—under the assumption that teaching academic skills is the most important way for schools to express their care for students (Noddings, 1988). Unfortunately, these assumptions overlook the connection between caring, supportive environments and academic achievement. These are stories educators tell about the work of supporting LGBTQ students in school environments that continue to be intolerant of queer identities and teach students that discrimination against LGBT people is acceptable (Macgillivray, 2000). They are teachers and guidance counselors who push the boundaries of tradition and explore schooling possibilities that affirm diverse identities and ways of thinking. Their narratives are reflective of Noddings’ (1988) framework for caring relationships—in which participants act upon their assessment of student needs. However, their stories also reflect limits to their freedom to care and advocate for LGBT students, thus suggesting the need to rethink care theory in the context of supporting students who continue to be marginalized in schools. This manuscript, therefore, is working toward situating the educators’ stories in a framework of care that addresses “questions of otherness, difference, and power” (Rolon-Dow, 2005, 104). Put another way, how can we expand theory of care to encompass the act of supporting students who are under constant threat of rejection, ridicule, and harassment due to social stigma? How do we account for the educators’ stories of care in spite of the restriction, limitation, and oppression that occurs in the context of their attempts to create safe school environments for LGBTQ youth in institutional contexts that do not address their unequal distribution of care? (Rolon-Dow, 2005).

This manuscript is the product of a larger study evaluating Reduction of Stigma in Schools—a program housed in a School of Education which aims to provide educators with tools to create affirming school environments for LGBTQ youth. The findings reported here emerged through teachers’ and guidance counselors’ talk about their own experiences supporting LGBT students and their evaluation of their schools’ successes and failures in supporting these students. The purpose of this paper is to explore public educators’ conceptualizations of what it means for public schools to be supportive, caring environments in the context of creating affirming school spaces for youth whose identities are often silent or invisible in schools. Through their narratives of engagement with the process of challenging social stigma and heteronormative traditions, participants offered statements of identity that reveal their beliefs about who they are as educators and the purposes they aim to serve in an educational setting. Their narratives provide valuable insight to the questions of who engages in the potentially contentious work of advocating for marginalized students, why and how these individuals do this work, describe barriers to creating a culture of care in their respective schools, and establish an ethical standard for their leaders’ and colleagues’ care and support of LGBTQ youth.

Social advocacy groups with LGBTQ youth: A means for the trainee to learn about self

Melissa Luke & Kristopher Goodrich

Paper title: Social advocacy groups with LGBTQ youth: A means for the trainee to learn about self

The purpose of this presentation is to describe preliminary results of a study exploring the experiences of school counseling trainees while engaged in an existent course which integrated social justice group work practices. This project grew out of collaboration between the researchers that highlighted the gap in the preparation of counselors to effectively work with LGBTQ adolescents in schools (Carroll & Gilroy, 2002; Israel & Hackett, 2004). Through their previous community engagement, the researchers observed practicing school counselors’ lack of awareness of LGBTQ students and their needs (Goodrich & Luke, 2009), many local schools struggling to establish and maintain Gay/Straight Alliance student groups (GSAs), as well as the opportunity for university-community collaboration around these issues.

The presenters designed the course project to increase trainee’s awareness of their own subjectivity (e.g., their social identity or positioning; Peshkin, 1988), while also providing experiential opportunities for them to co-facilitate psycho-educational group work with LGBTQ high school students and their allies. Awareness of subjectivity was theorized to assist the development of trainee’s conceptualization, intervention, and personalization skills (Luke & Bernard, 2006), thereby better preparing them to meet the needs of LGBTQ adolescents through their co-facilitation of GSAs (Goodrich & Luke, 2009). From a social justice perspective, the researchers endeavored to give voice to the needs and experiences of LGBTQ adolescents, which have gone largely unheard in the counselor education and school counseling literature (Israel & Hackett, 2004). A concomitant advocacy related intention was to provide support, development, and assistance to new and established GSAs in local high school communities through a university-community public scholarship project.

Applied ethnographic research methods were utilized for this study. Consistent with applied ethnographic methods, researchers kept individual subjectivity journals throughout the project, as their contact with trainees occurred across formal and informal research contexts. In addition, researchers and four trained process observers recorded observations of the trainees in three formal research settings which included the visit to the local LGBTQ Youth Center, three sessions of small group GSA co-facilitation at five local high schools, and three in-class group supervision sessions. Following the various training activities, trainees were required to make an entry in their subjectivity journals. The course instructor provided trainees with a different journal prompt each time to assist in providing some general structure in focusing their entry, as well as gave supervisory feedback.

The results of this study support that trainees grew in their knowledge and awareness of their subjectivity, and this led to a growth in their available skill sets in working with LGBTQ adolescents. The findings support that by infusing a social justice curriculum within extant coursework and engaging trainees in exploring their own subjectivity while working with underserved populations, educators might provide a vehicle for their trainees to understand the nature of inequalities and injustices present across systems (Green et al., 2008) and model how they can more effectively address these issues with their students.

Awareness to Action: Educator Journeys Toward Support of LGBT Youth

Panel Title: Awareness to Action: Educator Journeys Toward Support of LGBT Youth, American Educational Research Association (AERA), Denver CO: 2010.

Panel Abstract: This panel explores the complicated work of creating safe and affirming learning environments for LGBTQ youth. The participants in these studies are educators—both pre- and in-service—who have participated in educational programs designed to strengthen their confidence and ability to engage in support and advocacy for students who are too often pushed to the margins of their school environments. Participants represent educators at various stages of their careers exploring their biases, becoming aware of school policies and procedures that privilege heterosexual identities, and coming face-to-face with the realities of resisting heteronormative tradition. The three papers in this symposium present work occurring in one School of Education that aims to empower educators to resist the schooling practices that privilege heterosexual identities and allow the harassment of queer students to go unquestioned, if not unnoticed (Macgillivray, 2000). We aim to explore educators’ growing awareness of the risks LGBTQ students face, examinations of their own biases and negotiation of their own roles and responsibilities to make schools safer. We intend to give voice to educators’ articulations of their knowledge and awareness of LGBTQ issues in schools and the emotional qualities of their engagement in social justice work in the context of creating affirming environments for LGBTQ youth. Their narratives create opportunities for exploring educators’ feelings about advocating for LGBTQ youth and their perceptions of their ability to do so in public schools. The impetus for this research lies in the consistent reports from LGBTQ students that they are not safe in school (GLSEN 2007), the well-established correlation between in-school harassment/isolation and risk (Bontempo & D’Augelli, 2002) and each panelist’s experiences in schools where efforts to bring LGBTQ identities out of the shadows are threatened, restricted or banned. Therefore, this research presents our attempts to (a) engage educators in conversations and educational experiences that will empower them to create change; and (b) examine their narratives—written and spoken—that emerged upon their engagement with the issues related to sexual and gender diversity in schools.

This panel addresses the experiences of educators at various stages of their careers—from pre-service to long-tenured educators—as they engage with the daily manifestations of heterosexism and confront homophobic practices. In some cases, we will present examples of educators articulating shifts in their conceptualizations of the school experiences of LGBTQ youth, their understandings of their roles as educators, and their changing perspectives of the hierarchy of power in their schools. In other cases, teachers’ engagement with LGBTQ issues served as an affirmation of what they already knew about their responsibilities and the contexts in which they work.

Although violence intervention is a vital step toward creating safer school environments, focusing efforts to counteract homophobia and violence solely on intervention in harassment narrowly defines LGBT youth as victims who need protection rather than students who deserve inclusive educational spaces to learn and grow. Anti-bullying training fails to adequately equip educators to support LGBT youth, and these studies offer new pedagogical approaches to engaging educators in self-reflection and providing tools for action. The collection of scholarship in this symposium reinforces the need for education and professional support across their careers as necessary for empowering educators to engage in social justice work. In-service educators’ narratives of engagement indicate that knowledge and resources are imperative, but even when they have these tools there is no guarantee that school leadership will support their caring efforts. Furthermore, this work serves as a call for deeper investigation into the role school administrators play in promoting or prohibiting supportive school cultures.

Out to In: Reflections of a queer first year teacher

Lauren Hannahs

Paper Title: Out to In: Reflections of a queer first year teacher.

Abstract: This paper explores the experiences of a queer pre-service – now first year – teacher with an undergraduate course “Queer Youth/Straight Schools.” Utilizing readings on the LGBTQ youth experience and queer theory, students in the course designed a research project on LGBTQ identified students’ experience in Syracuse City public schools. The culminating piece of the class was a proposal to the administrators of the Syracuse City School District recommending ways in which institutional changes can be made in order to better the experiences of not only LGBTQ students, but every student that walks the halls. Research findings indicated a clear difference in the perceptions of LGBTQ students and that of teachers as to the inclusiveness of their schools. Drawing from my experience as a queer first year teacher, I will reflect on what I have learned as an outsider, in the student/researcher role to what I’ve learned as an insider, as a part of the social and institutional workings of the public schools. I will reflect upon what it means to be an LGBTQ activist while working in a social system that reinforces the gender binary and systematically supports heteronormativity.

Research, Responses, and Reflection on Three Years of The Reduction of Stigma in Schools Program

Elizabethe Payne & Melissa Smith

Paper Title: Research, Responses, and Reflection on Three Years of the Reduction of Stigma in Schools Program

Abstract: The Reduction of Stigma in Schools Program (RSIS), begun in 2006, strives to actively create opportunities for dialogue and change around the issues facing LGBTQ youth in schools through educator to educator directed workshops and through on-going research. Denial of the existence of LGBT students in schools and fear of addressing non- hetero sexualities in schools remains high. In the spring of 2009, 3 days after an RSIS workshop, a district superintendent ordered all teachers to remove their new Safe Space stickers. The reason given was a parent complaint that “kids who read the sticker could become gay.” This paper explores the collected stories of RSIS educators, interviews with workshop participants, observations of encounters with administrators and districts, and those “you must be kidding moments” to develop a greater understanding of the discourses that continue to silence LGBTQ identities in schools and to locate potential for change.