“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.