Caitlin L. Ryan

Discussing Princess Boys and Pregnant Men: Teaching About Gender Diversity and Transgender Experiences Within an Elementary School Curriculum

This study shares the experiences and outcomes of teaching about gender diversity in an elementary school classroom. It outlines how an urban public school teacher included discussions of transgender and gender-nonconforming people within the curriculum and documents the ways in which her students responded to those lessons. By making discussions of gender diversity a recurring theme in the curriculum, students learned to question restrictive social systems, think more inclusively about gender expression and identity, and apply this knowledge to other experiences. The students’ responses to these lessons indicate that elementary school-aged children are ready for such an inclusive curriculum.

Already on the Shelf: Queer Readings of Award-Winning Children’s Literature

This essay explores what it might mean to read children’s literature in elementary school classrooms through a queer lens. The authors argue that because queer theory has a history as a literary theory that destabilizes normative associations among gender, sexuality, bodies, and desire, it provides a set of analytical tools classroom communities can draw on to create alternative readings of a wide range of familiar texts. Such readings of books already on the shelves of elementary school libraries and classrooms can highlight experiences and subjectivities of nonnormative sexualities and gender identities in the hopes of making classrooms more inclusive. Specifically, we argue that four high-quality, award-winning children’s books already included in many schools and classrooms—Sendak’s (1963) Where the Wild Things Are, Woodson’s (2001) The Other Side, DiCamillo’s (2003) Tale of Despereaux, and Patterson’s (1977) Bridge to Terabithia—can be fruitful sites for opening up these more inclusive readings and conversations. The article offers possible queer readings of these texts as well as suggestions for how to encourage elementary-aged students to think about both books and the socially constructed norms of real life through a queered lens. By first queering on-the-shelf texts and then asking students to think about how that queering connects to larger social issues, elementary classrooms can become places where strict identity categories—categories that can marginalize queer students and families—are made visible, are questioned, are stretched, and can even fall apart.

Kissing brides and loving hot vampires: children’s construction and perpetuation of heteronormativity in elementary school classrooms

This paper explores notions of (hetero)sexuality circulating in elementary school classrooms through an analysis of students’ own talk and interactions. Data collected during a multi-site ethnography in a diverse set of elementary schools demonstrate that while curricular silences and teachers contribute to heteronormative classroom environments, children also take up and perpetuate heteronormative ideals in their own interactions both through explicitly anti-gay talk and by silencing of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ)-inclusive perspectives, thereby maintaining the heteronormativity of schools. Findings show (hetero)sexuality to be a constitutive part of classroom life, present even in the formal teaching/instructional time of elementary schools and even in the talk/activities of children themselves. Uninterrupted, these discourses intersect with the official curriculum and reify schools as places in which LGBTQ people/perspectives are not welcome or valued, creating social and academic effects for all students.

Queering chapter books with LGBT characters for young readers: recognizing and complicating representations of homonormativity

ABSTRACT In this paper, we consider the limited chapter book options with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) characters available for upper elementary readers. While these texts all include one or more LGBT character(s), the overall representations of LGBT people and issues highlight particular normative identities and silence others. We are concerned that these representations reify neoliberal ideas about sexualitys relationship to race and class, and encourage gay assimilation into normative but problematic, nonequitable institutions. Yet we also believe that an analysis of books focusing only on representations of LGBT characters’ identities limits the queer potential of texts. Therefore, in addition to looking at representations within these books, we also consider how a second look at these books through a queer lens can help disrupt normative representations of a range of identity categories. We undertake this dual analysis for several purposes: (1) to find and review LGBT-inclusive chapter books available for pre-YA (young adult) readers, (2) to analyze gaps in this corpus of literature so as to push back against normativizing frameworks, and (3) to show how bringing queer critique and analysis of such texts can be used to deconstruct and diversify representations of LGBT people and families until/in addition to the publication of additional and more diverse texts.

In This Issue: LGBTQ Topics in Elementary Education, Research, and Practice

Twenty years ago, Letts and Sears (1999) worked to break the silence around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) topics that pervades elementary education by publishing their groundbreaking anthology, Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling. With its provocative title, this collection of essays explored important questions about gender, families, and how the inclusion of gay people and queer perspectives might help us productively reconsider what and how we teach young children. Although the political and social landscape has shifted in multiple ways with regard to gender and sexual diversity (GSD) since then, creating historic levels of visibility and cultural acceptance for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in mainstream media and popular culture, situations in K-5 schools continue to be unwelcoming. Research undertaken since the publication of Queering Elementary Education shows that when it comes to students’ early years of school, little has changed in the past two decades. We know that normative expectations around sexuality and gender continue to circulate in, and be reinforced by, elementary schools (Kehily, 2004; Renold, 2005; Wallace & VanEvery, 2000). We also know that maintenance of these norms, communicated via teachers and curriculum as well as through policing by peers (Holford, Renold, & Huuki, 2013; Ryan, 2010, 2015), creates unsafe, unequal, and un-inclusive learning environments in the elementary grades for students and families (Kosciw & Diaz, 2008; Kosciw, Greytak, Palmer, & Boesen, 2014). For example, even just a few years ago only half of elementary school teachers (49%) said an elementary school student with a lesbian, gay, or bisexual parent would feel comfortable at the school where they teach, and even fewer (42%) thought that would be true for a student with a transgender parent (GLSEN & Harris Interactive, 2012). Even though most teachers address family diversity generally, only 2 in 10 elementary school students (18%) actually learn about families with two moms or two dads (GLSEN & Harris Interactive, 2012). And as recently as a decade ago, 75% of middle school principals reported bullying, name-calling, or harassment of students to be a serious problem at their school (GLSEN & Harris Interactive, 2008). Such findings indicate that students are learning through their elementary school experiences that LGBTQ identities do not need to be learned about or respected (Ryan, 2015). The situation becomes even more serious given recent challenges to and reversals of pro-LGBTQ policies at federal, state, and local levels across the United States, as well as general conservative backlash against marginalized people. It’s not just LGBTQ-identified adults like elementary school teachers and parents who are influenced by such unwelcoming environments. A wide variety of students stand to gain from creating elementary school cultures more accepting of GSD. Such students include the millions Theory Into Practice, 58:1–5, 2019 Copyright

Navigating Parental Resistance: Learning from Responses of LGBTQ-Inclusive Elementary School Teachers

One of the most common responses from pre- and in-service teachers related to addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) topics in elementary school is a concern about parents’ responses. This article explores these concerns by examining two elementary school teachers’ interactions with parents in relation to their LGBTQ-inclusive teaching. This article provides a possible road map for other teachers who are nervous about parental responses to LGBTQ-inclusive teaching and interrupts notions that negative responses from parents are reason enough to avoid including these topics in elementary classrooms.

Looking back at the service delivery models of sex education in the United States: Adults with visual impairments report on their experiences:

This study investigated the sex education experiences of adults with visual impairments who attended either an itinerant or residential service delivery model during their school age years in the United States. We sought to answer the research questions through an online survey instrument that included quantifiable survey items. Findings demonstrate particular sex education content presented to participants in the school curriculum was more frequent for participants who attended residential schools. However, there were little or no meaningful methods or materials (e.g., role plays, explicit talk, tactile graphics, electronic materials, anatomically correct models) used by the participants in their sex education experiences regardless of their educational school setting. The information reported by participants in this study underscores the claim that more thorough and in-depth sex education is needed in all types of service delivery models that takes into account the needs of students with visual impairments.

Queerspawn Speak Out: A Review of Let's Get This Straight: The Ultimate Handbook for Youth With LGBTQ Parents

Lets Get This Straight: The Ultimate Handbook for Youth With LGBTQ Parents provides an engaging and accessible set of tools for youth from LGBTQ-headed families. The stories and resources shared encourage these youth to take pride in their families, value their diverse experiences, and work against homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of injustice. This review points out the variety of ways the book speaks back to silences that traditionally operate within and around youth with LGBTQ parents.