- The largest organization focused on teaching English throughout the world held a seminar for educators to learn how to foster inclusivity and challenge societal norms within the “language classroom,” according to an unearthed webinar reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
- The presentation encouraged educators to work “queer theory” into their language lessons and to challenge “cis heteronormativity” in the classroom.
- “Queering the classroom invites us to consider how identities, languages and everything in our more than social world is not fixed. There is no stasis, but always becoming,” Dr. James Coda, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said during the webinar.
The largest organization dedicated to teaching English throughout the world explained to educators how they can work “queer theory” into language studies and challenge “cisheteronormativity,” according to an unearthed webinar reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The TESOL International Association Higher Education Interest Section, an organization based in Virginia and made up of 13,000 English language professionals, held a webinar on July 18 titled “Fostering Inclusivity and Challenging Norms in the Language Classroom” in response to bills throughout the U.S. that have limited age-inappropriate lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation. The presentation was led by Dr. James Coda, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who advised educators on how to bring gender identity and sexuality into their language lessons, even if their state forbids it. (RELATED: ‘I Just Started Estrogen’: Little-Noticed Biden Admin Webinar Featured Trans Eighth Grader, LGBTQ Student Activists)
“You can [bring queer inquiry into the classroom] by reframing mainstream questions about the topic of homosexuality in ways that get beyond the notion of the teacher is expert, and engage students in rethinking their questions and deconstructing sexual norms,” Coda said during the webinar. “This again makes me think of the context in which I am employed and reside, and in similar contexts, too, in which these parental rights bills have surfaced. Again, how can we as educators consider our questions and how binaries are surfacing? For example, not in only just the student’s questions, but the student’s statements, our own statements and how we can upend those norms.”
“Thinking about our questioning practices, specifically, we need to bring that critical perspective, and by inviting queer theory into the classroom, we can do this, especially in contexts similar to mine, in which one may not be able to engage with issues of gender and sexual diversity,” he continued.
Coda provides attendees at the beginning of the webinar with a glossary of the terms he will be discussing. The glossary included “queer theory,” which is defined as “a disruption to essentialist understandings of gender and sexuality,” and “LGBTQQIPSAA,” which stands for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit (2S), androgynous, and asexual.”
Coda encouraged educators to integrate materials which challenge “cisheteronormativity,” the naturalness of monogamy, marriage and reproduction, to bring queer theory into the classroom, according to the video. He suggested that language teachers use “drama, theater [and] teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling” to bring queer theory into the classroom.
TESOL the international organization that designs English as a second language curriculum, hosted an hour long seminar regarding how k-12 educators can “queer the classroom” in states where it is now not allowed.
James Koda, the lecturer also recommended a weird lesson that… pic.twitter.com/MjCdfxGTwR
— Right Side of History™️ (@xxclusionary) August 2, 2023
Coda also explained an excerpt from a Spanish class a teacher shared with him where the educator used an activity to indirectly speak about gender and sexuality in the classroom, according to the video. He explained that the teacher began her lesson by teaching students in her class the Spanish word for “prince” and “princess,” and then asked individuals in the class which they were.
The Spanish teacher asked a male student in the class named Sean if he was a princess, which caused laughter from the rest of the students, Coda explains in the webinar. As the lesson continues, Sean interrupts the teacher to tell her that he believes that he actually is a princess rather than a prince.
“The teacher concludes by saying ‘Sean knows that everything is possible. The princess, Sean,'” Coda said. “And then she goes on to ask ‘is Carl a princess? Are there other princesses in here?'”
Coda provided educators with a series of suggestions on how to be an ally to LGBTQ students within the classroom, encouraging them to educate themselves on gender, sexuality and how they might unintentionally bring “bias in the classroom.”
“Queering the classroom invites us to consider how identities, languages and everything in our more than social world is not fixed,” Coda said. “There is no stasis, but always becoming.”
TESOL and Coda did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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