By, Emma Janas
Part 1:
This week’s reading that my group’s learning experience was based off of was titled, “But I’m not gay: What straight teachers need to know about queer theory”. My LC group chose to emphasize the themes, harmful effects of homophobia and heterosexism, how gender works to limit students opportunities, queer theory, and how queer pedagogy can transform schools. We chose these themes because they discussed important concepts such as how homophobia is a form of bullying and violence in schools, how there are gender boundaries seen in schools for students that teach kids to act super feminine if they were born that way and teach males to act super masculine if they were born that way which does not allow students to express themselves, along with gender harassment that targets students who dress a certain way that doesn’t portray them as straight, and queer theory described as a way to get rid of the norms in society and build on the idea of critical theory and equality, and lastly how teachers need to be open to transforming schools so that students can see the world in their own view creating new learning methods. Our learning objective was for our classmates to understand the issue involved with different stereotypes put on people based on their gender and sexuality, and how we as educators have to break down those stereotypes and norms and promote change so that students can feel accepted and be able to open up education to a new view of the world. To involve our classmates in the lesson we had several open discussion questions such as, “do you feel that homophobia was seen at your high school’s”, “what are some ways you as a future educator can promote equality within the classroom”, and “what activities could be used within the classroom to have students express themselves as individuals?” which allowed the students to express their personal experiences with homophobia that they have faced first hand, and ways that they could prevent that from occurring in their future classrooms.
Part 2:
I learned a lot about how early on kids have gender stereotypes put in their mind, and feel as though they are expected to act and dress a certain way based on their gender they were born with. This topic matters to me because I don’t ever want my students to feel less valued based on the gender they were born with or feel as though they can’t dress or act the way that they want to, because I want them to be able to express themselves and their individuality. When planning this lesson I did several of the slides as well as came up with the discussion questions and found the video. When teaching the lesson I explained several of the concepts to my classmates and tried getting across to them the importance of queer pedagogy and supporting students no matter how they identify.
Part 3:
https://www.educationandemployers.org/17497-2/
Part 4:
Emma 