Schooling Society: Sexual-Minority Teachers as Activist Educators

• In Event: Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: How to Change the World: LGBTQ Activism as Education

Abstract

This empirical study considers how four public school teachers became activist-educators for LGBTQ inclusion in their schools. Through a series of postfoundational ethnographic interviews, I explored the impetus and conditions that drove these teachers to become activists, their motivations for coming out in heteronormative educational environments, the ensuing backlash they experienced during their efforts promoting educational and cultural change, their individual processes in becoming change agents, and the educational strategies and tactics they developed from years of activist work within their schools. Through the sharing of their lived histories, these teachers spoke to their personal resiliency, courageous hope, and active struggle to put the “public” back into a truly public education that is inclusive of everyone regardless of their differences.

Author

• Kristopher Wells, University of Alberta