Tilling the Soil for LGBTQ-Inclusive Policies: Learning From Desegregation to Cultivate Communities of Safety and Inclusivity

• In Event: Roundtable Session 24
  In Roundtable Session: Climate Change: Welcoming LGBTQ Issues and Identities Into Educational Spaces

Abstract

In this paper, I use data from a yearlong study, at one public middle school in southern California, to understand what it takes for schools to cultivate communities prepared to embrace LGBTQ-inclusive policies. Utilizing desegregation literature, I argue that care must be taken to implement policies in schools that are situated in sociopolitical contexts of inequality. Using action research and mixed methods, I employed a Community Development model, which places responsibility for change on all stakeholders in the community. I share descriptions, illustrations, and reactions to interventions focused on gender and sexual diversity. This study is an example of what it looks like to till the soil—to cultivate safety, inclusivity, and community for healing harms caused by heteronormativity.

Author

• Bethy Leonardi, University of Colorado - Boulder