Challenging the Limits of Binary Language in Elementary Education Through Poetry, Word Art, and Creative Bookmaking

• In Event: Teaching, Affirming, and Recognizing Trans and Gender-Creative Youth: A Queer Literacy Framework

Abstract

Objectives:
When teachers explore free-form poetry, word art and creative book construction with young students in a way that remains conscious and accountable to their own feelings and intentions, these processes help to shift the inclusivity of classrooms in form as well as content. This paper presents four lesson plans that apply the QLF (Author A, 2015).

Perspective(s):
Working in reference to the QLF as well as Emergent Curriculum approaches to reflexive teacher practice (Gandini, 2005; Wein, 2008), this work demonstrates how a system of communication is not only a means of relating to others, it is an active participant in all of the formative relationships that we have as social beings. The application of the QLF and the Emergent Curriculum is analogous with each participant’s feeling of safety in the wider school community (Palmer, 2007). As such, educators are asked to consider whether the way that they teach students to read, write and speak effectively is working cohesively with other hopes about how these students will learn to see, hear, consider, change, respect, include, feel, trust, love, and be recognized more deeply in that communication.

Data Sources:
This paper builds upon the theoretical work on QLF presented in this symposium and suggests practically applications of said framework to elementary classroom. The author presents lessons using free-form poetry, word-art and creative book construction, forms of language learning whose innate flexibility empower student thinking, support radical self-acceptance, and encourage the protection of this right for every other person. When these skills are taught in the context of the QLF, the stories of T*GCY finally have the opportunity to be represented and reflected in a context that celebrates as opposed to sensationalizes them. The data that informs the continued development of this work has evolved in elementary school classrooms with teachers who are interested in changing the way that they approach language learning to be reflective and celebratory of the lives of T*GCY in form as well as content. Their process included arts-based learning, relationship building with community activists, conflict resolution strategies and community building in classrooms, and collaborative peer support among colleagues.

Scholarly Significance:
This approach to writing, speaking and sharing in elementary education encourages teachers to work with their students in positively disrupting the binary constructs of both language rules and identity formation. When educators begin to unveil the in-be-tweens of that which we are traditionally taught to consider absolute, it infuses all of the words that they use to encourage and support their students with greater integrity, impact and endurance. These forms of language learning explore transformation with the same dynamic and unapologetic visibility that every aspect of the lives of T*GCY should be celebrated. These processes are continuums that thrive in-be-tween and as such, represent a fluidity that is useful to any young person exploring identity formation. For T*GCY, they are an invitation to look to the experiences of their own lives as unique and important insights that deserve to be shared.

Author

• Benjamin Lee Hicks