Finding Our Activism in a Professional Learning Circle Turned Freirean Culture Circle

• In Event: Dispatches From the Field: Five Models of Collaborations for Teacher Agency and Social Justice

Abstract

The purpose of this group was to disrupt the traditional professional learning circle (PLC) that is a professional development requirement. Unlike a traditional PLC, I facilitated our dialogue drawing on Freire’s (1970/2004) and Souto-Manning’s (2010) model of culture circles as democratic, radical spaces to engage in dialogue, problem solving, and action. Specifically, we focused discussions on gender and sexuality.

Using queer theory as a theoretical framework, this paper examines how our PLC-turned culture circle became activists over time. Queer theory focuses on disruption, rebellion, questioning, and reimagining a present and future beyond heteronormativity and traditional structures of normalcy and acceptability (Britzman, 1998; Luhmann, 1998; Shlasko, 2005; Waite, 2019).

This study used practitioner action research to study how a group of teachers at the high school level discuss gender and sexuality in the frame of social justice. The group of 15 high school educators met one–two times per month for one school year. Data were drawn from audio and video recording/transcription, researcher’s journal, Google Classroom thread, shared documents, emails, and other correspondence between participants.

Community, vulnerability, storytelling, and a shared commitment to social justice gave us a space to become activists together.

Negotiation and Participant Voice as Feminist Community Building. Negotiating our expectations helped build a feminist, egalitarian community with a vision of our aims to work for social justice rather than data and outcomes. Together, we defined our goals and described how our sessions would run (Bohny et al, 2017).

Vulnerability through Storytelling as Risk-taking and Resistance. Sharing our stories in ways we could be vulnerable, ask questions, and admit fears built our community’s foundation (Taylor & Coia, 2009). Participants took turns describing issues they were facing in their classrooms (e.g., homophobic slurs, balance student voices, navigating student concerns with sexual assault scenes, how to address pronouns, etc.)

Collaborative Action and Activism as Small Acts of Agency. The group engaged in collaborative co-writing as forms of activism. Our co-writing included sending emails to administration, an email to a student refusing to participate in a lesson about the Stonewall Uprising, and the co-creation of our mission statement. Co-writing gave non-tenured teachers a safe way to have a voice and participate in activism without having to fear repercussions.

Few teacher-led communities focusing on sexism, homophobia, and heteronormativity have been documented (Blackburn et al., 2010 is one notable exception). The need for straight educators to discuss gender and sexuality and to feel more prepared to address related issues persists (Martin, 2014; Meyer, 2007). Our collaboration presents one version of how teachers can begin to build more vulnerable spaces to discuss social justice issues and build their activism.

Author

• Kelly Lormand, Grand Valley State University