Scrutinizing Safety: Personal Reflections From a Gender-Expansive Choral Music Teacher

• In Event: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging in Music Education

Abstract

The inception for looking at safety from my perspective came when I noticed scholars had begun to discuss transgender students in the music classroom, but the voice of the transgender or gender expansive teacher was missing. Since I lived as both gender expansive student and teacher, I have retrospectively examined my experiences with safety as they are seen from three different viewpoints: imagined, lived, and learned. Although exploring my gender in spaces that are dominated by views of gender as seen through a binary lens (Rands, 2009, p. 424) has been perplexing, I have utilized this research study as a space where I have felt “empowered to be vulnerable” and “comfortable enough to speak [my] mind” (Perez-Putnam, 2016, p. 2).

Author

• M. Miguel Rowland, Robeson Elementary School, Champaign Unit 4