“You see it in me”: Quare Pedagogy, Place, and Being

• In Event: Liberatory Pedagogies: Understanding Holistic Approaches to Sexuality in Educational Research

Abstract

Teacher education courses and corresponding activities towards licensure were established for many reasons but most importantly to support future teachers—ensuring pre-service teachers “effectiveness” in the classroom (Cochran-Smith, 2001). In 2024, teachers are asked to investigate their identity to understand their practice, but how does a teacher, who holds marginalized identities, cultivate and actualize their full self. This case study investigates how a quare (Johnson, 2005) inclusion teacher’s literacy practices influence their pedagogies while working within a racially and linguistically diverse high school student population in the US east coast. The educator reflects upon his relationship with sexuality, religion, race, masculinities professionally and personally. This paper draws upon an Black Feminism analysis (Collins, 2002; Collins, 2019) of interviews and artifact analysis emphasizing the importance of expanding definitions of literacies by providing greater insight on how restorative literacies (Pritchard, 2016) can create homespaces (hooks, 1990) for Black queer educators and their students, and highlighting experiences within teacher education in order to ready pre-service teachers to enter the workforce resisting anti-Black and anti-queer pedagogies. Providing insight into issues of teacher retention and the importance of humanizing the teaching working force, this study works to humanize Black Queer subjects by elevating their lived experiences, as worthy subject matter in teacher education and teacher practice.

Author

• Lindsey Allen, University of Maryland