April 18, 2024
Queer Frontiers in Education with Steph Graham
Teaching. While Queer, Season 2, Episode 31
When you walk through the halls of academia as a queer individual, the echoes of your identity resonate with every step. That's why I sat with Steph Graham (she/her), a beacon of light for those navigating the professional world while proudly owning their queerness. Together, we unpack the complexities of queer experiences in education, shedding light on the often-unspoken hurdles and the liberating journey toward authenticity. Steph, with her adept coaching skills, provides a roadmap for students and teachers alike who are yearning to find their place in an environment that has not always been kind to those who dare to be different.
Steph and I peel back the layers of what it means to be an educator who doesn't quite fit the traditional mold. From the importance of creating a resume that sings with your personal values to navigating interviews with the precision of someone who knows just how much is at stake, we guide you through the nuances of establishing your presence in the world of teaching. The conversation is a heart-to-heart on the critical nature of inclusive practices—not just for the personal validation of queer staff but more so for the students looking for a beacon of hope in their own journey of self-discovery.
We wrap things up with a candid discussion on the true essence of allyship within the LGBTQ+ community in educational settings. From the silent solidarity of safe space stickers to the more vocal advocates, we dissect what it means to stand beside someone in their quest for acceptance. Moreover, we tackle the ongoing challenges faced by underrepresented groups, like women in STEM, and celebrate the victories, big and small, that keep the wheels of progress turning. This is not just a talk; it's a tribute to the transformative power of embracing every student's identity and the educators who are shaping a future where everyone can learn and thrive without fear. Join us for an enlightening journey through the heart of teaching while queer.
To be a guest or to hear more episodes visit www.teachingwhilequeer.com.
Follow Teaching While Queer on Instagram at @TeachingWhileQueer.
You can find host, Bryan Stanton, on Instagram.
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Chapters
00:26 - Navigating Queer Experiences in Education
09:27 - Inclusive Practices in School Environments
16:14 - Allyship in LGBTQ+ Community
26:38 - Supporting LGBTQ+ Students in Education
Transcript
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Teaching While Queer is a podcast for 2SLGBTQIA+ educational professionals to share their experiences in academia.
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Hi, I'm your host, brian Stanton, a theater pedagogue and educator in New York City, and my goal is to share stories from around the world 2SLGBTQIA+ from 2SLGBTQIA+ educators.
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I hope you enjoy Teaching While Queer.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Teaching While Queer.
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I am your host, Bryan Stanton, today.
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I'm so excited to have with me Steph Graham.
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Hi, Steph, how are you doing?
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Hi Bryan, I'm doing well.
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Thank you, excited to have with me Steph Graham.
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Hi, Steph.
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How are you doing, hi, Bryan?
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I'm doing well, thank you, awesome.
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I forgot to mention my pronouns, are he they?
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I try to start the episode with that, so do you mind taking a second and sharing a little bit about yourself with our listeners?
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Yeah, absolutely so.
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My pronouns are she/ her.
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I identify as a lesbian and I'm really excited to be here.
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A lot of what I do in the way of education and working with folks who are LGBTQ is through my coaching business and helping them with their career and achieving their career goals and where they want to be.
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So this is something that I find so fascinating, because I think it's something where high school education is supposed to help out with this.
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College education is supposed to help out with this, but then, like I've been in situations where it just falls short.
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Um, I've even had a situation I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before where I had a rhetoric and writing teacher in college tell me to just tailor my resume to enterprise, because that's the only job we're all gonna get at the end of this and I was like all right well, I'm out of here.
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It was nice meeting you it was uh.
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I want to say it was a good three weeks, but it wasn't so.
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I I met it right before the drop deadline, so, um, that that can be really frustrating and I think that it's something that should probably be more mainstream and curriculum.
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Yeah, and I think your insights are going to be super valuable, especially when we get to the core of like navigating this kind of time that we're living in and needing to have jobs as queer people.
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You know, absolutely yeah.
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So let's let's avoid the current turmoil and, kind of like, think about the past a little bit.
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What was life like for you as a queer student?
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That's a great question.
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So for me, like many people, that was really a journey of kind of learning who I am and what that looked like.
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So I definitely can think back and say I feel like there was a lot of confusion at certain times about who I was and that really did impact me in terms of my education.
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Like, so much of that is relation to others, whether it's your teachers, your peers, feeling like you can show up 100% as yourself, and so, as I was figuring that out, that became kind of challenging for me.
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That was certainly the case in high school.
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Fortunately for me, I did go to an all women's college, so that definitely kind of allowed me to explore myself and just be around people who were, you know, going through that same experience.
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But I do think, especially when I think to high school, that was a really big challenge, especially the years that I was in high school.
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You know it.
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Just it was.
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It was a different time and even now that's incredibly hard for students today.
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So Absolutely, and did you experience a lot of anti-queer behavior in high school, or it was more so that you were kind of struggling on your own, felt like there was maybe a sense of isolation?
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Yeah, no, great question.
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So, unfortunately, I think there was a culture at the time of just being very flippant or flagrant with certain words.
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For instance, there's the F word for, you know, folks who are typically gay men.
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We actually had to have a school assembly for them to tell us why it was not OK to say that word, because it was just so openly used.
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And again, I mean, you know, we're talking early 2000s.
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So, yes, that was more prevalent in culture of like mainstream culture, but like it was very much so clear that people weren't thinking about it.
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To them it was like oh, it's just a word, I don't mean it attached to gay people in any way, but there was no analysis, no thought process and really considering.
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Like there are people in this environment who are going to be impacted by what you're saying and I think the impact that that had is after graduating.
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So many people came out, like so many people a few years ahead of me, behind me, and I was shocked because all I kept thinking is you never would have known when we were in high school.
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But that says so much about the environment we were in.
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Absolutely.
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I mean, there was a lot of, a lot of hiding that needed to happen in order to feel safe.
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And it's funny because when I was in high school I was outed, so I didn't have that kind of luxury, but I had the same kind of floodgates open when I went off to college, like so many people from my high school came out later on and there's some people that I was like oh yeah, I knew that, and then some people who I was like, wow, I would have never thought about that and it's just based off of, you know, safety absolutely yeah, 100 yeah.
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And you mentioned something earlier about, oh gosh.
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Just flew out of my head right as I was saying the words, so let's move on.
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Perfect.
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How do you think that your experiences as a queer student have kind of impacted how you work as an adult?
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Fantastic question and I just I feel so fortunate, honestly, to have had the experiences I did, because I see that really pay off in my coaching.
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So, for context, you know I'm a career development and interview coach.
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I do specialize in working with people, one going through career transitions, but two working with underrepresented groups, so people who are neurodivergent, LGBTQ, racial or cultural minorities.
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Working with those folks is really important for me because our career ends up being so much of our life.
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We spend so much time at our jobs.
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People, most career coaches they just think how do I get you to that next step?
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What's that next job For me?
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I really like to help my clients say what is your career going to look like?
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And we do have to consider all facets of who you are, the identities that you hold, because that makes a difference in your job, in the environment that you're in, and you want to make sure that that's something you can do, for instance, though, in ways that I can kind of help coaching based off of my experience.
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So right now I am working with a few LGBTQ students college students and helping them just better understand what the workplace can look like and what are the things they should be asking.
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You know what are the right questions to ask.
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What should you expect in a work environment?
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You know how do you advocate for yourself and set those boundaries.
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I always tell people my coaching is very holistic because we are multifaceted as people.
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It's not just your career.
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I want you to feel safe, embraced, comfortable in the environment you're in.
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So I would say, just understanding what that can look like in a corporate setting or a nonprofit setting or whatever I'm able to better prepare them for whether it's giving them tactics or tools or just like insight into this is something you should be prepared for.
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Absolutely, and it's so interesting because your conversation about your job actually like brought my question back or my my, it was more of a connection Right, and you mentioned that you work with folks who are neurodivergent as well as those who are part of the LGBTQ community, and so what I was thinking about was the fact that, like, language has been so or slang rather, has been so derivative in a sense, that it's like dividing people because these words are being said.
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But, to the same token, it's that idea that, like, it gets watered down the more that it's said, in the sense that the people learning the language now don't associate it with the negative thing about a person that it was associated with.
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And so I was thinking about how, like, even on high school campuses today, there's a huge push to get rid of the R word when referring to folks with disabilities.
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However, like, most high school students didn't even realize that that was actually a term used for folks with disabilities because, you know, linguistically it's just come to mean like stupid or dumb right um, and that's the same thing with like gay, that's so gay.
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It's like all of these words have kind of kind of kind of culminated on stupid or dumb um, and so I thought it was just really interesting.
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Uh, your conversation about the f word just kind of brought that back to light, and I bet that in your experience working with these varying groups that you're kind of have to focus a little bit on, like what are the positive attributes of the who you are, because so much of our coding in the world right now is, you know, being different is being wrong.
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Right, yeah, no, that makes sense.
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That's a good connection, absolutely.
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Yeah.
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So let's dive a little bit into kind of what you do, if you don't mind.
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So you're coaching folks on getting a job and one of the core questions that I generally ask in an interview is like what would you tell somebody who's going into an academic setting?
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Maybe they're a new teacher or principal or whatnot Probably not a principal, because you need some kind of experience there.
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But if they're a new teacher and they are unsure about being their authentic self in the classroom, what advice would you give them?
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Yeah.
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So when you think about a school setting, obviously there is kind of the school bureaucracy of how they kind of run things.
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My biggest thing and this is something that I really tried in my career to make sure I did visibility.
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That was really important to me, even in settings where I maybe felt not 100% comfortable or wasn't really sure I really wanted to be visible, because I knew there were people that would be looking at me that would be wondering is there anyone else here that is like me?
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So for a teacher, obviously it can be intimidating, not only a classroom of kids who typically are not the nicest people in the world, but then also, of course, like the administration, fellow teachers, so one.
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I think a lot of it is really figuring out what that environment is going to be like before you get into it.
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As we know, whether it's teaching or any other role, that can be hard.
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You know there are only so many questions you can ask and you have to just assess based off of that.
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But if you are in a setting in which you do feel comfortable, I always do recommend trying to be as visible as possible, because you don't know who you are helping or influencing to say it's okay to be who you are.
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So I think I have a follow up question there, given that your skill set and what you're working on and you know, I guess if you decide to answer, this is a little freebie for everybody.
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But when you're going to apply for a job or going into the interview process, like, how do you test those waters?
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How do you know if that that place is is going to be welcoming?
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Right.
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What do you look for I?
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have a great example, someone I worked with that I was like you taught me something.
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This is amazing.
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This person is a trans man and legally, at the time that he was applying to a role, still had his birth name as the legal name.
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So had to put that on the documents because, again, it's just his legal name at the time.
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But on his resume, very clearly at the top stated this is my legal name, I go by X, I identify as a trans man and I think at the time I was coming up and that makes me sound so old, very much.
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So more of like how do you hide it?
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We know people aren't going to like this, so how do you hide it?
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And I kind of checked myself, or him saying that really checked me, to say you know what, you're right.
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He took the approach of like I'm going to tell you up front if you don't like it, that's fine and I don't want to work there if that's the case.
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So I really think being able to do either something like that and you know it's a very specific case if that is your situation, but also if you have volunteer work or different things that you've done that you can put on your resume to kind of say, hey, these are the values that I hold, these are the things that are important to me.
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So first, that's kind of that first wall of defense of like, okay, they saw that and chose to go forward.
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I'm feeling a little better Now once you're in an interview.
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You know honestly, like your sexual orientation shouldn't really come up in an interview, but there are questions that you can ask, say around diversity, equity and inclusion.
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Now a lot of people will just say, oh, what is your mission?
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Like Like, what is your DE&I mission?
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Those questions aren't as helpful.
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They can easily just recite whatever HR put in the handbook and you know everything's great.
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So asking more pointed questions of can you tell me about a time that there was some sort of conflict that was based off of you know anything falling under the DE&I category, but how is that like?
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Is there a process in place for you as a manager or our team to deal with that?
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I think companies need to be proactive in saying if something like this happens, here is our process for how we deal with it.
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And as we see more companies hiring heads of DE&I or just diversity in general, we're starting to see more processes put into place and so when you are interviewing people being able to ask those pointed questions and get really solid answers.
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I think that's important yeah absolutely.
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You actually got me thinking about my interview for the second school that I taught at, because I had been teacher of the year for the school district that I was leaving, which was really great to an extent, and also shined a negative spotlight on me because of who I am, yeah, and so I explained my story because I was asked the question like why, why are you leaving if you had all the success there?
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And then I turned the tables back around on him and said, ok, great, you've heard my story.
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Now how would you handle that situation as an administrator?
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And I think that I think it's worth saying and having that question, like you know, I, when they ask you, do you have any questions for us?
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Like one I think it's good form to always have a question and two, for queer folks, maybe that question needs to be you know, I'm a part of the LGBTQ community.
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If someone were, you know, if we did experience any kind of like anti-queer behavior, someone where you know, if we did experience any kind of like anti-queer behavior, what steps do you have?
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in place to combat that right, or how would you respond to it?
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Um, because I think that it's really important to be up front to an extent, if you feel comfortable with that, but also like it's really important to get beyond that surface level, which is what you were talking about.
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I'm going to recite the mission statement or the diversity statement and give them, you know, facts.
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I've noticed that this situation is happening at other schools in the area.
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How would you respond to it, or how would this district respond to it?
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Right, exactly.
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I like that.
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That's perfect advice.
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It's great advice.
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Um, thinking about your own experience as a like as a student, and maybe some work that you've experienced, like if you're helping folks with.
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You know, getting teaching jobs or transitioning, I know, is a huge, uh huge thing right now for the education community.
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There are a lot of people transitioning out of education, unfortunately.
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What would you like to see the school community do to be more inclusive of 2SLGBTQIA plus people?
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Great question.
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So I will say yes, you are right.
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There are people definitely transitioning out of education.
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I've worked with a decent amount of people who are getting out of the classroom, which to me, for a number of reasons, I guess that can be a very difficult work environment for people, but I'm so sorry.
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Could you repeat the question?
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Yeah, so what would you like to see the school community like?
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What can the school community do to be more inclusive of LGBTQIA folks?
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Yeah.
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So I would say again, visibility and I want to be clear that can also be allies, so it's not necessarily oh, I hold this identity and I'm sharing that, but like they have little safe space, stickers that you can put up so students know they could come to you if they need to, just being vocal about it as much as you can as a whole, as an administration, I mean, obviously you would have to get everyone on board and I know right now across the country, you know there are some places where that's doable, there are some places that's simply not doable, but as much as you can get people on board whether it is, you know, announcements, where you talk about certain things and you celebrate certain things just as you would anything else like really thinking, how do we just bring in some of that culture that shows we know about it, we care about it, we support those who are a part of the process or, excuse me, a part of the community, those types of things where, again, it's just that level of visibility.
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I think, especially when you think about kids right, maybe not the younger, younger, but especially, like high school, they don't want to necessarily have that full conversation where you sit down.
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You're real serious.
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They're like, okay, I just want to know it's out there, I want to know that I can feel safe.
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But I don't really want to have that full-blown conversation.
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Yeah, absolutely that conversation, like any kind of serious conversation.
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I feel like it's really awkward for young folks.
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I mean I have instances with my own children where they're like I don't even want to have this, like I would like to buy these Oreos from you.
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Conversation with people so the serious ones can be a little bit, you know, fraught right.
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I have some follow-up questions based off of that, and so one is like what do you think of the word ally when it comes to like, when it comes to like almost being like a brand tool or a badge of honor?
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Um, I'll give you an example.
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If the pride organization on campus were to create shirts and one of them was like the organization's logo pride, and the other one was organization's logo pride, ally, what, what are the things that come up kind of for you when you see that?
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Yeah, so part of me I'm kind of chuckling because I'm like I wish you could do like a training, like everyone needs to do this training to be considered an ally, because I think for a lot of people they think, oh, I'm okay with this, so that makes me an ally, right, not quite an ally.
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In my opinion, my definition there's a level of being proactive, there's a level of having that visibility or standing up for someone when they can't, or really being engaged or involved.
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I think another important thing based on other identities that I hold, that I see is a lot of people do it in a transactional way.
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So I supported you and I expect you to support me and if you don't now I'm mad that I ever supported you.
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Yeah, it's like quid pro quo.
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Exactly, exactly, and so for me, I think, being an ally, that's why I almost say like some level of training or understanding.
00:18:45.664 --> 00:18:55.586
This is not just I'm okay or like, yeah, I'll support you now, but like it's really I'm with the group, like if stuff goes down, I'm here, like I'm here to be next to you and by your side.
00:18:55.586 --> 00:18:57.128
I think it's great.
00:18:57.128 --> 00:19:04.036
Like I work for companies where you know they were like ally day and all this stuff.
00:19:04.036 --> 00:19:04.777
I also thought it was interesting.
00:19:04.797 --> 00:19:06.898
I was like are we celebrating allies more than we are the actual people in the community?
00:19:06.898 --> 00:19:08.901
I think that's something to think about as well.
00:19:08.901 --> 00:19:19.092
And again, based on the many identities that I do hold, when you think about being in a space that is for that group, you, as an ally, kind of need to sit in the back and be quiet.
00:19:19.092 --> 00:19:31.104
If you are invited to give an opinion, if people do kind of bring that up, sure, but really recognizing, at the end of the day, this is someone else's space and, as an ally, I'm here to support you but not override you in any way.
00:19:31.846 --> 00:19:37.557
Yeah, absolutely override you in any way?
00:19:37.557 --> 00:19:38.118
Yeah, absolutely, I think so.
00:19:38.118 --> 00:19:39.863
That situation the specific example I gave came up at a school that I worked at.
00:19:39.863 --> 00:19:44.416
It came up after they took an ally training that they found like that was available.
00:19:44.416 --> 00:19:52.780
And it's funny because I took that training also just to kind of see like what, what can I do do?
00:19:52.780 --> 00:20:10.915
Because it was kind of marketed more about, um, you know, making things better for lgbtq students and and what it was was more like an ally training and I was like, okay, so this clearly was not made for anybody who identifies with the community.
00:20:10.915 --> 00:20:28.979
And then the other thing that I thought and I've had this conversation with some folks at that school was what are you telling the students when you're like I support this, but I need it to be publicly known that I'm an ally and I'm not a part of that community, so someone who's like they're.
00:20:29.299 --> 00:20:30.564
they really want you to know.
00:20:30.564 --> 00:20:32.096
Oh, but it's not me, right?
00:20:32.096 --> 00:20:32.435
So?
00:20:32.696 --> 00:20:41.022
like here I'm wearing my pride ally shirt because I need you to know that I'm an ally versus I'm just supporting the group.
00:20:41.403 --> 00:20:41.644
Right.
00:20:42.836 --> 00:20:47.448
And it's funny because I distributed the shirts.
00:20:47.448 --> 00:20:49.542
I didn't make the designs, but I distributed them.
00:20:49.542 --> 00:21:16.980
And so there were plenty of teachers who just brought the regular old shirt, regardless of their identity, and then there's plenty of folks who bought the ally shirt and I, just I, and I went to somebody who was going to take over you know some things for me after I was leaving and I was like I just want you to reconsider that ally shirt, because to me what it means is a little bit on the lines of like, separate but equal.
00:21:16.980 --> 00:21:22.579
Yeah, I'm here, I'm here to support you, but I need you to know that I'm not a part of that community yeah, yeah.
00:21:22.599 --> 00:21:23.301
So what, what does?
00:21:23.342 --> 00:21:29.530
it say about the pride community that you can't just wear the logo you have to have a separate thing yeah, that's.
00:21:30.192 --> 00:21:36.955
That's something to bring up with your therapist, for sure yeah, for sure, and I think you're right.
00:21:37.076 --> 00:21:44.000
I also do believe that, like there should be a training and whatnot for any kind of allyship, and it needs to start with understanding.
00:21:44.000 --> 00:22:05.741
Performative allyship, um and and I think that's another kind of thing that falls in is that if you want, if you want to do these things and you want to say you're a proud ally because you took a training, then if you're here to wear the badge like the training isn't work, the training is just understanding.
00:22:05.741 --> 00:22:06.904
Yeah.
00:22:08.269 --> 00:22:09.152
And that actually.
00:22:09.152 --> 00:22:13.820
I mean there's obviously intersectionality that goes into all of this but, a good example.
00:22:13.861 --> 00:22:29.982
I used to be a part of a social justice group and we would always say that we had a queer, feminist lens and that is how we did all of our work through that lens, and one of the reasons is because it's almost that, you know, if not everyone is free, then no one is free, you know, like if there's still a group.
00:22:29.982 --> 00:22:35.232
So really it was like how do we uplift the group that is the seemingly most oppressed?
00:22:35.232 --> 00:22:38.622
Thinking about trans, like black trans women.
00:22:38.622 --> 00:22:45.477
Coming at it from that angle, to me that really shows a level of allyship or just being invested in the community.
00:22:45.477 --> 00:22:52.963
Because, you recognize, even though I am queer, there are other people who, wow, we really need to center them because they're going through something and this is difficult.
00:22:53.065 --> 00:23:03.477
So Yep, I wow.
00:23:03.477 --> 00:23:05.527
We really need to center them because they're going through something, and this is difficult.
00:23:05.527 --> 00:23:20.450
I really wish that the white, cisgender, queer community would remember that, because I do think there is so much animosity within the queer community and and I've seen, I've witnessed just a lot of like anti-trans rhetoric, just in general.
00:23:20.450 --> 00:23:50.440
I've absolutely, on you know, various apps, seen racism, fat phobia, like there's so much divisiveness even in the queer community, but everything's okay because now, quote unquote white gay men are acceptable right, right so you know f everybody else um and that that drives me nuts.
00:23:50.740 --> 00:23:54.587
Uh, as, as a person like, my gender is queer.
00:23:54.969 --> 00:23:55.288
Yeah.
00:23:56.135 --> 00:24:14.282
And then also as a parent, because my children I have one half black, half white child, I have three Mexican children and I'm just sitting here going like I have to make the world safe for everybody, Because if I don't, then my house isn't safe.
00:24:14.282 --> 00:24:15.866
You know what I mean.
00:24:15.866 --> 00:24:18.083
Like nobody in my house is safe.
00:24:18.083 --> 00:24:40.486
And it's been really interesting because intersectionality, I think, makes up a huge part of who we are, and so I love the fact that you could talk about those things with people, because I think that we are told that our identities are these kind of little boxes that we stack on top of each other and that at any given time we can just take it out but still have our identity.
00:24:40.486 --> 00:24:44.942
But take out a box, you know, don't be the gay teacher.
00:24:45.565 --> 00:24:45.885
Yeah.
00:24:47.695 --> 00:24:51.661
Take that part of your identity out and you can't.
00:24:51.661 --> 00:24:57.407
You'll lose who you are when you start compartmentalizing your ID or identity.
00:24:57.954 --> 00:25:00.945
Right, I actually have a example that just came to mind.
00:25:00.945 --> 00:25:12.863
I'm working with a college senior and she is trans and has a very, very heavy STEM background and I said you know, as a coach, my job is helping people get jobs, telling you what actually makes sense.
00:25:12.863 --> 00:25:14.948
It's not everything is in flowers and perfect.
00:25:14.948 --> 00:25:23.107
So I said to her I was like you know what, though the STEM experience that you have is very, is not very common amongst women.
00:25:23.107 --> 00:25:24.558
Now we can talk about why STEM is.
00:25:24.558 --> 00:25:26.625
You know, women aren't encouraged in STEM, all those different things.
00:25:27.757 --> 00:25:32.226
But I was like for most women, their resume wouldn't necessarily look like this.
00:25:32.226 --> 00:25:33.147
Not that they couldn't do it.
00:25:33.147 --> 00:25:35.432
Most women their resume wouldn't necessarily look like this.
00:25:35.432 --> 00:25:38.199
Not that they couldn't do it, not that there aren't women out that do, but you know what I mean?
00:25:38.199 --> 00:25:39.703
I was like this is actually kind of uniquely different.
00:25:39.703 --> 00:25:40.787
And she kind of like lit up.
00:25:40.787 --> 00:25:41.529
She was like oh really.
00:25:41.529 --> 00:25:43.536
I was like, yeah, like this is a bit different.
00:25:43.536 --> 00:25:48.162
I want you to like one, recognize that, but then also you can lean on that, just know that you can.
00:25:48.201 --> 00:25:50.345
My job is like okay, I know what it's like to be a woman.
00:25:50.345 --> 00:25:52.146
I know what it's like to be queer in these spaces.
00:25:52.146 --> 00:26:01.721
You really need to be able to lean on certain things and I was like your STEM background is strong and it was really nice because, one, she was kind of pleasantly surprised of like oh okay, like great, I feel good.
00:26:01.721 --> 00:26:17.030
But two, what really touched my heart is like I could tell she felt validated in what I was saying and I was just like them feel good, finding that confidence and being able again to like take all of those identities together.
00:26:17.875 --> 00:26:29.855
Yeah, and I think there's something about like I mean, a lot of us are put in situations where we look back and we're like, okay, someone else has to point out that look at all these things that you've done.
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