Coming out, rolling over, and playing model: possibilities beyond the trope of queer students “at-risk”

Abstract

In this article, I explore one lesbian teacher’s ethical dilemmas and resulting disappointment related to the lack of participation by queer students in the Gay Straight Alliance she helped to create. Her dilemmas hinge on the paradoxical subject position of queer teacher in tension with the “coming out imperative” and intersecting with discursive articulations of teacher-as-role model and queer students as a population “at-risk.” Grounded in scholarship that describes the discursive production of queer teacher and queer students, I explore the ways in which one group of queer students resist notions of “at-riskness” and the resulting impact on their teacher.

Keywords:

• teacher professionalism
• teacher thinking and knowledge
• teacher socialization

Notes

1. I recognize that there is a tension with my use of queer as an umbrella term for lgbt. The problem is that it can be seen to erase difference across social locations (Anzaldua, 1991). My intention in using the term here is to honor queer theory’s multifaceted poststructuralist roots. Of particular importance is its history of acknowledging difference and its construction of self as unstable, multiple, and situated (Gamson, 2000; Green, 2002, 2007; Seidman, 1993). I borrow from Sullivan’s (2003) and Wilchins’ (2004) work in my use of the term as a noun, adjective, and verb – queer as both being and doing.

2. In this paper, I work with the following definition of a Gay-Straight Alliance: student clubs that work to improve school climate for all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression (GLSEN, November, 2012).

3. Annie is a pseudonym.

4. Resistance here is congruent with the notion of queer as a verb, queer as subversion. I refer to this type of resistance as “queering moments” in another article (Goldstein et al., 2007).

5. Project 10 is a public school program providing on-site educational support services to queer youth. It was the predecessor of the GSA.