Youths’ Literacy Disidentifications in a Secondary Classroom: Contesting Transphobia through Humor in Role-Playing

Abstract

Background Recent decades have seen an increased number of literacy education researchers attending to LGBTQ people and texts in secondary schools, frequently documenting tensions that emerge, such as conflict. However, this research tends to be limited in scope with respect to time, texts, and identities. Moreover, it shows that students tend to face challenges and constraints when attempting to challenge homophobia and transphobia. Focus of Study In this study, I sought to extend previous scholarship by exploring how students used reading and writing to work within, on, and against normative values and practices in a secondary classroom as they enacted queer activism, efforts I conceptualize as literacy disidentifications. Setting This study took place at a public urban comprehensive high school that I call Harrison High School, which was in a midsized Midwestern U.S. city. In this manuscript, I focus on one course, a sophomore humanities class that combined English language arts and social studies. Research Design I conducted a yearlong literacy ethnography at Harrison, acting as a participant observer throughout the high school but focusing on literacy learning contexts, including English language arts classrooms and a GSA (Genders and Sexualities Alliance) club. Data Collection and Analysis During my participant observation experiences, I constructed field notes. In addition, I made audio and video recordings of classroom lessons, collected documents, and conducted interviews with teachers, students, and administrators. I analyzed these data through an inductive and comparative grounded theory approach. Findings Drawing on sociocultural perspectives of literacy and language along with queer theories, I conceptualize literacy disidentifications and explore this heuristic through the actions of Imani, a queer youth of color who encountered a schooling context where her activism was frequently shut down. To legitimize and sustain her queer activism, she blended humor with other literacy practices, such as role-playing and signification, which resulted in critiquing, yet not necessarily transforming, transphobia. Conclusions These findings suggest that educators working to cultivate queer-affirming schools can: sanction conflict and teach youth how to navigate conflict in compassionate and humanizing ways; recognize, rather than squelch, youths’ queer activism; teach LGBTQ-inclusive curricula, especially curricular texts that foreground the lives and perspectives of trans people; and broaden the range of youth literacy practices valued in classroom lessons.

Literacy (Dis)Orientations in a Secondary Classroom: Possibilities and Limits of an Intersectional LGBTQ+‐Inclusive Curriculum

“…Leonardi and Staley (2021; Staley, 2022; Staley & Leonardi, 2016) offer sustained investigation into the paradoxes of a queer(ed) inclusive educational praxis, focusing heavily on the emotional discomfort leaners experience when questioning “common sense” (Kumashiro, 2015) with respect to gender and sexuality. Their exploration of moment‐by‐moment instructional moves and instances of pedagogical disruption (especially Leonardi & Staley, 2021; Staley, 2022) resonates with my own individual and collaborative inquiries into (dis)orientations here and elsewhere disidentifications (Schey, 2020) and ruptures (Schey & Blackburn, 2019). Collectively, these studies of queer literacies are, in part, posing questions about queering the epistemological practices that students and teachers use in the context of curricula inclusive of sexual and gender diversity.…”

“…Due to the proliferation of codes, my next analytic phase entailed reviewing the analytic index and data with the goal of condensing insights about LGBTQ+‐inclusive classroom lessons. Elsewhere I have focused on youths' actions such as genres and composing (Schey, 2022b), roleplaying and humor (Schey, 2020), or conflict (Schey, 2021b), so for this article I chose to focus on teacher actions, my intent being to engage with research on queer literacy pedagogies and inclusive curriculum. To do so, I draw on an ethnographic tradition of case analysis (e.g., Blommaert & Jie, 2010; Green, 1983; Green et al, 2020; Mitchell, 1984).…”

“…Although these insights are compelling, queer literacies researchers nonetheless take up strategies of inclusion, myself included (e.g., Helmer, 2016; Lin, 2017; Ryan & Hermann‐Wilmarth, 2018; Schey, 2020; Staley & Leonardi, 2016). In this article, I lean into the relationship between curricular inclusion and queer literacy pedagogies in an effort to understand the frictions and resonances between these approaches.…”

Queer and trans youth (not) knowing: experiences of epistemic (in)justice in the context of an LGBTQ+-inclusive secondary curriculum

“…During the 2016-2017 school year, I completed a yearlong literacy ethnography (Heath and Street, 2008) at Harrison High School (for additional information on the ethnography, see Schey, 2019Schey, , 2020Schey, , 2021Schey, , 2022. I approached this project drawing on my experiences previously working as a high school English teacher and GSA co-advisor to support queer and trans youth, families and educators.…”

“…Studies have largely focused on teachers' attitudes (Page, 2017;Thein, 2013), experiences (Helton, 2020) and pedagogies (Helmer, 2016), and only a few reports feature queer and trans youth encountering inclusive curricula (e.g. Schey and Blackburn, 2019;Schey, 2020Schey, , 2021Kenney, 2010;Vetter, 2010). Beyond English language arts (ELA) in content areas such as social studies, similar limits exist.…”