Phobia

Part I

In a sense I feel that one of these questions could answer another. The hope is that what we teach in our classrooms will have positive, uplifting, lasting effects on the children in our classrooms, and that may translate outside into the world, and into their home environments.

How do you create an inclusive setting that students will respect and that has the potential to transfer into other aspects of their lives? & How do you deal with homophobic parents or policies?

I believe students who learn to develop empathy for characters in stories are more likely to accept other people for who they are in the classroom and outside. The challenge is how to engage them in these topics. I would work throughout my school year to engage students in stories about a variety of characters that students could relate to and develop empathy for, building towards the more complicated characters or discussions surrounding their behavior that students may not understand. When it came time for discussion, we would use the same strategies we had been using with the previous novels - there would be no difference in the way we "accepted" or "treated" any LGBTQ characters. We would focus on similarities that students could draw between themselves and the characters to develop a "culture of empathy" as Christensen calls it, asking them to "enter the lives of characters in literature, history, or real life they might otherwise dismiss or misunderstand." I might ask, "What if you were in this person's shoes?" or "What if this character had been straight? What would that change?" I might say, to help them think critically about their own biases, or the biases of the other characters in the story. At the beginning of the year, and throughout, I would like to set the tone that all characters we would be encountering would be beautiful and different, and just like ourselves in the classroom. I might have an activity where students can look at themselves as having multiple aspects of their identities, so that they can begin to see people as multiplicitous. Focusing on a person-first ideology, where people are humans first, should help students learn to see their fellow classmates and peers as equals. When students understand this, I believe they will start to notice the biases that come out in others that could use more empathy, like homophobic parents. We will likely have homophobic students in our classrooms, too. It starts with us; the rest of the work is up to them.

Regardless of whether there are "policies" in place, there are always ways, in literature interpretation, to talk about issues and lenses. I am not above finding many, even small, ways to make all students feel welcome in my classroom.

Part II

Though our Intersession week focused on the inclusion of all races, genders, and identities in Science Fiction, and in portrayals of the future, I realize we did not do much to address class. The idea was that all students see themselves, and others, represented in the future, and in other "worlds," but what about right now? What Christensen strives to do in including the poetry of Martin Espada deals precisely with that. Not only does she graciously and wisely expose his poetry in both English and Spanish, doing both the poet and her students linguistic and global justice, she teaches her students to respect those who cook and clean up after them.

When a student of ours chose "poverty" as her social issue that she wanted to address or explore in her "future" world, I realize we did not do much to scaffold her understanding of the issue within Science Fiction. She did not know what the purpose of her social issue was, only that it was important to her. This is the same student whose I Am poem in the Poetry of Rap class described being from "small kitchens." She stood so tall, was so proud. I find myself wondering now, how does class show up in Science Fiction? What is a way to explore it, or address it, through the guise of another world? I am also struggling to think of examples of how this type of respect of "invisible workers" is taught (if at all) in the media. I remember reading "On Dumpster Diving" in high school, which for the first time exposed me to the idea of people really living off of eating food out of dumpsters. It was the first time I saw that, and also felt sincere respect and empathy for the person. I am reminded of the limits of my knowledge.