Equally important is to consider how you’re learning to teach those titles. What queer educators do you read and learn from? It’s important to include LGBTQ titles in your classroom library.
Titles like They Both Die in the End by Adam Silvera, If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan, This is Kind of an Epic Love Story by Kacen Callender, Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian, Trans Mission: My Quest to a Beard by Alex Bertie, and I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver are foundational pieces for an LGBTQ-affirming classroom library.
the Homo Sapiens Agenda and its cinematic adaptation Love, Simon are worthy of space in classrooms, but they cannot be the sole texts.
We need narratives that center queer people. Where are queer narratives and voices present in the curriculum? First, do queer narratives exist in your curriculum? And if so, where? How do we position queer narratives? Are they in book club choices or literature circles? Do we use queer narratives as mentor texts for the whole class? References to queerness that are vague or disputable in canonical works are not enough.How can we make our own English classrooms spaces that live up to the ideals of the “English teachers support queer youth” meme? Some questions to consider in our classroom and practice that can guide our work include: And that message is that English teachers can work to make their classrooms affirming and loving spaces for students even when broader school structures remain entrenched with homo-, trans-, bi-, and queerphobia. The message behind the meme transcends the specific popular cultural texts used to construct the meme. A search on Twitter with the words “gay” and “English teacher” will provide the depth of the meme’s reach. While not an official name, I refer to the collection of memes as the “English teachers support queer youth” genre.Įxamples of the meme are abundant: screenshots from video games, promotional photos from actors, stills from reality shows, celebrity pictures at political events, stock images of bespectacled readers, and the list goes on. In the past few years I’ve noticed a warming (and often humorous) trend on social media: Queer youth creating memes that speak to the ways their English teachers supported, affirmed, and loved them. Hotel? Trivago blog post was written by Cody Miller, Chair of the NCTE LGBTQ Advisory Committee. I made this account TWO DAYS AGO and have 100+ followers my mind : shook There are other Hotel Trivago memes that are not related to the election. Hotel – Trivago #USElections #TrumpvsBiden Presidential Election - where Donald Trump is squaring off with Joe Biden. The memes seem to be having a resurgence just as the 2020 U.S. Hotel? Trivago.” It garnered over 83,000 likes and 67,000 retweets and was seen in circulation over the years. User posted a tweet comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler followed by the caption, “Mystery? Maybe. According to Know Your Meme, this meme first appeared on Twitter in February 2017.