Introduction

Anna is a seventh grade teacher in a small town outside Fort Worth, Texas and the mother of a transgender kid. Between teaching in a deeply conservative district and supporting her own family, Anna has seen firsthand the effects that hostile school environments can have on student well-being. Wanting to better support LGBTQ students in her own classroom, Anna took to the internet for guidance. Her search led her to free resources from the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a nonprofit organization supporting LGBTQ students and educators. She found free lesson plans centered around young adult novels with queer protagonists—exactly what she was looking for.

Excited and wanting to share them with others, but also nervous about how they would be received, she ultimately decided to bring the resources to a teachers’ meeting the following week. The conversation was quickly shut down, but not for the reasons she’d anticipated. The other teachers told Anna that while they think supporting all students is important, the principal would never go for it, and neither would parents. And even if they did, the teachers themselves would not know how to begin talking about queer characters or identities. Even with the resources available, Anna’s efforts were dead in the water.

This report is aimed at opening up a new line of dialogue about today’s teacher experiences so that efforts like Anna’s* are embraced instead of squashed. The first report of its kind to examine the possibilities inherent in LGBTQ-inclusive materials for training classroom teachers, it explores the biggest challenges to creating, implementing, and scaling up this kind of PreK–12 teacher professional learning. It is also the first to consider the opportunities in harnessing digital materials, particularly open educational resources (OER),¹ as tools for helping to overcome those challenges and enabling queer inclusion.² Situated within the broader context of culturally responsive teaching (CRT), this report aims to help set a research and practice agenda for education leaders that envisions ways to combine lessons learned from both the LGBTQ advocacy and open education fields.

This work is, in part, the result of a cross-sectoral working group that came together to pool resources, knowledge, and insights around LGBTQ advocacy, inclusive teaching, and OER. Participants in the group, listed in the Appendix, contributed heavily to the report’s framing and content, and I am extremely grateful for their thoughtful participation.

*Anna's name has been changed to protect her privacy.