TITLE:

To do this discussion differently : Queering Teacher Professional Learning through Comic Art and Graphic Stories

*IN THE CONTEXT OF MY WORK: “graphic stories” is used to describe the end result of something created through the process and medium of “comic art”, and “comic art” refers to a process for drawing words and ideas into stories.

IN GENERAL

• my research considers how we might better support teachers to proactively expect and welcome the many queer and wondrous ways that kids, families and colleagues show up in our schools and classrooms;

• i am interested in centring the voices and experiences of trans/NB (non-binary) people involved in the school system in various roles, while simultaneously shifting away from the expectation that it is queer/trans people who should to do this teaching by offering our own bodies as exemplars; that we must continue to literally en-ACT these explanations in order for schools to accept and care for us.

SUMMARY OF THESIS PROJECT + related work to come

•  my current work explores how Comic Art and Graphic Stories can help to engage all educators more personally and continuously in professional learning(+action) about these topics.

• my dissertation contains a series of  three, comic book length graphic stories, as well as plans for a fourth.

• i am writing+drawing these books to address the question: 

  What formats for teacher professional learning (TPL) show promise in supporting educators to expect, welcome and include trans/genderqueer students, families and staff in schools? 

•  the series is designed to invite teachers into an intentionally slowed-down, personalized, and emotionally-connective process of professional learning.

• each one of the first three graphic stories in the series is linked to a section in the fourth book, which will be constructed more like an interactive workbook: inviting readers to question their own relationship to “identity” and “change” at the same time that they are engaging with these first-person stories of transition, challenge, and celebration at school. 

• these materials are intended to help schools support contemplative teacher practice, collegial community building, and the sort of continuous, equity-based education that most systemic approaches to teacher professional learning (TPL) do not prioritize.

• the first three graphic stories compose the three “data/results” chapters of my dissertation.

• my plans for BOOK.4 compose much of my final thesis chapter, which also discusses the broader impacts of this research + some potential next steps. 

• the series is deliberately slow, detailed and introspective: both in process and product 

• this work is not intended to provide magic solutions for how schools can function “better” in relation to queerness, but rather to facilitate the opening of discussions and to help support the sort of enduring relationships between colleagues that are necessary for the hard work of sustainable change in schools to take root.

* my hope is that these books can offer invitations into that longer-term work by initiating conversations (internal and collegial) about ;

• learning to know what we personally need to care for ourselves as care-givers (and also why even those thoughts can feel hard)

• individual identity work: making space for curiosity and change with respect to one’s own sense-of-self as an educator

• collegial care and support through challenging lessons, actions and experiences

• ongoing, collaborative, relationship-building among all of the students, staff, and families that compose a school community

B O O K . 1

DOING THINGS WITH DEMONS: SELF-CARE FOR CARE-GIVERS

summary:

• this book encourages teachers to think more about how (and/or if) they take active steps to care for their own physical, mental, and spiritual health on a regular basis. 

• the content also very clearly acknowledges that this question can feel very fraught and complicated for many folks and as such: 

• the pace / content / format of this book are designed to invite readers into that process slowly and abstractly with a great deal left up to the imagination.

• readers are encouraged to find personal connections between the words, images, ideas, and their own life experiences;

BOOK.2

VISIBLE IS NOT THE SAME AS BEING SEEN: A CONVERSATION ABOUT PRIVACY IN HYPER-VISIBLE BODIES 

summary:

• the source text for this story is the transcript of a conversation between a friend/colleague and myself about the intense sort of entitlement-to-access that many people feel with regards to the lives and bodies of individuals who read as “visibly different” from themselves. 

• that assessment of “difference” is frequently assumed in contrast to the white, English-speaking, straight, cis, binary-gendered bodies that are “expected” to populate North American schools and society. 

• this graphic story is structured as two pages of dialogue, then two pages of image - back and forth– with found-poetry integrated into the images / stemming from the dialogue pages which directly precede+follow each visual section.

BOOK.3

THIS POEM IS BOTH/AND: A STORY OF LOVE AND COMMUNITY 

summary:

•  BOOK.3 is about moving towards conscious, inclusive relationship building in school communities. 

•  it is an especially personal one for me because the source text and the imagery are a combination of; 

  • a found-poetry piece about the “identity” of our classroom community that started as a collaboration with my (then) grade 3/4 students,

    and;

  • a poem i wrote as a grad student, reflecting back on aspects of my own experience; transitioning while teaching elementary school.