Chitter Chatter, #LGBTeach

Main street, Richey, Montana.

Rural education offers its own unique set of triumphs and challenges. Small, isolated communities are built upon strong, traditional family values. The school is often the center of these communities, playing host to Saturday night dates, choir concerts, and basketball games.  I grew up in one of these rural places, graduating with 16 other students. The high school had less than 50 kids, grades 9-12. Today, more than 20 years later, the high school is at least half that size. 

While many assumptions could be made about rural schools, the students who attend them, and the teachers who teach there, one assumption that should be avoided is the belief that diversity is unnecessary. Specifically, it is important to offer students options and present them with stories and characters who are different from themselves. It is more important to present these stories to young people in rural schools because they do not see the events, individuals, or situations in their day-to-day lives. 

On May 31, 2014, I was awarded my doctorate in education. The focus of my study was to investigate teacher attitudes toward using young adult (YA) literature with lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) content in rural schools in Wyoming. What follows are some of the more startling data that emerged:

• 100% of respondents said it was not very important to incorporate YA literature with LGBT content

•  Half of respondents said it was not very important to recommend YA literature titles with LGBT content to students

• 75% of respondents did not use or plan to use literature with LGBT content

• 75% of respondents said it was not very important to be familiar with LGBT content

• Every respondent listed at least one concern in regard to teaching YA literature with LGBT content

Of what were teachers afraid? 

Concerns included living in a conservative community that reflected conservative and traditional views of family, neglect of the national Common Core State Standards to allow room for the inclusion of diverse literature, and fear of negative parent reaction if books with LGBT content were read in the classroom. 

Interestingly, no comments addressed any fear of rejection from the students. On July 6, 2014, a reader commented at the weneeddiversebooks.tumblr.com website “[T]his movement is more than social media activism, it’s our lives being reflected back at us.” The We Need Diverse Books mission statement says the group is a “grassroots organization created to address the lack of diverse, non-majority narratives in children’s literature. We Need Diverse Books is committed to the ideal that embracing diversity will lead to acceptance, empathy, and ultimately equality.” 

What first caught my eye when I visited the We Need Diverse Books website was the top blog about the novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post. I picked up the book a few years ago because it is set in Montana, my home state, and the author, Emily M. Danforth, attended my alma mater, The University of Montana. As I read the book, I was most intrigued by its setting – a rural town in eastern Montana.  

One of the great things about diversity in classrooms is that it makes the environment better for everybody. It’s not just good for one person or one group, it’s good for everyone. Teachers are not without their fears, however, and evidence exists to show some fears are rooted in their lived reality. 

That is where support comes in. 

Jessica Lifshitz (@JessLifTeach), an educator who lives outside of Chicago, wrote in her blog crawlingoutoftheclassroom.wordpress.com about coming together to chat on Twitter. The first #LGBTeach chat will be held on July 24, 7 p.m. MST. It is open to everyone and will provide many benefits, including a place to gather resources, a place to connect and build a professional learning network, a place to support each other, and most importantly, it will give space to discuss issues that can help young people. 

The Twitter chats, blogs, and website comments rest on a belief that young people need access to a wide range of materials. In rural schools this is especially important because of the nature of the community – small, isolated, and removed from major metropolitan areas. Students in these areas have limited access not only to individuals who identify as LGBT but also people of color, individuals with disabilities, and ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities. Teachers need the support and the resources to pull it off. I look forward to chatting with you on July 24 at 7 p.m.!