74. How Trauma-Informed Practices Make Your Queer Students Feel Safe at School

Are you curious about how growing up in a conservative town shapes a queer educator's perspective on inclusivity and teaching? Claudia Cortese (she/they), a seasoned faculty lecturer, shares her eye-opening journey from a homophobic high school environment to fostering a safe and inclusive classroom.

Claudia Cortese’s experiences as a queer student in a conservative setting provide valuable insights into how personal adversity can fuel a commitment to creating inclusive educational spaces. Her journey underscores the importance of understanding and empathy in addressing current challenges related to queer representation in academia.

• Discover how bullying can  influence your approach to fostering inclusivity and respect in the classroom.
• Learn practical Trauma-Informed strategies to ensure all students are safe and successful
• Understand the vital role of humility and compassion in effective teaching and how it contributes to a positive educational atmosphere.

Tune in now to gain invaluable insights from Claudia Cortese on how personal history shapes teaching practices and discover actionable strategies for creating an inclusive classroom environment.

Transcript

Bryan (he/they): [00:00:00] Claudia, thanks so much for joining me today. How are you doing? 

Claudia (she/they): I'm okay. How about yourself? 

Bryan (he/they): I'm doing great. Thank you. Can you take a moment to introduce yourself to everybody who's listening? 

Claudia (she/they): My name's Claudia Cortese. Pronouns are she, they. I live in New Jersey. I'm a poet. And I'm an associate teaching professor at Montclair State University where I teach in the Department of Writing Studies.

So I teach college writing one and two. I also teach, creative writing classes sometimes. And I also teach in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. 

Bryan (he/they): Let's talk about your upbringing. What was life like for you as a queer student?

Claudia (she/they): Okay, so that is a great question and it's definitely informed my teaching in so many ways. So I grew up in Ohio in the 90s, Canton, Ohio, home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, big football town, not far from Steubenville, where there was, that horrific case of the girl who was sexually assaulted by two football players.

So I grew up in a town that [00:01:00] was very steeped in football culture and toxic masculinity. This was also the 90s when gay marriage still wasn't legal, where there was still so much homophobia and transphobia and biphobia and that was just the culture back then. There was very little representation in the mainstream of queer people and then the little representation we got was mostly white queer people, right?

So that was the context in which I grew up and I would say my experience of being queer and a student. I came out when I was in ninth grade. But I started to be bullied for being queer starting in middle school because kids perceived me as queer before I officially came out. And I would say my experience was just of always being unsafe.

Always feeling profoundly unsafe. I was constantly having a trauma response. When I was at school, I was constantly in fight, flight, or freeze. And I just had this constant feeling of tension in my body and anxiety and hypervigilance. And looking around and wondering what was going to [00:02:00] happen or what were students going to say to me.

And I remember I had this moment in college. This was my freshman year of college where I just felt very relaxed. And I was just in a class and I was just listening to a lecture. I remember it was a literature class. And I remember I, I like had this jolt moment where I realized it was the first time I had felt relaxed in a classroom in probably like over ten years.

No, actually was pretty unsafe in middle school too, because I also experienced a lot of bullying in middle school. and it's I didn't realize how much tension I was holding in my body until I stopped holding it. And so just to give you a few examples of some of my experiences, when I was in eighth grade, this boy passed me this note when I was sitting in study hall and it was like this stick drawing and the stick figure was hanging from a noose.

And he said, that's you. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. You're going to hang me. And then when I was in ninth grade, I actually, stopped being able to [00:03:00] ride the bus and my mom had to start picking me up from school because, the kids were bullying so bad and I had this girl like threatened to kill me.

And I remember saying to her, and it's interesting, I was so vulnerable. I said to her, why are you being so mean to me? And she said, oh, it's nothing personal. I'm just a gay basher. And I was like, feels personal to me and I remember I shaved my head when I was in ninth grade and I remember walking into Spanish class and the whole class was staring at me and talking about me.

I remember just feeling like an animal on display in the zoo and feeling really self conscious because I didn't do it for attention. I just wanted to shave my head. I thought it would look cool. I was really into Ani DiFranco at the time and I just thought a shaved head would be cool. I wasn't doing it for attention.

And I remember the Spanish teacher joined in and started talking about my shaved head, too. And the whole class proceeded to have a discussion about my shaved head that went on for a really long time. And I just felt so incredibly uncomfortable. And, I just remember often [00:04:00] teachers looking at me.

I felt like with disgust and disdain, there was never one time that a teacher ever protected me from bullying. Not once did a kid ever get in trouble. And I got really bad grades in high school. I almost dropped out of high school. I ended up graduating. I think I graduated with a 2. 5 GPA, maybe 2.

I'd have to look back, but it was pretty low, but it had nothing to do with my academic abilities. I was just constantly feeling anxious and unsafe. And I remember even in 11th grade, and I don't think this is exactly about queerness, but I think it's related to it. I worked really hard on this presentation.

The assignment was to, Read an autobiography or biography about someone we admire and then do a presentation on the biography. And I chose Karl Marx because I thought Marxism and communism were cool. And I was curious about Karl Marx. And, I went to the front of the class.

Like we were all assigned to do and I started presenting on Karl Marx and what I'd learned about him the teacher, was a Vietnam vet and pretty [00:05:00] anti communist and I still remember he interrupted my presentation. He didn't let me finish it and he started yelling at me and ordered me to sit down he did this in front of the whole class.

I wasn't allowed to finish my presentation, and I feel like it was all connected to this view that teachers had of me of being like this freak. it was connected to being queer. It was also connected to being liberal and leftist. It was also connected to being fat. I experienced a lot of fat phobic bullying.

It was also connected, I think, to this perception that I didn't conform to the gender binary. and I'm going to speak to this, I think, more maybe during question two. my experiences as a queer student were just always that no one was going to keep me safe.

Teachers were not going to keep me safe. Students were not going to keep me safe. The bus driver wasn't going to tell kids. To not kill me or not threatened to kill me. Teachers were going to talk about me like a freak in front of everybody. Student teachers were going to yell at me in front of everyone.

And even the few teachers that I felt were my allies never really stuck up for me. I had an English teacher, 12th [00:06:00] grade who did like me. And I remember there was, this jock football player who sat behind me and he was constantly like poking me and playing with my hair. and touching me without my consent and he would always make fun of me.

And I remember one day I just snapped and started to go off on him and tell him to leave me alone. And the teacher was like, sat in front of the whole class, Claudia, come out into the hallway with me right now. And so what it looked like to the students was that I was getting in trouble.

So then she pulled me out. She goes, look, I know so and I'm not going to say his name. I know so and doesn't treat you well. I know he's mean to you. I know it's really unfair, but I can't talk to him because he's really unreasonable. So I just need to talk to you about it and ask you to not react to him anymore.

And I was like, okay. So then I went back into the room. The whole class thought I had gotten in trouble. Even though I had it, and then it was my responsibility to modulate my reactions to him and to just let him continue to bully me. And it was, he was bullying me because I [00:07:00] was queer, because I was fat, because I didn't conform to the gender binary, because I was a leftist.

And yeah, and I think a lot of that has shaped my teaching. Just, my experiences of school, for most of grade school, is just being always unsafe. 

Bryan (he/they): Yeah, and there's a couple of things that I want to point out that we should really highlight because I think they're incredibly relevant even now. The first is the idea that you have to be the person who changes your behavior in order to accommodate, my presumption is the straight white male.

Claudia (she/they): Yep, correct. 

Bryan (he/they): And so I think absolutely that is still completely relevant in our lives and so incredibly frustrating because I think about that when it comes to even just sexual assault, even if you're a person who quote unquote doesn't believe there are multiple genders other than the two that you were told to believe when you were younger, if you are a person that believes in the gender [00:08:00] binary, there is still this impression that young girls have to change their behaviors because young boys can't, or won't, or too often are too obstinate, or whatever the situation is, and the boys will be boys and stuff.

The other thing you pointed out was some of your bullying, and in fact, a lot of it for middle school was based off of perception. People perceived that you were a queer person and they bullied you. And I think that's so incredibly relevant because you 2024 Olympics, where all these anti trans folks were coming out for this.

to women boxers who are women and it didn't matter that they were women because they had more masculine facial features or they had, there is dialogue that they may be intersex, but that's still not a trans person and [00:09:00] it's still based off of your perception. Of that person. And there was worldwide bullying happening.

And I find it so fascinating that folks who are like, there's a war on Christmas. There's a war on Christianity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, are constantly bullying based off of perceived issues. 

They don't care about the fact. They just want to put you down. 

Claudia (she/they): And it's so much about the gender binary.

Like I was bullied in eighth grade cause I had short hair and because I was fat. And then the same in ninth grade, I had a shaved head. So much of it was not about who I was dating or who I was attracted to. It was about that my like embodiment challenged the gender binary in a way that offended and disgusted the people around me, including the teachers who, the Spanish teacher who talked about my shaved head in front of the whole class for an extended period.

Bryan (he/they): That's a great example [00:10:00] that leads us into the next question is clearly that's not a teaching practice that you have. So what are some things from your childhood that have informed or how have the things from your childhood informed your work in education? 

Claudia (she/they): think that's such a great question.

I definitely think of myself as being a trauma informed educator and running a trauma informed classroom. I do that in several different ways. One is I do in my syllabus have a policy that says no oppressive language or, discourse. And I say what that means, fat phobia, homophobia, transphobia.

Stereotyping, racism, And I also say it's okay for us to disagree with each other, for us to debate each other, do it in a respectful way. use I statements, or it's okay to be passionate about your ideas, but don't name call or put other people down.

So I really put that front and center that there should be no, oppressive language or, bullying, I put that front and center in my classes. And I also really try to teach to the [00:11:00] humanity of my students and keep their humanity in mind. I don't play favorites.

I don't care if you're, someone who seems like a cisgender, white man who's on the football team. I will treat you with complete kindness and respect. and if you're a queer student, I will treat you with that same kindness and respect. I don't play favorites, I don't privilege some students voices over other students voices.

I just make sure to, Really like in a way do this thing where of course I see their identities because how could you not see identity but it also tries hard to not let it inform. Anything about how I treat them or interact with them or see them. they're just an individual to me.

And so that's front and center. And then the other thing I do is I let students tell their stories in class. And I make sure that students listen, respond. So thinking about that trauma informed teaching, right? One of the things that trauma does to us is that trauma takes away narrative, right?

When we have a traumatic experience, the reason why we're triggered, we re experience it in the present. It's because it hasn't been encoded as a [00:12:00] story in our memory. So it just recurs in the present when we get triggered. And so I let students tell their stories. I'll perhaps teach something that's abstract, or historical, or theoretical.

But then I say to them, okay, tell me about How this connects to your personal experience. If you want to share your personal experience, I would never force someone to or even ask them to, but I open up the floor. So for example, in my gender studies classes, if we're talking about toxic masculinity, or we're talking about gender stereotypes, I do a whole unit on gender and toys, right?

And the way that gendered messages are embedded in our toys and in our games, and even in the way that, parents raise kids in terms of gender socialization, assigning a gender at birth and all that. And then we talk about it from a kind of theoretical perspective of what is gender, right? And what are gender stereotypes?

And what is gender socialization? And but then I say, okay, now tell me your stories if you want to. And then students share their stories. And then we all bear [00:13:00] witness to those stories. And I always make sure when a student is done sharing an idea or sharing a story that I repeat it back to them to make sure I understand it.

So I say, what I hear you saying is this. And that way they know that I'm bearing witness. And that way the students also all hear it again to make sure they really understood it. And then I say, okay, who wants to respond to that person? So then I let another student respond to them. And that way that's creating this community.

It's a relational way of teaching and it's a trauma informed way of teaching. And I don't know if I'm going to talk about some of the, I guess I just, I was like I'll talk about this in another class, but I'll just do it right now. I definitely think of teaching as political, and I keep that in mind while I'm teaching that I really want my students to leave the classroom with more empathy for themselves and more empathy for others.

And like I said, I do that through storytelling, by asking students to really listen to each other, I do that by connecting the political with the personal. And for example, I taught a fat studies class. And I do think [00:14:00] teaching about fatness is very queer, because it has to do with the way that we construct ideas about the bodies, the way that we privilege some bodies over others.

And also fatphobia actually really mimics and mirrors the language of, the frameworks of homophobia and transphobia. But in my fat studies class that I taught a few years ago, which was the first fat studies class that Montclair State has ever offered.

And it was an intersectional class. It was called fat studies, race, class, gender, queerness. I had students write in their evals that this class, and I cried when I read my teaching evaluations because they said that the class helped heal their trauma. They said the class helped heal their eating disorder.

They said that no one had ever, and I'm going to start crying just thinking about it, that no one had ever let them talk about the things that I let them talk about, because we're so steeped in diet culture, right? and I had a lot of queer students in that class too, who talked about the fat phobia they'd experienced in the queer community, and that was really powerful.

But I think it was the first space students had ever been in, where [00:15:00] I was like, this is a fat phobia free space. This is a diet culture free space. This is a space where I recognize fatness as a marginalized identity. And I'm gonna let you tell your story. so we would talk about theoretical things like the construction of the BMI and how it was a project, rooted in eugenics and white supremacy.

But then I said, what are your experiences with the BMI? And students told stories about being weighed at school and then having a BMI report card sent to their houses and being weighed in front of other students. They talked about experiencing fat phobic bullying in school and no one protecting them.

They talked about, romantic partners asking them to lose weight and family members body shaming them. And I really held space for that and acknowledged how harmful those experiences And I don't think any educator or any adult figure had ever recognized how.

Harmful. These experiences have been to them with diet culture and body shaming. So I'm constantly moving between the macro and the [00:16:00] micro my classes and holding space for students stories and modeling for them empathic and non judgmental listening and witnessing. And then the other thing I do is make space for joy and delight and fun in my classes, which I think is a very queer practice, right?

Queer joy. And I think it's also trauma informed because the other side of trauma is post traumatic growth and post traumatic healing. And the way you know you're on the way to healing is when you can experience delight and joy again. And so I play games. in my classes. I use humor in my classes in my transnational feminist.

isms class, I had students, we talked about two spirit people, and we talked about, the way that, colonizers in the Americas, Spanish, Portuguese British really imposed like the This Western conception of the gender binary onto indigenous people. And we talked about two spirit people. We talked about how different indigenous nations have multiple genders.

They have three genders, four [00:17:00] genders, seven genders, eight genders. So we did this historical kind of theoretical work, and then I put them into groups and I said, okay, obviously. Unless you're indigenous, you can't be two spirit. But let's look to the future. What are the genders you want to create? And I let each group create their own genders.

And I told them to come up with a name for the future gender society they're creating. And then come up with a name for each of the genders they were creating. And my favorite was this group that came up with Mood Ring Society. And then each gender was a different color. And they presented to us all these different genders and how they correlated to these different colors and it was the mood ring society.

And it was so fun. And teaching doesn't, the classroom doesn't need to be boring. We can do theoretical historical work and we can also be like super playful and fun about it because that's also part of empathy. That's also part of creativity and that's also part of healing from trauma. It's also part of [00:18:00] understanding if we keep the work.

All theoretical, all intellectual. If all I do is lecture, which is not how I run my classes. My classes are very participatory. We do group work every class. if we are creative, then students actually understand the material in a way that is like personal and embodied. And it will stay with them and it will hopefully shape how they move through the world after they leave.

My classroom. And the other thing I love about group work is that not all students feel comfortable talking in front of the whole class or sharing their stories or participating in the intellectual discourse of the classroom. 

And I always check in with each small group so I can try to connect with each student. I also do a lot of conferences so that I can connect with each student on a personal level. So that they feel seen. Cause I never felt seen. I felt completely unseen and unsafe when I was a student in high school and middle school.

So I want to make sure every student feels seen and safe. 

Bryan (he/they): Absolutely. There's so [00:19:00] much beauty that was in that statement right there. And I just think that's wonderful. The idea of, fat studies class period, just the idea of it is, revolutionary and it shouldn't be. And just the beauty of how you approach your classes through trauma informed care.

So thinking about that, what are some things you do when you are confronted with anti queer behavior despite the fact that you have a very like hard line on discrimination in your classroom? 

Claudia (she/they): That's a great question. So I'm going to tell a story because it's probably my proudest I've been teaching for 15 years, and it's something that completely surprised me.

I couldn't believe what transpired. So this was right after Trump got elected in 2016, which was a wild time to be teaching. And I definitely saw an uptick in 2016 of racism and homophobia I think [00:20:00] Trump winning really did embolden some students to be more vocal about. their biases, but I did see that in my classrooms in 2016.

I was like, whoa, okay, here we go. So I had this class, it was a first year writing class, and it was the very beginning of the semester, and I was teaching this article about toxic masculinity, and it was written by a man, and it was about the trauma of toxic masculinity and the way that toxic masculinity traumatizes men through the way that it socializes them and the way that it shames them.

And, I had students read the article, we came to class, and this one student, and I'm just gonna call him Michael. That's not his real name, his name is not Michael, but Michael, he, came in and he was really upset about the article.

He was pissed. And he just went off about it and was super angry. And that's okay. Students are allowed to be angry. Students are allowed to disagree with a reading. but he monopolized and derailed the discussion. And pretty much the whole hour 15 [00:21:00] minute class was about arguing. Not arguing, but we had Michael arguing with other students.

Michael being angry about the article. I didn't get through my lesson. I didn't do the activities I was supposed to do. He just derailed the whole class and I was like, oh god. So then I had him, I sent him an email. I said, Michael, you should come see me during my office hours so we can talk. thinking about trauma informed teaching, I did a few things that I think are trauma informed.

So first he came in and I said, Michael, it's okay for you to disagree with the readings. It's okay for you to debate students about the readings. Nothing wrong with that. I appreciate that you're engaging with the readings. I said, but, You need to reel it in because you derailed the class and I didn't get through my lesson and you didn't let other students speak as much as they wanted to.

I even said to him, I was like, did you notice the effect you were having on other students? Did you see on their faces and in their body language how upset they seemed? he hadn't noticed. So I was trying to make him aware of like other people. and then here's the boundary, I also pulled out the student code of conduct.

And I said [00:22:00] according to the student code of conduct, If a student is disruptive to the point where the teacher can't teach, that is a violation of our Code of Conduct. So if you continue to act in this manner, I will report you to the Dean of Students, and I made sure to say, but you're welcome to disagree with the readings and debate them.

You just have to do it in a way that doesn't monopolize, so much of the class. And I could tell he was scared. It never occurred to him that I could report him, so I set a boundary, because I think part of trauma informed teaching is also setting compassionate boundaries.

And then I said, but then I got curious, right? And then I said, What was going on for you in class? Because I think a lot of teachers would have stopped with the boundary. But I said, What was going on for you? Why were you so upset? He goes, Oh, it just felt like the reading was attacking men and it was stereotyping men.

And that is so unfair. And then I reflected back to him I said, That makes sense. Of course you were upset. No one should stereotype men, and no one should generalize about a whole group of people, so it makes sense that you were upset. So I made sure to honor his feelings, and validate [00:23:00] them, and then I said, but let's look at the article together.

So then we pulled it up, and we looked at it together, and I showed him that's not what the author was doing. I told him how a lot of Feminist, theory centers women and those assigned female at birth, although I don't think I would have said a fab back in 2016. I said, I think I would have just said women centers women and the way that patriarchy oppresses women.

And he's trying to challenge that and show the actual pain and suffering that a lot of men are in. Cisgender men, heterosexual men, are experiencing because of toxic masculinity, because of patriarchy. And then I talked about how, men are shamed if they have depression or mental health struggles.

They're not allowed to be vulnerable. They're shamed for showing a wide range of emotion. They're shamed from seeking mental health assistance. They're shamed if they experience violence. They can't talk about it, according to toxic masculinity. And I said, so this is actually deeply compassionate to men?

And sentiment, and I could see a light bubble, and I could go Oh, I didn't realize that. And I said, yeah. And then, he proceeded to tell me about his [00:24:00] struggles with mental health. And he proceeded to tell me about how he struggles with depression, and he doesn't feel like he can talk to people about it. And then I gave him compassion, and I said, I'm so sorry you've experienced that.

And I gave him compassion, and then for the rest of the class, he was Completely engaged. He stopped being antagonistic. He actively participated, but not in a domineering way. He was respectful of other students. I couldn't believe it. He was like a different person. And then I read my evals, my student evaluations, at the end of the semester thinking, Did he really come to love the class, or was he just, I don't know.

I wanted to believe it was authentic, but I was like, what if he was just acting because he didn't want to. Maybe he wanted to get a good grade or maybe he didn't want to get in trouble with the Dean of Students. I want it felt authentic, but you'd never know. Because it was just such a turnaround. I almost couldn't believe it.

And then I read the evals and I did not have one negative review that semester. Every student in his class [00:25:00] reviewed me positively, which means it wasn't fake. He actually turned around and started to love my class and stopped viewing me and the material as antagonistic. 

Bryan (he/they): You just described something that is, I guarantee every teacher goes through is is this real?

Or when the email comes out, once they go anonymous, is it going to be like, it turns out it was all bad. But I'm so happy to hear that, You made such an impact, and I truly appreciate that you gave us some practical steps to do trauma informed conversations with our students, because I think that's so necessary, and while it's starting to become a part of professional development life, it's still not utilized as much as it needs to be done in the educational field.

So I really appreciate that. And that actually ties into, our next question, which is, What can the education community do to be more inclusive of queer people? 

Claudia (she/they): I [00:26:00] think that is a really great question. I think one is just like centering queerness more, even if you are cisgender and heterosexual, you can even like own that, right?

I really love the idea of making these sort of naturalized identities visible in the classroom that we think of being cisgender and being heterosexual is like the norm or natural on them being queer. So if you are a straight educator, say, Hey, I'm cisgender and I'm heterosexual and making that visible.

And if you're queer, if you feel comfortable and you feel safe, also making that visible. I am very visibly queer in the classroom. I wear rainbows all the time. I've mentioned my girlfriend before. Not like too much, but I'll just be like, Oh, students will be like, did you have a good weekend? Maybe we'll be chatting before class.

I'll be like, oh yeah. My girlfriend and I saw a really good movie. Have you heard of it? Just make it totally chill and just whatever. I think that the other thing is to really, depending on the subject matter you're teaching, I think you can do this in all subject matters, like teaching.

Queer writers, teaching queer scientists. If you're teaching a STEM class and [00:27:00] noting that this scientist was queer, teaching queer engineers, showing that there are queer people who can make it in the professional world and have contributed to, all these different fields of study.

And I think also just being very cognizant of how your queer students are being treated in the classroom, maybe have a policy. against homophobia in your classroom and pay attention to how queer students are being treated in the classroom. And if you do hear homophobia or transphobia, intervene.

No one ever intervened for me, ever. There was not one teacher who ever intervened on my behalf. Throughout middle school and high school. So it would have been so nice if someone did. And then I think the other thing is to think about queerness, not just as a noun, but as a verb, right? What does it mean to queer the classroom?

Queerness is an LGBTQ identity, but also I think queerness as a verb is about making. The social constructions visible as social constructions, right? The gender is a [00:28:00] social construction, sexuality is a social construction. The academic essay is a social construction. The classroom is a social construction.

Hierarchies within the classroom are social construction. So how can you queer that? If you're teaching the academic essay, let them know, Okay, these are the norms of the academy. But there's nothing natural about the fact that the thesis statement has to go at the end of the essay. Or that you have to introduce all quotes with a single phrase.

I'm just teaching you the norms of the academy so you can make it through the academy. And also querying authority. In the classroom, that I maybe am the one who sets the boundaries within the classroom and facilitates, but I'm not above any student. They are my equal. They are, they're going to teach me as much as I teach them.

I'm going to listen to them when I mess up and I make a mistake because I make so many mistakes. Maybe I accidentally used the wrong pronoun. Maybe I mess up the syllabus and get the dates wrong on the syllabus. maybe I say something and then a student's oh, that's not exactly right.

[00:29:00] I make sure to be like, you're right. I messed up. Thank you for correcting me and that, I appreciate it. 

Bryan (he/they): So you had already mentioned, in a previous question if you feel safe as a queer educator, share your pronouns, share your queer identity.

If you had somebody from our community come to you, seeking advice because they were worried about being authentic at work, what would you give them? 

Claudia (she/they): Ah, that's so hard. I think first and foremost, They need to stay safe. and so I would say There's no pressure to be out and don't feel like it's, I think sometimes there's shame around being in the closet, right?

Like I'm doing something and I think that's gotten better. I think that was more of a 90s and early 2000s thing. But sometimes there's pressure to be out of the closet and be loud and proud and that's what you should be doing. But I would just say there's no shame. And if you have to be in the closet at work to stay safe, there's no shame to that.

And whatever you need to do to stay safe in the classroom and in your workplace is You know that I support you in doing that and that, yeah, that's just so hard. So I guess it's a simple [00:30:00] answer, but I would just say, don't feel like there's anything you should or shouldn't do.

Do whatever feels right for you. because I think thinking about trauma informed teaching, trauma is so disempowering. And homophobia is traumatic, transphobia, biphobia is traumatic. And it takes away our power, it takes away our agency. So the first thing I would say is you have the power and you have the agency to, Determine for yourself what feels right and what feels safe and there's no shame in any choice that you make.

And I would just support you in whatever choice you make. 

Bryan (he/they): Absolutely. So we've got a question, from one of our listeners. Today's question comes from Sky and Sky asks What qualities do you think a good educator needs to be successful? 

Claudia (she/they): Yeah, I think some of it I already covered, but I think having a trauma informed practice.

I think being humble, not looking down on your students. I think really thinking about embodiment in the classroom. And I think [00:31:00] there's a lot of ways to think about that. But one of that is that teaching is a relational experience. It's a human experience before it's an intellectual one. And I don't think students can learn if they don't feel safe.

The reason I got really bad grades in high school is because I didn't feel safe. In college, I got excellent grades, pretty much straight A's, because I felt safe. And the only two classes I got B's in college, were the two classes where, the teacher was mean. And I didn't feel safe. One of them was actually racist the other one was just cruel and would bully us and I couldn't learn in those classes.

So I value humility, never looking down on students, treating them as your equal and thinking about your embodiment in the classroom. I guess what I mean by that is.

Students, it's relational, it's interpersonal, and I try to have unconditional positive regard for my students. So that's something that comes from therapy, but truly having positive feelings for [00:32:00] every single student and actually feeling that in my body. That I actually like every single student, I care about every single student, and I'm rooting for every single student.

And I will treat every single student with respect, and when they're talking in class, I am emotionally invested in what they're saying, and I'm supporting them. When I'm reading their essays, and I'm conferencing with them, yes, I'm giving them feedback on aspects that they can change about their writing, ways they can develop their thesis more.

Or, Make their evidence and analysis clear, but then I also make sure to always say what I like about the essay and ways that I think the essay is creative and thoughtful because there's always stuff that's working well, right? There's always stuff that is, and so making sure, so I think it's really important for educators to authentically feel at home.

That unconditional positive regard for their students, and then to make it at the forefront of their pedagogy. To always keep in mind, It's going to be hard for a student to hear perhaps a lot of, critical feedback on their [00:33:00] essay. Make sure you tell them what's working well.

Make sure you tell them their strengths so that they don't feel disempowered or discouraged. Make sure in the classroom that they feel safe. Make sure that they feel like you're rooting for them and you're on their side. Because if they have that sort of embodied, emotional, relational experience, I think they're going to do so much better.

Bryan (he/they): They're going to learn more. They're going to think more. and I've experienced it where I did terrible when I didn't feel safe in the classroom. And then I thrived and did great when I felt safe. absolutely. And I think that just, there's some things that I think education as well, that the rest of the world should capture.

And then there are things that education doesn't do well that I see happening in the rest of the world. Like I worked in corporate entertainment for so long, and I was trained to basically give feedback in a way that I was starting with positives, and then I was approaching the constructive criticism, and I was also ending with, I think that this is gonna be great, because if you put these [00:34:00] things in place, it's gonna make such a huge impact.

And I think that teachers, probably because we're inundated with having to give feedback. And also inundated with feedback that we forget that we need to approach it in a way that's going to be, humanizing. As opposed to, gosh, I'm just completing a task. Because sometimes when we get in task mode, that can be pretty, Just check it off and I don't care what it sounds like.

Claudia (she/they): that's not always teacher's fault because sometimes, we have these overcrowded classrooms. We have these standardized tests that teachers have to, teach to, I think when teachers are not teaching to their students humanity it's sometimes it's just that they are overworked The district is not meeting their needs and is not taking care of them so that they can take care of their students It's not their fault if they have hundreds of students Sometimes they can't teach to the humanity of each student if they have too many of them And so that's a [00:35:00] structural problem not a teacher problem 

Bryan (he/they): And I'm not critiquing a teacher and saying, Oh, I know you're not.

You're doing this and you're a bad person. I'm just saying, when we are dealing with all these structural issues, we also have to keep in mind that we're dealing with humans. But also, to the people who run those structures, you are also dealing with humans. Teachers are human beings. And I need parents and I need administrators and I need school board members and all the people to recognize that they are talking about human beings when they talk about quote unquote teachers.

Thank you Sky for asking that question. And if you would like to hear your question on the podcast, you can click the Ask a Queer Educator link wherever you listen to the podcast. Claudia, thank you so much for joining me this afternoon. I really appreciate all the tips you've given us on trauma informed teaching and how to incorporate that, not only in the classroom, but with one on one conversations with students.

It's [00:36:00] been really helpful. 

Claudia (she/they): Thank you so much, Bryan, for having me and thank you to all the listeners. I appreciate it.