Presenter: Jessica Miller
Co-presenters: Kalynn Jaramillo, Rhue Buddendeck, Ana Osorio, Antonina Pevzner
Mentors: Julia Heffernan, Education Studies; Maure Smith-Benanti, LGBTESSP
Creative Work Presentation: C5 (Gumwood Room)
Major: Psychology
Queering the Teacher’s Desk: Education Studies 111 focuses on issues and problems in education. As a culminating critical pedagogy activity in the fall of 2014 every discussion section for this course decorated an old school desk to represent themes in public education. A single section of EDST 111 was filled entirely with LGBTQ students living in the UO Gender Inclusive Student Housing. This group maintained an academic focus on gender and sexuality studies in education. The LGBTQ cohort professor was the director of the master’s degrees and licensure program in teacher education. The cohort itself was designed as a disruption of heteronormativity in teacher education. Along with critical pedagogy readings the LGBTQ cohort was assigned the concept of reimagining the teacher desk. At the end of the term these students were given the actual “Teacher’s Desk” to paint in an act of reclaiming the classroom. Of particular importance to the project are the following statistics:
- 74% of queer students are verbally harassed at school
- 61% of queer students report school based harassment get no relief
- Queer students are three times as likely to miss school on a monthly basis
- Queer students have lower grade point averages than their peers
- Queer students are twice as likely to not plan to pursue post-secondary educationThis work has been displayed at the College of Education.