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Queer consciousness: one kindergarten teacher’s action research to support colleagues in creating safer schools for queer people

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Content Queer Consciousness: One Kindergarten Teacher’s Action Research to Support Colleagues in Creating
Safer Schools for Queer People
Kristian Steven Sanchez
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation proposal submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education
May 2024

© Copyright by Kristian Steven Sanchez 2024
All Rights Reserved

The Committee for Kristian Steven Sanchez certifies the approval of this Dissertation
Mary Stevens
John Pascarella
Artineh Samkian, Committee Chair
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2024

iv
Abstract
The purpose of this action research study was to examine how I, a queer, multi-racial, cisgender,
kindergarten teacher supported other kindergarten teachers to engage in reflection on instructional
practices that reinforce cisheteronormativity to promote greater queer consciousness. My action
research question was, “How do I engage with elementary school teachers in critical reflection to
increase our consciousness of cisheteronormative practices in schools?” I developed a 3-month-long
action plan that consisted of nine weekly one-hour sessions where myself and three other kindergarten
teachers engaged in critical reflection about topics related to gender, sex, and sexuality to raise our
queer consciousness. The study took place at a Pre-K–4 elementary school in South Los Angeles that
served Black and Latino students and families. My conceptual framework was constructed using
elements of transformational adult learning theory and adaptive leadership that informed the
development of my action plan. Participant transcripts, jottings, and observer’s comments turned into
fieldnotes, and personal critical reflections were coded and used as data to inform the analysis. I found
that our fear of and pressures from students’ families shaped our ability to facilitate a queer-inclusive
environment. I also found the importance of regulating distress within myself and participants and the
need for humor to lower the heat when there is discussion about LGBTQIA+ topics, as seen throughout
my study. The evidence presented, as seen in my findings section, showcases how participants made
growth toward raising their queer consciousness, the power humor had to support the holding
environment, as well as my missed opportunities as an adult educator throughout my study.
Implications are discussed in the afterword detailing my personal growth throughout my study, the
importance of teacher-family partnerships in this work, and a reimagining of language sufficient enough
to disrupt the reproduction of conflation between gender, sex, and sexuality and promote queer
futurity.

v
Keywords: cisheteronormativity, kindergarten, queer consciousness, reflection, gender, sex,
sexuality

vi
Dedication
To my mom, Yvette, I am proudest to be your son. As a single teen mom, you gave up so much of
yourself for your sons. You are the strongest person I have ever known. I have been so lucky to be
showered with your love throughout my life. I am me, I am here, because of you.
To my grandparents, Mary and Peter, for your long history of struggle and sacrifice for our family. You’ve
always made sure my belly was full, that I had a safe ride to and from school every day, and some extra
cash in my pocket just in case.
To my aunt Roxy and brother Isaiah, thank you for always holding the family down.
To my childhood special friends, Carly and Marissa, for being my holding environment and saving grace
since we were kids. Carly you are my rock. Marissa you are my sunshine.
To my chosen family Arri, Leanna, and Diante, thank you for filling my spirit and heart with joy, safety,
and laughter. You three are my forever sanctuaries. Don’t ever go where I can’t follow.
To my amazing circle of best friends Mokie, Jeannette, Dylan, Kelsey, Insia, Aaron, Alec, Alexis, Adam,
Grant, Olivia, Sid, Daniel S., Lindsay, and Malcolm for your unwavering support. I was able to complete
this degree because you provided colorful outlets to escape the chaos. Friendship is the best ship!
To my queer best mates, Daniel L., Berto, and Conor for always making queerness a celebration. When
I’m feeling the loneliness that heteronormativity and cisnormativity reproduce, I know I can count on
you all to create a rainbow in the dark.
To Nancy for being the best instructional aide throughout my time in the program. Thank you for being
the force that held our kindergarten classes down throughout these past years.
And lastly, to my younger self, I hope I made you proud. I hope every time you read this dissertation, the
words heal your queer soul. With so much adversity in your life, you did it Kris! I’m so proud of you.

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Acknowledgements
To Dr. Artineh Samkian, for not only being the best chair a person could ask for, but for being my
biggest cheerleader these past few years. You constantly reminded me to enter spaces as a practitionerscholar and that every experience, good or bad, small or big, is a learning opportunity to be added to my
toolkit. You have made me a stronger writer and a more reliable narrator by being my most critical
friend. I am more discerning of the world around me, and it is due to the fact that I forever have your
voice in my head asking, “What evidence do you have of this, Kris?” If I had to do it all over again, I
would choose Samkian Squad every time. Thank you also to Dr. Mary Stevens and Dr. John Pascarella for
giving your time, love, feedback, and energy as members of my committee. I will forever be grateful for
“Team Kris.”
To the 2021 Leading Instructional Change Cohort for creating the space and conditions for me to
do so much unlearning. To Burkie Babes, thank you for being my colleagues, classmates, and life friends
throughout this program. Jeff, you have been my queer confidant since the first week of school. Happy
Thursday to you forever. Jennifer, you pushed me to read closely, think critically, and were the
necessary soundboard for me to. I knew if I needed a soundboard, you would listen. Alexis, you
reminded me to celebrate milestones that were so crucial to completing this program. I cherish our
friendships we have grown and cultivated in this period of my life.
To my kindergarten team, old and new. You all mean so the world to me. Arri, Mokie, Rachel,
Vero, Abby, CeCe, Paula, Nancy, Jennifer, Ambar, and Joanna, we are all K Team BAE Team forever. You
all are the reason I can continue to do the hardest job in the world. The laughter, the silly stories we told
one another to ease the pain throughout the day, and how you listened to me spew all the things I have
learned in my time as a graduate student will never be forgotten.
To all my students, past and present, it has been such a great pleasure being your kindergarten
teacher and the first stop on your educational journey. I love you all as if you were my own. I have

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always felt such an immense amount of pressure being your kindergarten teacher. The saying goes that
you will never forget me. I hope I gave you fond memories of feeling loved and safe coming to school. I
also hope that if you get old enough to search for me on the internet and find this dissertation that you
know how hard I worked every day to make our classroom a warm place where you learned more than
just your letter sounds, shapes, and numbers. I hope if you are reading this now in the future, and you
identify as queer that you smile knowing you had what I never did—a queer teacher who loved and
made space for you to exist as your truest self. To every little USC Trojan who ever walked into my class,
I am the teacher I am today because of you all.
Lastly, I want to acknowledge that I stand on the shoulders of queer giants. This work is in honor
of the queer lives lost, the queer lives that remain forcibly hidden, the queer people openly living their
most authentic lives, and the people whose queer lives have yet to be discovered. I have the privilege of
life because of the battles fought and the ongoing advocacy of the LGBTQIA+ community. To the
teachers and children of the future, I hope that my work contributes to ensuring that there is love, joy,
and celebration in queer futurity.

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Table of Contents
Abstract........................................................................................................................................................ iv
Dedication.................................................................................................................................................... vi
Acknowledgements..................................................................................................................................... vii
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................................ xi
List of Figures.............................................................................................................................................. xii
Problematizing Blanketed Terminology...........................................................................................3
Historically Entrenched Inequity......................................................................................................5
Organizational Context ..................................................................................................................10
My Role ..........................................................................................................................................15
Conceptual Framework..................................................................................................................16
Queer Consciousness........................................................................................................20
Cisheteronormativity ........................................................................................................21
Critical Reflection..............................................................................................................24
Andragogy.........................................................................................................................30
Adaptive Leadership .........................................................................................................34
Actions ..............................................................................................................................40
Research Methods.........................................................................................................................46
Participants and Setting....................................................................................................46
Data Collection, Instruments, and Protocols....................................................................50
Data Analysis.....................................................................................................................54
Limitations and Delimitations...........................................................................................56
Credibility and Trustworthiness........................................................................................57
Ethics.................................................................................................................................58

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Findings..........................................................................................................................................59
Increased Awareness of Cisheteronormativity.................................................................59
Facilitator Questioning as an Andragogical Move ............................................................61
Fear Is the Elephant in the Room .....................................................................................83
Orchestrating Conflict.......................................................................................................93
Missed Opportunities .....................................................................................................112
Afterword.....................................................................................................................................124
My Growth......................................................................................................................125
Community of Love, Community of Learners.................................................................134
Blanket Terminology Is Insufficient ................................................................................137
References ................................................................................................................................................140
Appendix A: The Genderbread Person Activity ........................................................................................145

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List of Tables
Table 1: Major LGBTQIA+ Court Cases Affecting LGBTQIA+ People 6
Table 2: Typology of Reflection: Dimensions and Guiding Reflections 28
Table 3: Kindergarten Team Norms 39
Table 4: Action Plan for Teacher-Leader 43
Table 5: Key Characteristics of Participants 47
Table 6: Evidence of Increased Queer Consciousness 60
Table 7: Discussion and Reflection Questions by Sessions 62
Table 8: Questioning Types and Their Typicality 65
Table 9: Evidence of Heat Regulation 100
Table 10: Evidence of Humor and Its Purposes 107
Table 11: List of Topics in Action Plan 114
Table 12: Instances of Gender, Sex, and Sexual Identity Conflation Across Cycles 115
Table 13: Instances of Gender and Sexuality Reflection 124
Table 14: Parent Feedback From December 2023 Family Survey 131

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List of Figures
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework 18

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Queer Consciousness: One Kindergarten Teacher's Action Research to Support Colleagues in Creating
Safer Schools for Queer People
I am a queer, cisgender, multi-racial kindergarten teacher of color. To be queer in adolescence is
not easy for most. For me, I had a family who at first, were uneasy upon hearing the news about my
queer identity at 17. Over time, my queer identity grew from something we never talked about as a
family to normalized dinner conversations. To say I was embraced immediately would not be the full
truth. I recall a tweet I read during Pride month from Aristhought (2021) a few years ago that has always
resonated with me:
I often think about the closet that queer kids grow up in. How it is not just passive hiding, it is
traumatizing. To suppress parts of you, to experience your own life as an outsider, to hear the
people you love hate people like you, is a trauma you will carry your whole life.
I have always minimized the story of discovering my queerness. I may have not experienced physical
bullying or violence, canon events of many queer people, but I knew what it meant to not be kind to
myself. I was my first bully. One of my first memories of my schooling was knowing I was not like other
boys on the playground. Though the words to describe being queer were absent from my vocabulary, I
first knew I was different in kindergarten—the age of the students I currently teach. From a very early
age, I became a master at code-switching. I was taught that being different meant putting yourself at
risk. Different was not allowed. I recently discovered why I am an an expert at code-switching. Inside my
soul lived two different little boys. The first little boy was sweet. He liked dolls, puzzles, and art. That
sweet little boy enjoyed traditionally feminine things like bright-colored clothing, wearing jewelry, and
playing with dolls. But his counterpart, the second little boy that existed within me, had to protect him.
This other little boy wore a mask of masculinity. He was forced to be tough, fixed the way he walked,
and deepened his voice every time he stepped outside his front door. He could not cry or show emotion.
Tears indicated weakness. When he felt romantic attraction toward other boys, he was disgusted with

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himself, because that is what the adults around him taught him to feel. That little boy was also sweet,
and the world couldn’t know, for if they did there would be grave consequences. These two boys that
lived inside my brain were always in conversation with one another. They were in constant competition
to take the driver’s wheel that was my brain and heart, guiding my thoughts, actions, and behaviors. The
boys became one over time. They became me. I became them.
In reflection, I think about how impactful it would have been to have somebody queer in my life.
I needed safe havens of some sort. The mere visibility of queer people, especially teachers, would have
helped these two boys that lived within me to become one sooner. What if I had someone, anyone, give
me permission to be all parts of myself? When I walk through my classroom door every day, I wonder
about my students who also bring two parts of themselves to school. All kids hold competing parts of
themselves. There is a part the world wants them to be and the part that is their most authentic selves.
Each year, when I meet my new class of 30 kindergarteners, I ponder which of them split themselves.
For the students who also learned to code-switch, I ask, “How many have voices inside and outside the
school to tell them how much they are loved, regardless of their identities?” So far, I have spent my
career devoted to being a model for my students on how they should treat themselves in a world telling
them to be a million other things.
To hold an LGBTQIA+ identity as an educator means that you often put yourself back in the
closet if your school site does not push you there first. Queer teachers resort to code-switching out of
fear for losing their job, personal safety, and protecting their mental health. I have been told by many
people throughout my career that telling my students I am queer or talking about LGBTQIA+ topics in
the classroom with my kindergarteners is not developmentally appropriate. Every school year, I am
tasked with “coming out” to a new set of parents and new staff. This has made me vulnerable at work as
I repeatedly anticipate the discussion surrounding my mere presence as a queer educator being aligned
or misaligned with other adults’ beliefs and attitudes. My motivation for this study was driven by my

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determination to know how to engage with and disrupt these kinds of conversations that manifest into
harmful practices toward my community, my students, and me.
The bargaining of my humanity has caused anxiety, sadness, and even ideations of leaving
teaching altogether. Though probably well intentioned, no child should have to hear “Stay strong until
you are old enough to move to a big city” or “It gets better.” Children should not have to waste any
more years of their life until they can finally start living it. No teacher should walk into a classroom afraid
of losing their job and being stripped of their humanity because of their queer identity. My hope for my
action research is for the work I do to contribute to moving the needle forward toward a more critically
reflective, open minded educational space that affirms all students and staff so that they can, in turn,
have a positive effect on all students’ outcomes, both LGBTQIA+ identifying and not.
Problematizing Blanketed Terminology
The LGBTQIA+ acronym represents a community that encompasses the identities of lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning people (Hanson, 2019). The “+” at the end of LGBTQIA+
indicates that this acronym has continued to evolve with the socio-political context to include and
welcome other gender and sexually diverse communities (i.e., intersex, asexuality, 2-spirited people).
This grouping of identities can be seen in other acronyms such as the recently popular “BIPOC” which
includes black populations, indigenous persons, and people of color (i.e., Latinx and Asian populations).
Bey (2019) cautioned against doing this for LGBTQIA+ people calling it “the collapse” which “results in a
failure to understand the stakes in violence—and to be clear, joyful discourse, legislation, and
worldmaking as well-visited upon those whose gender expression or perceived gender expression
signifies nonnormatively” (p. 192). For this study, I want to name the tension I felt as a queer person
with the use of LGBTQIA+ when referencing gender and sexually diverse people. I also want to name
that the mere use of the acronym is reproducing heteronormative and cisgender hegemony and is itself,
a cisheteronormative practice—the very thing I am trying to combat and disrupt with this action

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research. The term “queer” also presented tensions. There is historicity to the word queer. On queer’s
multifaceted etymology, Kolker et al. (2020) said the following:
Queer was first used as a term meaning strange, odd, or suspicious. Later in the early 1900s,
queer or fairy was used as an insult to refer typically to gay men who displayed more feminine
behaviors. In the 1920s and 1930s middle-class gay men would refer to themselves as queer to
distinguish themselves from fairies who were seen as feminine and lacking status as masculine.
In the 1980s the LGBTQIA+ community reclaimed the word as an identity label in order to break
boundaries of binary ideas of sexuality and gender/sex. queer has become more commonplace
in modern media and television as well as being more readily adopted by LGBTQIA+
organizations. queer is often used as an umbrella term to describe non-cisgender and nonheterosexual individuals or those outside of traditional gender roles or sexual binaries. (p. 1340)
For a long period of time, its origins as a slur were used to demean and label someone as not normal
(Bey, 2019). Over time, it has evolved to encompass sexual and gender identity that does not
correspond to established cisnormative and heteronormative ideals (Bey, 2019). This has led many to
embrace the term queer and its problematic past to take back their queer power (Bey, 2019). Collapsing
all gender and sexually diverse identities reduces them into a group of people historically treated badly
based on their sexual and gender identity without acknowledging or celebrating the distinctness of each
letter that coincides with different gender expressions, sexualities, and queer experiences (Bey, 2019).
For the purpose of writing flow in this study, I will be using the acronym LGBTQIA+ and queer to refer to
myself and the gender and sexually expansive community. I am conscious of these tensions and the
impact of using this acronym. I am aware that using terms like LGBTQIA+ and queer without
problematizing for others is, a cisheteronormative practice. This tension is rooted in larger societal and
historical inequities placed on LGBTQIA+ and queer communities and at the time of my study, there
exists no solution.

5
Historically Entrenched Inequity
In 1932, Willard Waller wrote a popular text entitled The Sociology of Teaching in which he
warned schools about homosexuality (Nash & Graves, 2022). In this text, Waller confidently claimed that
homosexuality was contagious, a word associated with disease or illness (Nash & Graves, 2022). Deepseeded prejudice, violence, fear, and discrimination against LGBTQIA+ individuals, especially in the
school setting are reflected not just through personal stories of LGBTQIA+ community members but also
in major court cases in our nation’s history (Nash & Graves, 2022). Nash and Graves (2022) listed many
of these major court cases as seen in Table 1. These court cases illustrate legal instances where
LGBTQIA+ rights were bargained for. In 1957 The Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, commonly
known as the Johns Committee, interrogated school teachers in an effort to eliminate gay and lesbian
people from schools as they were considered dangerous for children to be around (Nash & Graves,
2022). By 1963, the Johns Committee revoked 71 teachers’ certificates and created unsafe working
conditions for hundreds of others (Nash & Graves, 2022). In 1978, Oklahoma introduced a new law that
allowed school districts to terminate employment on the grounds of being a part of the LGBTQIA+
community (Nash & Graves, 2022). This law defined homosexuality as “advocating, soliciting, imposing,
encouraging, or promoting public or private homosexual activity in a manner that creates a substantial
risk that such conduct will come to the attention of schoolchildren or school employee” (Nash & Graves,
2022). In 1972, an English teacher named John Gish organized the Gay Teachers Caucus of the National
Education Association (NEA) and was later terminated by his school board, a decision backed by the New
Jersey courts as they stated that his actions supported gay rights and were considered “a deviation from
normal mental health which might affect his ability to teach, discipline, and associate with students”
(Nash & Graves, 2022, p. 8). As seen in the previous examples, schools were unsafe places for LGBTQIA+
identities. If the targets were queer adults and teachers, what messages did that send to students who
identified as part of the LGBTQIA+ community during this time? These cases showcased how LGBTQIA+

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discrimination and unequal treatment have historical roots and have repeatedly occurred over time. On
this historical inequity, Nash and Graves (2002) stated that “LGBTQIA+ peoples were the dominant
ideology’s version of a triple threat—perceived as dangerous to children and youth because of an
assumed pathological, sinful, and criminal nature. Relatively few could see beyond these destructive
assumptions” (p. 13). The fight for LGBTQIA+ equality has clear, strong homophobic roots established
and reproduced throughout our nation’s history.
Table 1
Major LGBTQIA+ Court Cases Affecting LGBTQIA+ People
Date Case Summary
1974 Acanfora v. Board of
Education
Maryland teacher fired for prior membership in a college homophile
club. Circuit court rules that schools cannot fire teachers based on
homosexuality, but he still lost his job because he did not list club
membership on his teaching application.
1977 Gaylor v. Tacoma
School District No. 10
Washington State teacher fired for homosexual identity (rather than
behavior). State Supreme Court agrees that his identity was reason
enough to be barred from teaching.
1977 Gish v. Board of
Education of the
Borough of Paramus
Teacher fired for refusing school district order to take a psychiatric
exam after helping organize the Gay Teachers Caucus of the NEA.
New Jersey Superior Court rules that school districts retain wide
latitude in determining one's fitness to teach.
1985 Rowland v. Mad River
School District
U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear Marjorie Rowland's case, but
Brennan writes his landmark dissent.
1985 Board of Education of
Oklahoma City v.
National Gay Task
Force
U.S. Supreme Court upholds Oklahoma law allowing school districts to
ban LGB teachers, but districts cannot ban teachers from talking
about LGB issues.
1986 Bowers v. Hardwick U.S. Supreme Court decided that states can have sex between same
sex consenting adults illegal; sexual activity for LGB people is
criminal if a state deems it so (many states did).
1996 Romer v. Evans U.S. Supreme Court rules that "equal protection under the law"
applies to homosexuals.

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Date Case Summary
1996 Nabozny v. Podlesny Seventh Circuit Court holds public school districts and officials liable
for failing to protect students from homophobic assault.
2003 Lawrence v. Texas U.S. Supreme Court rules that sodomy laws are unconstitutional. LGB
sex is no longer a felony. Overturns Bowers.
2013 United States v.
Windsor
U.S. Supreme Court determines that the federal government must
recognize same-sex marriages that have been approved by the
states.
2015 Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court determines that state governments cannot ban
same-sex marriage. Marriage is a fundamental right.
2020 Bostock v. Clayton
County
U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Title VII (of the Civil Rights Act) ban
on workplace discrimination based on sex includes LGBTQIA+
workers.
Inequitable treatment towards the LGBTQIA+ community continues to unfold in the present day
as queer people navigate the current sociopolitical landscape. Currently, it is very common for LGBTQIA+
teachers and non-LGBTQIA+ teachers to leave the classroom or to be fired for “being political” by
reading books that feature sexual and gender-expansive characters (Oltman, 2023). Oltmann (2023)
found that in 2021 the American Library Association recorded 729 challenges against 1,597 books and
reported a total of 1,586 book bans. An overwhelming majority of these books that were banned were
written by LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC authors and featured a diverse array of LGBTQIA+ characters and
experiences (Oltmann, 2023). Recently, the “Parental Rights to Education” bill and the “Don’t Say Gay”
law called for the elimination and any mention of gender identity and sexuality in schools (MENEBHI,
2023; Florida House of Representatives, 2022). These repeated instances are a result of decades of
discrimination that contribute to the erasure and marginalization of LGBTQIA+ identities from school
language and rhetoric which have severe consequences for students, including those students who do
not identify as LGBTQIA+. Cisheteronormativity is not a victimless dominant ideology. Students who do

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not identify across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum are also at risk for further reproduction and marginalization
of the LGBTQIA+ community. All students have the potential to normalize these cisheteronormative
practices modeled by adults while witnessing the mistreatment of their LGBTQIA+ peers and teachers
that reinforces the status quo and normalizes cisheteronormativity.
As a result of the instances of marginalization previously mentioned, LGBTQIA+-identifying
students in American schools continue to experience differential academic outcomes when compared to
their cisgender, heterosexual peers (Sansone, 2019). In regard to educational aspirations, Greytak (2016)
saw that LGBTQIA+ students were more likely to report that they did not plan to complete high school
(2.7% LGBTQIA+ students vs. 0.8% of non-LGBTQIA+ students) or to continue their education past high
school (9.6% LGBTQIA+ students vs. 5.7% of non-LGBTQIA+ students). Regarding physical and verbal
bullying at school, LGBTQIA+ students encountered higher levels (Sansone, 2019). Compared to nonLGBTQIA+ students, LGBTQIA+ students are more likely to be bullied or harassed based on actual or
perceived sexual orientation (67.0% vs. 13.5%) and gender expression (59.7% vs. 17.6%) (Greytak, 2016).
Concerning student safety and chronic absenteeism, LGBTQIA+ students reported feeling unsafe at
school and were more than twice as likely to have missed school in the past month because they felt
unsafe or uncomfortable (36.6% of LGBTQIA+ students vs. 14.7% of non-LGBTQIA+ students). The way
that LGBTQIA+ students experience discipline is also different when compared to their non-queer peers
(Greytak, 2016). Almost two-thirds (62.8%) of LGBTQIA+ students experienced harsher school discipline
(e.g., detention, suspension) compared to less than half (45.8%) of non-LGBTQIA+ students (Greytak,
2016). The disconnection from the school environment coupled with a diminished sense of safety
exacerbates the risk of chronic depression, self-harm, and suicidal ideation among LGBTQIA+ students
(Hanson, 2019). The disheartening data can be traced to the idea of cisheteronormativity enacted in
society and schools. Francis (2022) defined cisheteronormativity:

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Cisheteronormativity represents a hierarchical system of prejudice in which cisgender
individuals are seen as the norm and privileged and whereby negativity, prejudice, and
discrimination are directed toward anyone perceived as gender and sexuality counter
normative. It is more than prejudices based on cisgender assumptions (as transphobia is) but
also represents an aversion to anything that goes against the understanding that there are two
and only two genders, that gender reflects biological sex, and that only sexual attraction
between these ‘opposite’ genders is natural or acceptable. (pp. 10–11)
Cisheteronormativity has implications for us all, especially those people and students belonging to the
LGBTQIA+ community. Every student is deserving of an equitable education and the school landscape
for LGBTQIA+ students has been ridden with challenges and obstacles hindering academic achievement
and their overall sense of well-being. Data gathered from the Trevor Project (2021) during a 2021 survey
of over 34,000 LGBTQIA+ youths across the United States reinforced these ideas and illustrated how this
plays out for students in school:
● In the past year, 94% of LGBTQIA+ youth reported that recent politics negatively impacted
their mental health.
● In the past year, 75% of LGBTQIA+ youth reported that they had experienced discrimination
based on their sexual orientation or gender identity at least once in their lifetime.
● In the past year, 48% of LGBTQIA+ youth reported they wanted counseling from a mental
health professional but were unable to receive it.
● LGBTQIA+ youth who had access to spaces that affirmed their sexual orientation and gender
identity reported lower rates of attempted suicide.
Progress has been made in the fight for equity with pro-LGBTQIA+ initiatives such as the creation of the
FAIR (Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, Respectful) Education Act, California Safe Schools Coalition, and
amendments to Title IX of the Civil Rights Act (Sadowski, 2019). However, the United States is home to a

10
wide variety of political and religious beliefs that have historically made a universal approach to solving
LGBTQIA+ inequities challenging. On the reason for this historical inequity, Sadowski (2019) stated the
United States has no “generally agreed-upon school policies, core values, philosophies, and mission
statements that can help in making the case that an LGBTQIA+-inclusive curriculum is not only a good
idea but is essential to fulfilling the mission of the school” (p. 37). LGBTQIA+ people have been fighting
for a safe place in schools, the workplace, and the world. In doing so, the LGBTQIA+ community has
been met with resistance, erasure, and invalidation of their existence and humanity (Nash & Graves,
2022). The data presented illustrate that there exist underlying causes for the differential outcomes and
opportunities LGBTQIA+ students experience and are rooted in the historicity of mistreatment toward
queer people.
Organizational Context
I have worked at BW Elementary (the pseudonym for the school site where my study took place)
for 8 years. You can see the historically entrenched inequity play out in many ways within my
organization. At my school site, inequities experienced by LGBTQIA+ students and staff are addressed in
a superficial manner. BW Elementary had a team member and family handbook that illustrates this. The
80-page handbook served as a resource for families so that they understood the policies and procedures
for their specific school site. Within the document, there existed subsections that discussed the values
and school mission. This is where BW Elementary discussed where they stood as an organization on
LGBTQIA+ issues. In this handbook, BW Elementary acknowledged the research that exists illustrating
the differential outcomes for LGBTQIA+ youth. In response to this, BW Elementary provided all teachers
with a business card-sized rainbow badge to wear as a keychain on their lanyard to declare their
allyship. BW Elementary considered their teachers as LGBTQIA+ ambassadors designed to create visible
and safe adults for all students. Surprisingly, the family handbook clearly stated that no additional
LGBTQIA+ curriculum is distributed to teachers and staff. BW Elementary is an school that

11
acknowledged LGBTQIA+ topics may be taught in their school, but not prioritized in instruction in the
way that academic content such as reading, writing, and mathematics are. Though there is mention of
LGBTQIA+ youth protections in the family and staff handbook, there is no mention of the school’s stance
in regard to protections for LGBTQIA+ educators, family members, or other adults who work at BW
Elementary.
The tension between espoused theories and theories in use, as discussed by Schön (1987, as
cited in Merriam & Bierema, 2013), is evident. There is a clear disconnect between my school’s beliefs
and what I see happening during the day to day at BW Elementary. My experience as an LGBTQIA+
identifying person who teaches at BW Elementary gave me this lens through which to view this
discrepancy. I wore that business card-sized rainbow badge. The rainbow badge that illustrated allyship
and representatives of a safe space for students to talk about their LGBTQIA+ identity. However,
professional learning about LGBTQIA+ topics has been few and far between. At my school site there
exists annual mandated online training to complete in the form of electronic modules with quizzes and
checks for understanding. The training module titled “Supporting LGBTQIA+ students” is a one-hour
video that teachers have historically played in the background while they set up their classes for the Fall
semester. The assumption made by my school was that every teacher at BW Elementary cared about
this topic and watched it with fidelity. The implication and harmful assumption made here is that a short
video is sufficient training to be considered well-versed in navigating LGBTQIA+ topics at our school site.
I have been guilty of not giving the training sufficient attention as well. The hallways at BW Elementary
indicated no evidence that it is a school truly safe for queer students and staff. Aside from my
classroom, there were no pride flags or pictures of queer leaders and advocates throughout history.
queer-friendly books for teachers to access and for students to read exist in one small box in the teacher
copy room. BW Elementary has historically placed little spotlight on Pride month in June or LGBTQIA+
history month in October compared to the months that celebrate Black History, Women’s History, Latinx

12
Heritage, and AAPI History (Asian-American, Pacific Islander) throughout the academic year. My school
site has espoused their support for LGBTQIA+ with few instances that show evidence of
operationalization.
One critical reflection illuminated this reality for me. I was commissioned by one website to
write an op-ed capturing the experience of being a queer educator. I declared how important it was to
discuss LGBTQIA+ topics in my classroom with my kindergarten students. It was well-received, and many
people and organizations shared it on their social media platforms. However, my disorienting dilemma
came from receiving a lot of hate and bullying from online conservative, alt-right groups who retaliated
against my op-ed piece. The excerpt that follows is from a critical reflection captured my feelings on the
situation and the reality of many queer educators who experience instances of homophobia and
transphobia.
Kris: I was expected to go into the classroom and teach students with this heavy weight.
After reading about how so many believe me to be this vile, evil thing I was immediately
brought back into the closet, where it was easier to lie about my identity than have the
arrows of society’s status quo thrown at me. I grew resentful of my peers in this
moment. The women I work with who openly tell their students and colleagues “We’re
trying for a baby!” in casual conversation as if that has no sexual implicationssomething I am always accused of. More so than me reading a book about two boy
bunnies who love each other? I grew resentful of the teachers who brought in their
husbands to work to volunteer and put pictures of their nuclear family around their
classroom, sharing them with their students. I think about how different that would look
for me. Would I be met with stares of disgust? If I did these things and students went
back home and discussed them with parents, would the parents tell them hateful things
like those who read my op-ed piece?

13
On one back-to-school night, a student’s parent publicly asked me invasive questions about my
personal life. This created a domino effect of disorientations. The first disorientation came when this
parent told me that she did not feel comfortable with her daughter in my class after I refused to answer
questions such as “You’re not married?” and “So you do not have kids with a woman?” These questions
signaled to me that she had a problem with my identity as a queer person through her body language
and facial expressions when she looked at the progress pride flag in my classroom, which caused the
second disorientation. The final disorientation came as a result of the response, or lack thereof, from my
administration after I confided in them about how distraught I was after this back-to-school night. The
excerpt that follows shows the strong feelings I had after this conversation.
Kris: When I was asked by leaders at my school how I think the problem should be solved, I
experienced another disorienting dilemma. I assumed that if anything surrounding my
sexuality were to come up in schools in any way, the people in leadership would know
exactly what to do right? And they would know how to handle it while still validating
and affirming my queer identity? They, too, do not get training and support in how to do
this work. Their job is to protect and support teachers after all, isn’t it? I assumed that
the people I have built strong relationships with would value and protect me. I have
always felt powerless in the teacher-parent relationship at my school site. Instead of
protecting me, my school leadership team focused on resolving issues with the parent
to ensure they feel comfortable with their child coming to our school. Historically, when
there are issues with parents my administration has made sure that the parent was the
priority, leaving me feeling pushed to compartmentalize any trauma I may face in regard
to my identity. There exists, also, joint fear among myself and leadership that parents
will go to school boards and superintendents, and my job and reputation might be at
stake. I had hoped that there would be a discussion about the harm that was done to

14
my spirit, my identity as a queer person, and my identity as a professional, but no such
discussion was had.
A few weeks later on my way to lunch, a fourth grade student stopped me and asked, “Are you gay Mr.
K?” in front of other students and staff because he heard another boy making fun of me during recess. I
told the student yes and then immediately tried to change the topic of conversation with the student. I
was uncomfortable talking to this student about my identity after my experience with administration as
previously mentioned in my critical reflections. After not having anyone to turn to about this experience,
The following excerpt of a critical reflection that followed this interaction showed how I yearned for a
work environment where I could truly and openly be myself.
Kris: When I was talking to this student, I found myself asking questions such as “Should I be
having this conversation with them? Are they old enough to truly understand?” I also
thought to myself no one else must go through this type of thing. No one else must
constantly “come out” or question if their humanity is appropriate for others to hear.
Historically speaking it feels as if queer advocacy always falls on the backs of queer
people and that idea came into my head and made me angry and feel a great deal of
injustice. I also thought to myself, “Why am I the only one with a pride flag in my
classroom?” I have walked in the hallways, and I am the only one. If my school is truly a
place where they state they are a safe place for LGBTQIA+ students, we are not showing
it visibly for other students to see. I think about how I always give my school “credit”
because they allow me to put up my flag and in other states, this is a fireable offense.
But I am setting the bar so low for others and myself and that will not move the needle
forward. This type of “I should be grateful” thinking perpetuates hegemony in the form
of cisheteronormativity. My hesitation to tell this student at that moment that I am gay
comes from cisheteronormativity already being the dominant ideology in schools. I am

15
conditioned to feel bad for saying I am queer to young children and made to feel it is not
developmentally appropriate which further silences queer people from owning their
identity and being their true selves as models for others, especially students.
It is these day-to-day lived experiences as a queer educator where I was reminded that schools
really are still spaces that perpetuate cisheteronormativity. The teachers at my school, myself included,
have internalized cisheteronormativity and cisheteronormative school practices as normal, everyday
parts of their instruction (Sadowski, 2016). Spaces are not affirming for queer people because the
practices, systems, and structures set up in schools do not allow others to reflect on the harm that these
types of moments create. It is the reason why critical reflection on our teaching practice in regard to
reproducing cisheteronormative hegemonic structures is the catalyst to disrupt these practices, systems,
and structures, and to ultimately raise awareness of how we are involved in this reproduction of
dominant ideology.
My Role
At the time of my study, it was my 8th year as a kindergarten teacher. I held the title of
department chair and led my three teammates in planning and decision-making that affected 120 total
kindergarten students at my school site. As a queer educator of color, there is evidence in my teaching
practice that I also have been complicit in reproducing cisheteronormativity. I have been hesitant to
read LGBTQIA+ books and continued to read books that exclusively featured cisgender, heterosexual
characters, families, and relationships. I have rarely shared my queer identity with students and families.
When students asked me what the pride flag in my classroom represents, I have responded with
watered-down answers such as “It means love” or “It means accepting everyone” that closed
conversation about LGBTQIA+ topics. I did not feel supported by leaders or administration at my school
site and had trouble feeling comfortable with the community where I work. When harm happened to
me in the form of homophobia within the work setting, I usually stayed quiet as I have been conditioned

16
by my school leadership to believe that this is not a priority at my school. This fear of losing my job or
somehow harming children because of my identity has made me feel less empowered to enact
disruption to embody teaching practices I know will make future generations of queer students not
experience these feelings I had as a queer adult.
The question that guided this action research study was: “How do I engage with elementary
school teachers in critical reflection to increase our consciousness of cisheteronormative practices in
schools?” As the teacher-leader, it was my aim to engage in critical reflection with the other
kindergarten teachers on my team around cisheteronormativity and how it lived in our classrooms and
in shared spaces of adult learning at my school site. The original research question asked: “How do I
engage with elementary school teachers in critical reflection to increase our consciousness of and
disrupt cisheteronormative practices in schools?” At the proposal stage, “disrupt” was removed from
the research question to focus on building my participant's queer consciousness, reflected in the revised
conceptual framework. I set out to establish that increased queer consciousness through reflection on
the reproduction of cisheteronormative practices and the dialogue that ensues would make us more
discerning of our teaching practices. In the succeeding section, I narrate the conceptual framework to
show my theory of change. Following that, I discuss the participants in my study, my plan of action, and
what data collection and analysis entailed. I then discuss my findings that answer my research question.
Lastly, I close with an afterword where I discuss takeaways, implications, my growth as a facilitator of
adult learning throughout my study and next steps regarding the futurity of LGTBQIA+ identityconsciousness.
Conceptual Framework
In this section I present my conceptual framework, my theory of change, for my action research
project. Miles and Huberman (1994, as cited in Maxwell, 2013) defined a conceptual framework as a
“visual or written product that explains, either graphically or in narrative form, the main things to be

17
studied-the key factors, concepts, or variables and the presumed relationships among them” (p. 39).
Figure 1 depicts the framework in visual form, followed by an explanation of the concepts in the
framework along with their relationship to each other. My conceptual framework is drawn from Cohen,
Raudenbush, and Ball’s (2003) discussion of instructional interaction and research. This framework
considers all three vertices of the triangle to be interdependent actors and the interaction between
them crucial to the outcome or desired result (Cohen et al., 2003). The apex of the triangle is me, the
teacher-leader and facilitator of adult learning in this study. Grounding myself in elements of adaptive
leadership and enacting adaptive leadership moves and behaviors allowed me to guide my participants
and myself to tackle tough problems and to make changes to our instructional practices (Heifetz et al.,
2009). According to Heifetz et al. (2009), an adaptive leader is willing to “expand informal authority
through building relationships, spending time with people to tell stories, encouraging others to share
stories,” and “understand and acknowledge the sacrifice people are making” (p. 12) when they decide to
share perceptions you may agree or disagree with. I asked my participants to engage in critical reflection
on the historically entrenched inequities surrounding LGBTQIA+ people (both students and adults). We
engaged in a discovery process of ourselves in relation to the LGBTQIA+ identities that caused
disorientation. I created new types of challenges that required my participants and me to learn new
ways of thinking, exactly what adaptive leadership called for (Heifetz et al., 2009).

18
Figure 1
Conceptual Framework
The interaction between me, as the teacher-leader, and the participants of my study, the other
kindergarten elementary school teachers, is depicted on the left of Figure 1. As the facilitator, I used
andragogical moves to facilitate adult learning, established norms of discourse with participants, and
fostered the learning conditions to be able to openly and honestly engage in conversation about our
critical reflections. Arao and Clemens (2013) discussed that leaders move towards a brave space with
their community through setting learning conditions in which there is controversy with civility and
owning your intentions and impact. These conversational norms are a part of the learning condition and
are represented at the apex of the triangle. Critical reflection is depicted in the center of Figure 4. Both I,
as the teacher-leader, and my participants in my study engaged in critical reflection and critically
reflective discourse. We built our identity-consciousness regarding gender, sex, and sexuality and
critically reflected on cisheteronormativity’s impact on school practices at our school site. In Cycle 3 of

19
the study, participants and I brought in moments of practice to critically reflect on to be more discerning
of how we are complicit in the reproduction of cisheteronormativity. Horn and Little (2010) discussed
how discussing moments of practice help locate problems of practice through teacher discussion of
classroom experiences and “treating the frequency and nature of such moments as indicators of the
generative power of a teacher group” (p. 189). We identified and examined our own moments of
practice, which helped us engage in critical reflections in the style of Wergin (2020) and Brookfield
(2013) where we named power dynamics and illuminated the reproduction of hegemonic practices for
ourselves.
The environment this conceptual framework was situated in was not exclusive to the classroom
setting with kindergarteners, but also considered adult spaces of professional development and where
professional learning communities (PLC) meet formally and informally. The desired short-term outcome
of the interaction of all three vertices, as shown by the arrow pointing to the bottom of Figure 1, is that
participants and I have raised our own queer consciousness and awareness of the reproduction of
cisheteronormative practices in schools. El-Amin et al. (2017) stated that critical consciousness, no
matter the identity marker discussed, is the “ability to recognize and analyze systems of inequality and
the commitment to take action against these systems” (p. 18). All this facilitated progress toward the
long-term goal. The long-term outcome was to move the needle for queer persons and address the
historically entrenched inequity of educational inequality and injustice for LGBTQIA+ people through
interrogation of those hegemonic “forces that sustain it” (El-Amin et al., 2017, p. 21). I believed that a
raised queer consciousness facilitated transformative learning, the type of learning where we are trying
to shift our deeply held beliefs and hold them up to a mirror to problematize them (Mezirow, 1991). My
goal was to raise queer consciousness and awareness of the complicit reproduction of
cisheteronormativity in schools to facilitate transformative adult learning with my participants. This type
of learning demanded that we become aware of our biases, assumptions, and the earliest messages we

20
have received about gender and sexuality that may lead us to reproduce dominant ideology in our
classrooms. This conceptual framework served as a north star that informed and guided my teacherleader moves and supported my participants’ journey toward developing a raised queer consciousness.
This study aimed to address the historically entrenched inequities that have existed for LGBTQIA+
students and teachers at my school site. Disruption was not the intended outcome of this study, as
indicated by the revised research question. Instead, I believed and still believe that reflection on our
actions, our instructional practices, our physical environments, and our deeply held beliefs about
gender, sex, and sexuality are first necessary to facilitate any kind of disruption of cisheteronormativity.
In the sections that follow, I expand on each of the concepts.
Queer Consciousness
Drawing on Airton (2019), El-Amin et al. (2017), and Sapon-Shevin (2019), I contend that
evidence of queer consciousness is seen when an adult has demonstrated any one of the four main
abilities.
1. The ability to familiarize and normalize LGBTQIA+ language, terminology, definitions,
concepts, and issues affecting queer persons.
2. The ability to pay close attention to how gender and sexuality inclusion is currently not
working in a given context and our role in reproducing that as adults.
3. The ability to identify hot spots, “situations where cisheteronormative assumptions/
transgressions are made or a person who is working towards creating unsafe environments
for LGBTQIA+ persons.
4. The ability to take action by proactively anticipating or cooling the hot spots or any
concretization of combatting or disrupting cisheteronormativity to be more inclusive of
LGBTQIA+ persons. I planned sessions that were devoted to building participants’ identity
consciousness for gender, sex, and sexuality.

21
Talusan (2022) spoke on the importance of educators building identity consciousness for gender and
sexual orientation:
First and early messages people receive about sexual orientation and gender inform and impact
their ability to engage in difficult conversations about sexual and gender identity. For some,
talking about sexual orientation and gender was off-limits. For others, conversations about
sexual orientation and gender were a vital part of dialogues with family and friends. (p. 67)
I intended to raise my participants’ queer consciousness throughout my study through critical reflection.
Within the dialogue regarding our critical reflections, we discussed our deeply held beliefs about
LGBTQIA+ identities and what promoted our comfort or discomfort with queer topics. The first few
sessions in Cycle 1 centered around this topic while we also familiarized ourselves with language that
laid the foundation for subsequent sessions. A raised queer consciousness was a short-term goal
because of the interaction between my participants, me as the facilitator, and the content that built our
gender and sexual identity consciousness. An element of queer consciousness crucial to this study was
the ability to reflect upon cisheteronormative assumptions and transgressions that happen in school.
The following section details cisheteronormativity further.
Cisheteronormativity
Drawing on Francis (2022) and Brookfield (2017), I define cisheteronormativity as a form of
dominant ideology where identifying as cisgender and heterosexual is the status quo used as a
mechanism of control that when reproduced keeps members of the LGBTQIA+ community marginalized
and oppressed. With this definition in mind, I have further unpacked the meaning of cisheteronormative
school practices as covert and overt practices carried out by educators and schools that erase and
further marginalize queer identities and reproduce harmful assumptions of members within the
LGBTQIA+ community (Shelton, 2015). Examples of cisheteronormative school practices include
punishment for traditional gender nonconformity, LGBTQIA+ invisibility in texts and curriculum,

22
dismissal or invalidation of LGTBQ+ concerns and topics, and rules mandated by state and local policy
that silence or erase the discussion of the LGBTQIA+ identity and history (Mangin, 2022; Renold, 2000;
Shelton, 2015). Cisheteronormativity is one apex of my conceptual framework. It was the content that
my participants and I engaged with throughout my action research after we built our gender and sexual
identity-consciousness. I sought out to engage in critical reflection while my participants and I examined
our interactions with curriculum, athletics, extracurriculars, outside partner impact, and other elements
of the school environment from which LGBTQIA+ students and adults may still feel excluded. When
considering what critical reflection may look like regarding cisheteronormative school practices,
Sadowski (2019) offered some imperative questions for educators:
If a certain place in the school is designated as a safe space, what does that say about the rest of
the building? If certain educators are seen as “safe” for students to talk about issues that are
central to their lives, what about the others? Does a school administration have a responsibility
to ensure that LGBTQIA+ students feel supported by all their teachers in every learning space in
the building, not just treated with mere “tolerance” by the majority? Is safety the only thing to
which LGBTQIA+ students are entitled at school? What about the skills and knowledge they
need to be effective, engaged members of their society as LGBTQIA+ youth? (p. 11)
These questions were used to push and guide reflection so that we illuminated the pervasiveness of
cisheteronormativity in our school setting. Drawing on the works of Greytak et al. (2016), Sadowski
(2019), Sansone (2019), and Hanson (2019) I have come to understand that educator reflection and
awareness of cisheteronormative practices in schools are key in order to actualize disruption of
cisheteronormativity in schools. Together, my participants learned about what the literature identified
as cisheteronormative practices. We analyzed those cisheteronormative practices against our own
practices and engaged in role play with those practices and then engaged in reflection. Sadowski (2019)
noted one common cisheteronormative teaching practice is reinforcing gender stereotypes with binary

23
labels such as calling on and organizing students as boys and girls (p. 124). For example, this can sound
like teachers saying, “Let’s see who is going to line up for lunch first, boys or girls!” This seemingly
harmless gamified classroom management strategy is a cisheteronormative practice because it operates
under the systemic assumption that all people are cisgender and identify with the sex assigned at birth,
leaving out the many identities in the spectrum that exists between male and female and further
reproducing the hegemonic assumptions that students must identify as only one of these two options:
boy or girl. My participants and I problematized cisheteronormative moments like this together to
unlearn many practices embedded in our day-to-day.
Another common cisheteronormative practice in elementary schools is the lack of a curriculum
and texts that reflect the LGBTQIA+ identity and its beautiful history (Mangin, 2022). According to the
GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) School Climate Survey, fewer than one in five
students report any representation of LGBTQIA+ people, issues, or topics in any of their classes (Greytak
et al., 2016). This means that many characters and relationships that students learn about in books and
lessons default to traditional cisgender and heterosexual stereotypes. On this practice, Sadowski (2019)
stated “You cannot just have books that deal with race or those that are by and about women. You also
have to include books that are by and about the LGBTQIA+ community” (p. 45). In addition to under and
misrepresentation of LGBTQIA+ people, Talusan (2022) also cautioned schools to not take the deficit
model of informing students about queerness. This means that curriculum in schools should reflect the
challenges and historical realities of queer people while also highlighting “joys, successes, and
celebrations of those identities and experiences” (p. 73). My participants and I took the time during
sessions to think about our practices and how they may not be affirming toward LGBTQIA+ people, as
stated previously, to avoid the consequences that will continue to lead to poor outcomes for LGBTQIA+
students.

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Cisheteronormative school practices can also live beyond the classroom and exist in other places
throughout the school environment, such as in school leadership behaviors and how the school
administration handles LGBTQIA+ topics. In a study of 12 schools across California, Massachusetts, and
Minnesota, 54% of teachers said “fear of parental dissatisfaction was a primary obstacle to their
addressing topics related to sexual orientation and family diversity in the classroom (Sadowski, 2019, p.
116). This fear can be the driving force behind the reproduction of cisheteronormative practices and is
the catalyst for many reactive forces of disciplinary approaches. I found fear to be its own
cisheteronormative practice throughout my study as noted in the findings section. I intended for my
participants and me to recall and reflect on our own instructional practices and choices and ask how we
are engaging in the reproduction of cisheteronormativity in the school setting. As mentioned previously,
an important mechanism to change our practices to be more inclusive of LGBTQIA+ identities is through
individual and collective reflection. Reflection was an attempt to have a proactive approach to
addressing homophobia and transphobia that came because of cisheteronormativity. It is a
cisheteronormative practice in school to deal with “name-calling and bullying in a reactive way”
(Sadowski, 2019, p. 120). On this reactive approach, Sadowski (2019) stated:
This crisis-management approach places gender-nonconforming students at risk. It’s all crisis
management, and there is very little proactive work in elementary schools, which is where the
social hierarchy [among students] starts. If we do not do things in elementary schools, it is going
to continue to be crisis management.
The following section details critical reflection and how it was used in my study.
Critical Reflection
Drawing on Wergin (2020) and Brookfield (2017) I define critical reflection as looking back on
our experiences and critiquing them by unveiling power in the form of dominant ideology while
illuminating and challenging our deeply held hegemonic assumptions. Wergin (2020) asserted that

25
critical reflection is a “meaning-making process that moves a learner from one experience to the next
with deeper understandings of its relationships with and connections to other experiences and ideas”
(p. 74). Furthermore, Brookfield (2017) posed the question: “What is pressuring us to make sure our
classrooms appear and sound a certain way?” (p. 11). I contended in the articulation of my conceptual
framework that the answer is the dominant ideology and power dynamics of cisheteronormativity.
Brookfield (2017) defined dominant ideology as the deeply held beliefs society has internalized as
normal that are ways to control and maintain the status quo. Drawing on Brookfield (2017) and VaidMenon (2020), cisheteronormativity is a dominant ideology that assumes the people of the world to be
exclusively heterosexual and neatly fit into gendered boy-girl categories. Consequently, those who fall
outside these traditional categories and binaries are marginalized. Critical reflection called my
participants and I to think about a problem of practice and challenging how we have defined the
problem itself (Wergin, 2020). As an educator, routine reflection is something I often engaged with.
However, engaging in reflection does not necessarily make it critical. Drawing on Brookfield (2017) and
Wergin (2020) critical reflection is taking our lived experiences and asking ourselves the hard questions
through the lens of power, positionality, and hegemony that ultimately lead to a transformational shift
in how we see the world. On the importance of critically reflecting on cisheteronormative power
dynamics and dominant ideology, Vaid-Menon (2020) stated:
Power can be defined as the ability to make a particular perspective seem universal. Control is
how power maintains itself; anyone who expresses another perspective is punished. Arguments
against gender non-conforming people are about maintaining power and control. Most can be
grouped into four categories: dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope. These
are strategies that people use to make the gender binary seem like a given, not a decision. It’s
important to understand how they work in order to imagine otherwise. (p. 36)

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Continuous critical self-reflection on teacher practices in school is key, yet insufficient to move the
needle forward and disrupt cisheteronormativity in schools. This is because Wergin (2020) stated that
reflection “needs to happen in the community, in interaction with others” (p. 74). I personally
participated in the process of critical reflection and engaged with me and my participants’
disorientations that we had regarding cisheteronormative school practices. Talusan (2022) suggested
that educators build queer identity consciousness first by critically reflecting on the first and earliest
messages we have received that inform and impact the approach we take with students around gender
and sexual orientation. Engaging in critical reflection was key for me as the teacher-leader. I used
questioning, an adaptive leadership strategy discussed in the subsequent sections, to get my
participants to engage in critical reflection about LGBTQIA+ topics. This facilitated our critically reflective
discourse about cisheteronormativity. Critical reflection also served as a means of gathering data about
my own growth and progression throughout this study as we engaged in critically reflective discourse
around cisheteronormativity in the school context.
Critically reflective discourse, an element of critical reflection, was intended to be the fuel
towards ultimately reaching a greater understanding of how we may have reproduced
cisheteronormativity through school practices. Marchel (2007) defined critical reflective discourse in the
following way:
Critical dialogue in schools occurs when educators discuss teaching incidents and challenges
with their peers in order to scrutinize personal experience and to avoid biased interpretations
and actions in teaching. In this practice, educators learn to communicate with peers in ways that
promote the examination of personal thoughts that influence their educational practice.
Ongoing dialogue helps educators work together to improve teaching, to solve problems
presented by the ongoing challenges of classroom life, and to reshape school culture and
practices. (p. 2)

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In my study, critically reflective discourse took place when we named our biases with one another,
talked openly about our deeply held beliefs, discussed our teaching experiences about this topic, and
used alternative lens to take on different perspectives (Marchel, 2007). When we revealed our emotions
and feelings with one another about our own experiences with queerness and built common ground
around those experiences, we engaged in critically reflective discourse (Marchel, 2007). In essence,
critically reflective discourse is open, vulnerable, and collaborative critical reflection about power
dynamics and dominant ideology at play (Brookfield, 2017; Marchel, 2007; Wergin, 2020). The primary
role of critically reflective discourse was to engage in conversation with one another. The purpose of this
group reflection and group discussion was to further facilitate one’s own personal reflection (Marchel,
2007). Wergin (2020) wrote, “Disorientation not in the presence of others can make existing beliefs even
more powerful and resistant to change” (pp. 88–89), further emphasizing the importance of how it is
imperative to learn in the presence of others. It is within these conversations with my participants that
we reflected on our practices with one another. Cisheteronormative practices are deeply entrenched in
our society and cannot be fixed with quick solutions. Engaging in discourse with one another about
cisheteronormative practices that may occur in our classrooms offered new insights into how we have
defined our problem of practice. Jay and Johnson (2002) stated that “when we strive to consider how a
situation looks from the point of view of someone different from ourselves, we gain far more than just
the benefits of understanding others. It is a chance to explore and illuminate the limitations of our own
frame” (p. 78). In my study, sessions were designed to create spaces for us to engage in critically
reflective dialogue and practice perspective taking. To support engaging in critically reflective discourse,
I used questions from Jay and Johnson's (2002) Typology of Reflection seen in Table 2.

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Table 2
Typology of Reflection: Dimensions and Guiding Reflections
Dimension Definition Typical questions
Descriptive Describe the matter for
reflection.
What is happening? Is this working, and for whom? For
whom is it not working? How do I know? How am I
feeling? What am I pleased and/or concerned about?
What do I not understand? Does this relate to any of
my stated goals, and to what extent are they being
met?
Comparative Reframe the matter for
reflection in light of
alternative views,
others’ perspectives,
research, and the like.
What are alternative views of what is happening? How do
other people who are directly or indirectly involved
describe and explain what’s happening? What does the
research contribute to an understanding of this
matter? How can I improve what’s not working? If
there is a goal, what are some other ways of
accomplishing it? How do other people accomplish this
goal? For each perspective and alternative, who is
served and who is not?
Critical Having considered the
implications of the
matter, establish a
renewed perspective.
What are the implications of the matter when viewed
from these alternative perspectives? Given these
various alternatives, their implications, and my own
morals and ethics, which is best for this particular
matter? What is the deeper meaning of what is
happening, in terms of public democratic purposes of
schooling? What does this matter reveal about the
moral and political dimension of schooling? How does
this reflective process inform and renew my
perspective?
Note. Reprinted from “Capturing Complexity: A Typology of Reflective Practice for Teacher Education,”
by J. K. Jay, K. Johnson, 2002, Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, p. 73–85. Copyright 2002 by Elsevier
Science Ltd.
Jay and Johnson (2002) used these three dimensions to categorize the types of reflection that
learners may engage in when thinking about a “puzzle of practice.” Cycles 1 and 2 laid the foundation of
my participants’ identity-consciousness about gender, sex, and sexuality and developed their knowledge

29
of cisheteronormativity in preparation for Cycle 3. Cycle 3, however, centered on critical reflection on
our instructional practices and utilized the typical questions seen on the far right of Table 2 and aided
my participants and me in our critical reflection. Drawing on Rodgers (2002) and the concepts of critical
reflection previously mentioned, describing the experience of reflection can be the most challenging
part of reflective practice due to educators fighting their natural urge to fix problems of practice
immediately. This remained true throughout my study as my participants, and I grappled with our
disorientations. As the facilitator of critical reflection, it was imperative to use andragogical moves to
facilitate adult learning. In the section that follows, I discuss how andragogy facilitated our
conversations and was used throughout my study.

30
Andragogy
For critical reflection and critically reflective discourse to take place with my colleagues,
andragogy, or adult learning, had to be considered. Drawing on Merriam and Bierema (2013), Warford
(2011), and Mezirow (1991), I contend that transformative adult learning is learning in adulthood that is
shaped by teacher-leaders meeting learners’ needs so that greater awareness, critical reflection, and
realizations about themselves and their place in society may take place. Participants and I were only
able to engage in the discussion of cisheteronormative school practices because I, the teacher-leader,
kept the ways in which adults learn at the forefront of my study. As a teacher-leader, it was imperative
that I built and fostered relationships with my participants. Mezirow (1991) discussed the importance of
building relationships in adult learning and the consequences that come from doing so:
But learning theory must recognize the crucial role of supportive relationships and a supportive
environment in making possible a more confident, assured sense of personal efficacy, of having
a self- or selves- more capable of becoming critically reflective of one’s habitual and sometimes
cherished assumptions, and of having the self-confidence to take action on reflective insights.
(p. 25)
My intended outcome for my participants was to have a raised queer consciousness and greater
awareness of the cisheteronormative practices that took place at our school site. For this awareness to
reach its full potential, my participants had to feel that they were able to share their reflections without
judgment to begin the process of making new meanings of their worldviews and behavior. Relationship
building and maintenance was key to creating what Merriam and Bierema (2013) described as a
community of practice (COP). Drawing on Merriam and Bierema (2013) I intend for my participants and
me to view learning as “the ongoing refinement of practices and emerging knowledge embodied in the
specific action of a particular community” (p. 122). This learning-while-participating mindset was the
reality for me and my participants as we engaged with the content of my study, cisheteronormative

31
school practices, and the discourse around the impact that it had on the LGBTQIA+ community. The
intended goal was to raise our collective awareness and consciousness of how our practices reproduce
cisheteronormative structures. This was made possible through the creation of a COP which served as a
dojo, or a space in which we learned from one another without fear of judgment and made mistakes
along the way (Merriam & Bierema, 2013).
Ways of Knowing
When enacting andragogy and engaging in critically reflective discourse around the topic of
cisheteronormativity it was crucial to think about where my participants were situated as learners and
how they were accessing the content and material of my action research. To be mindful of all my
participants’ “sociocultural and ontogenetic dimensions of cognition” I was mindful about their zone of
proximal teacher development (ZPTD; Warford, 2011, p. 253). Warford (2011) defined ZPTD as “the
distance between what teaching candidates can do on their own without assistance and a proximal level
they might attain through strategically mediated assistance from more capable others” (p. 253). To
promote teacher development at the first stages of ZPTD I employed the strategy Warford (2011)
described as prolepsis throughout my study. In essence, prolepsis affirmed participants' prior teaching
experience and pushed them to imagine a new future through a lens with strategic questioning
(Warford, 2011). On the idea that adults come to learning experiences with their own histories,
knowledge, and competencies, Aguilar and Cohen (2022) suggested that teacher-leaders ask learners
reflection questions about their own experiences as children in schools and their experiences as
teachers. Questioning became a key andragogical move I made as I facilitated and engaged in critically
reflective discourse with my participants. As a teacher-leader, I maintained steady vigilance about the
ZPTD of my learners when constructing and carrying out my study to calibrate and meet their needs so
that learning took place. As the teacher-leader, I utilized the typology Drago-Severson and BlumDeStefano (2017) defined as ways of knowing as it pertains to social justice. On why it is important to

32
understand more about how others understand themselves as adult educators for social justice, DragoSeverson and Blum-DeStefano (2017) stated:
Understanding the developmental trajectory of adulthood and anticipating the developmental
diversity that will occur in nearly any team, group, or organization, can help us better
differentiate the supports and challenges we offer to each other as we work to manage
complexity, examine assumptions, relate across lines of difference, do our best for children and
each other, and shape more equitable visions and realities for the future. (pp. 463–464)
I planned to support my participants in making changes to their practice, especially practices that
reproduced cisheteronormativity. One key andragogical move I made was to uncover what type of
learner they are to effectively support their learning. I will utilize the categorizations of the four ways of
knowing and the effective supports to facilitate learning for adults (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano,
2017). Together, the knowledge of my participants’ ways of knowing and the understanding of their
learning needs aided in the short-term goal of raising our queer consciousness of cisheteronormative
practices because it informed the questions I posed and supports I provided for them when we were
engaged in critical reflection. To concretize this concept, if I came to discover that one of my participants
is an instrumental knower, for example, providing a model for their own reflective practice would be
crucial so they may be able to do it on their own.
Modeling
Tharp and Gallimore (1988) defined modeling as the “process of offering behavior for imitation”
(p. 47). Modeling served as an important means of assisting performance for my participants. They
watched me, the teacher-leader, engage with the activities in a public and vulnerable manner that
provided a demonstration for them to make meaning of. They then were able to visualize imitating
those same behaviors in their own reflections (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). I publicly reflected on my own
experiences and practices while my participants watched. I modeled reflection publicly so they were

33
able to mimic the sentence frames I used in my critical reflections, the types of questioning I asked
myself, and the overall lens in which I viewed the activity or situation with.
Brave, “Safe-ish” Spaces
When discussing a topic as traditionally taboo as cisheteronormativity in schools, it was
imperative for the participants in my study to feel that they could be transparent and honest about their
experiences. This meant that I had to foster the conditions for learning. Fostering the learning
conditions, or the environment under which my participants can access information and learn with one
another, was a key andragogical move of mine as the teacher-leader. Drawing upon the work of Arao
and Clemens (2013) and Aguilar and Cohen (2022), I intended to foster learning conditions for my
participants and me to have a learning environment somewhere between a “safe enough” space and a
“brave” space where we shared power with one another (as opposed to power over) and participated in
a conversation that was honest, no matter how challenging the issue that arose. As a teacher-leader, I
intended to utilize strategies to build a learning environment for my participants and me to engage in
critically reflective discourse. The goal for my study was to create co-constructed norms and community
agreements, address conflict and breaches of safety, recognize our spheres of influence, and identify
and mitigating dominant culture (Aguilar & Cohen, 2022; Arao & Clemens, 2013). A brave space or safe
space learning environment is different from the community of practice previously mentioned as
because I, as the teacher-leader, am taking responsibility to set and foster the conditions of learning
that may take place with my participants. On adult learning, critical reflection, and the importance of
braver spaces on both concepts, Arao and Clemens (2013) stated: “Bravery is needed because learning
necessarily involves not merely risk, but the pain of giving up a former condition in favor of a new way of
seeing things” (p. 141). On creating a learning environment that is “safe-ish” or “safe-enough” Aguilar
and Cohen stated:

34
In psychologically safe environments, people believe that if they make a mistake, others will not
penalize or think less of them for it. They also believe that others will not resent or humiliate
them when they ask for help or information. (p. 66)
I initially set out to create a brave space for my participants. However, what my study truly called for
was the facilitation of a strong holding environment. Heifetz (2009) refers to a holding environment as a
space where participants can “surface and discuss particular values, perspectives, and creative ideas
they have” (p. 155). My participants and I were very familiar with one another and had already
established strong norms as a team from our shared history of working together. I continue to believe
that a brave space is needed when engaging in the work of critically reflecting on LGBTQIA+ topics,
however due to the delimitation of my participant choice, creating a strong holding environment was
deemed more appropriate. This is further discussed in the following section about adaptive leadership.
Adaptive Leadership
Drawing on Heifetz (2009) and Brookfield (2017) I have come to define adaptive leadership as
the ability to get a team of people to see the systemic challenges in their organization as only solvable
when we are engaging in critical reflection and working to transform our deeply held beliefs about the
world while managing the loss that comes with this change. I refer to Brookfield (2017) in this definition
because my participants and I reflected on the dominant ideology, power, and hegemony that has
created many adaptive challenges as previously stated, a critically conscious element missing from the
original definition. Awareness of cisheteronormative school practices was an adaptive problem because
it required us to imagine new ways of teaching, behaving, and thinking devoid of gender or sexual
orientation. As mentioned earlier, cisheteronormativity is a dominant ideology, an inequity so
historically entrenched that treating it as a technical problem, or thinking we are solving the problem by
providing technical solutions, does not move the needle towards the long-term goal of LGBTQIA+
equality, affirmation, and celebration. Breaking out of a cisheteronormative paradigm is challenging

35
because we are entrenched in a society that, unless otherwise stated, assumes everyone is straight and
cisgendered (Sapon-Shevin, 2019). It is comfortable for many to live in this world especially when their
identities align with the dominant culture. I pushed my participants and me to give up this
cisheteronormative way of thinking throughout my study. In doing so, there existed some loss that came
as a result of this push where my adaptive leadership behaviors were imperative. On the adaptive leader
role of helping others with their experience of loss, Heifetz (2009) stated:
What people resist is not change per se, but loss. When change involves real or potential loss,
people hold on to what they have and resist the change. We suggest that the common factor
generating adaptive failure is resistance to loss. A key to leadership then, is the diagnostic
capacity to find out the kinds of losses at stake in a changing situation, from life and loved ones
to jobs, wealth, status, relevance, community, loyalty, identity, and competence. Adaptive
leadership almost always puts you in the business of assessing, managing, distributing, and
providing contexts for losses that move people through those losses to a new place. (p. 22-23)
Loss brought discomfort to my participants and me because we replaced our old mental models with
new ones and worked towards breaking free of cisheteronormativity. Adaptive leadership viewed
leadership as a “practice” instead of the commonly associated title or job (Heifetz, 2009). When my
participants and I engaged in topics of cisheteronormative school practices, I called “attention to tough
questions, drawing on people’s sense of responsibility beyond current norms and job descriptions”
(Heifetz, 2017, p. 29). When this happened, I relied on two of the many core behaviors of adaptive
leaders: (a) designing effective interventions which included getting on the balcony and keeping the
work at the center of people’s attention, and (b) orchestrating conflict by creating a holding
environment, regulating the heat and giving the work back to the people (Heifetz, 2017).

36
Designing Effective Interventions
The first step of designing an effective intervention to get others motivated to solve an adaptive
problem is to get on the balcony. Like Wergin’s (2020) mindful learning and Rodger’s (2002) idea of
presence, getting on the balcony requires a leader to take mental pictures of what is happening around
them to use in reflection at a later time (Heifetz, 2017). As the teacher-leader, it means using multiple
lenses through which to view what is happening. To get on the balcony is to ask oneself, “What patterns
do I notice?” “Is what I am noticing biased, or can I look at it in a different way?” Getting on the balcony
is a behavior utilized throughout my study that made my critical reflections stronger. When my
participants and I were engaged in conversation, it helped me notice what I was paying attention to, and
as a result what I was missing. Getting on the balcony is a strategy like the strategy Rodgers (2002)
discussed called reflection-on-action. On this type of reflection, Rodgers (2002) stated:
In fact, reflection-on-action, where the process is purposefully slowed down, coached, and
carried out in the company of others, becomes practice for reflection-in-action – an isolated, inthe-moment enterprise. It is human nature to leap to conclusions about what is happening in
any given situation – especially for teachers, who have to react quickly and almost
simultaneously to multiple events. Reflection keeps at bay this tendency to interpret and react
to events by first slowing down to see, then describing and analyzing what happened, and finally
strategizing steps for intelligent action that, once carried out, become the next experience and
fodder for the next round of reflection. (p. 234)
This type of slowing down and getting a view from afar helped me gain perspective. Perspective helped
me, the teacher-leader and facilitator, make more informed changes that were necessary to move the
team toward solving our adaptive problem. After each learning session, I took the time with myself to
voice memo and record what I noticed happening throughout the session. This allowed me to gain
perspective and have a clearer understanding about how my participants are engaging with the learning

37
to inform the planning of subsequent learning sessions. Getting on the balcony provided a way for me to
make sense of what was happening between my participants and me during the sessions. At the end of
each Cycle, I spent 1 week out of the field where I further reflected on the way my participants were
responding to the learning. I developed interpretations as to how teachers approached the adaptive
challenge at hand. Taking on and gaining perspective was crucial for my study not only for me, but for
my participants as well. Getting on the balcony was an adaptive leadership strategy that forced my
participants and I to think about the queer experience that LGBTQIA+ people have in schools. As
previously mentioned, cisheteronormative school practices are reproduced because they are historically
entrenched and when my participants and I personally gained insight into other perspectives,
specifically that of the LGBTQIA+ experience in schools, it brought a new awareness that promoted the
long-term goal of disruption of cisheteronormativity in education.
Orchestrating Conflict
Another adaptive leadership behavior I utilized is orchestrating conflict. There were different
levels of comfort surrounding the discussion of LGBTQIA+ topics in the school setting amongst my
participants and me. As mentioned earlier, this is because of the dominant ideology of
cisheteronormativity and its translation into teacher behaviors and practices. Paying attention to the
current socio-political landscape, my participants and I shared similar values and beliefs about LGBTQIA+
topics’ place in the school setting. We all agreed that this work was important as demonstrated by their
excitement to be participants and their enthusiasm that remained consistent in my study. However, I
surfaced topics that were unfamiliar to some of my participants and asked questions that my
participants have never been asked. This brought about moments of internal conflict as opposed to
group conflict in the form of disorientations. To increase our queer awareness and consciousness of
non-affirming LGBTQIA+ practices that perpetuate cisheteronormativity, my goal was to “seek out,
surface, nurture, and then carefully manage the conflict toward resolution, rather than see it as

38
something to be eliminated or neutralized,” similar to that of someone who is conducting an orchestra
of differing musicians (Heifetz, 2017, p. 151). A huge component of orchestrating conflict is the practice
of creating a holding environment with my participants. The following section details this.
A Strong Holding Environment
Relationships played a crucial role in the facilitation of a holding environment with my
participants. My relationships with my participants held much power when it came to making adaptive
changes. My participants and I had a history of working together, shared language, purpose, values, and
trust (Heifetz, 2017). My participants and I did not need to co-create new norms to help us operate.
Instead, we used the norms we established as a team at the beginning of the academic school year as
they have proven to be strong and familiar ways of being. My school site has a protocol for establishing
norms at the beginning of every school year. My team and I used the app Jamboard to answer questions
such as: “What is working with your team?” “What is not working?” “What do you need from your
team?” After silent reflection, we engaged in dialogue and concretized what these norms could look like
with sentence starters and behaviors. Before my study, all meetings between my participants and I
began with reflection on what norm we wanted to embody and what norm we wanted the team to
embody for our time together. In the middle of the year, we had a norms step back where we discussed
what changes, if any, needed to be made so that the norms reflected the state of the team. Table 3
shows the norms that were used for this study. Each norm has a title and under it, bullet points for what
this looked like, sounded like, and felt like. “Asking for help = refusing to give up,” for example, was a
norm that we personally embodied and hoped others would embody as noted in the transcripts of
Session 1. We supported one another through the unknown of the first session, asked questions, and
made attempts to try as we grappled with the LGBTQIA+-centered content together for the first time as
a group. For all these reasons, I found that fostering a strong holding environment was more

39
appropriate than the construction of a brave or safe-ish space. As previously mentioned, Heifetz (2017)
defined a holding environment as:
The ties that bind people together and enable them to maintain their collective focus on what
they are trying to do. All the sources of cohesion that offset the workforces of division and
dissolution provide a sort of containing vessel in which work can be done. (p. 155)
Outside my study, my participants and I consistently met multiple times a week both formally and
informally. We shared the same lunch time, common prep periods, and were always in conversation
with one another. The fostering of a strong holding environment created a space where there were
multiple opportunities for participants and I to engage in critically reflective discourse.
Table 3
Kindergarten Team Norms
Kindergarten team norms
KTeamSlayTeam
• Snacks and rolly chairs
• Joy, laughter, and fun
• Sharing important dates/calendar
invites
• Fun icebreakers
• “Girl, let me tell you.”
Asking for help = refusing to give up.
• Supporting each other through the
unknown.
• It’s okay to ask questions.
• “Pobodies Nerfect.”
• “I don’t know, but I will try.”
• “It’s okay, we can try again tomorrow.”
Shared power
• Take the time and space you need.
• Respect your “me time.”
• United Voices (ex. surveys)
• Anti-racist standards at the forefront
• Data is information, not competition.
• Being community-responsive is
rigorous.
• “Can you help me draft this message?”
‘Hope your day gets better”
• Tomorrow is a new day.
• We got this!
• Share the good even when it’s bad.
• Good mornings before business
• Remember to breathe.
• It’s okay to cry.
• “Do you want me to listen while you vent
or listen to help you solve your problem?”

40
As previously mentioned, school and classroom practices are biased toward heterosexual and
cisgender students that ignore and erase LGBTQIA+ identities, resulting in lower achievement outcomes
for queer students. For this study, I engaged my participants in critically reflective discourse to first
unearth these practices. To facilitate this work as the teacher-leader, I embodied elements of adaptive
leadership, used andragogical moves, and established and fostered learning conditions for my
participants. For this action research, we learned about, critically reflected on, and discussed how to
raise consciousness of cisheteronormative school practices that reproduce the dominant ideology of
cisheteronormativity that contributes to lower academic outcomes for the LGBTQIA+ community. With
adult learning in mind, my goal was to raise our queer consciousness around our own reproduction of
these cisheteronormative school practices to not only answer my action research question, but to work
towards addressing the historically entrenched inequity that exists for LGBTQIA+ people.
Actions
As presented in my conceptual framework, the intended short-term goal of my study was to get
my participants and me to raise our queer consciousness. Specifically, I intended to reflect with
participants on how we have reproduced cisheteronormativity through cisheteronormative school and
teaching practices. Using critical reflection and engaging my participants in critically reflective discourse,
I sought to get my participants and me to have a greater awareness of cisheteronormative school
practices and their effect on student outcomes. Many of the cisheteronormative school practices we
may engage in have become a normal part of our teaching practice. When we critically reflect on what
these practices are and their impact on not just LGBTQIA+ people, but all people in our school
environment, we become more likely to stop them and raise our awareness of our own role in the
reproduction of cisheteronormativity. Raising queer consciousness with the teachers on my team was
the short-term outcome of my study as part of a longer goal of addressing the historically entrenched
inequity that is the unequal academic outcomes for LGBTQIA+ identifying persons.

41
For this action plan, the learning purpose was to have my participants, the other kindergarten
teachers on my team, build their identity consciousness for gender, sex, and sexuality while examining
how we are entrenched in a cisheteronormative society. I planned weekly, one-hour meetings with each
other as a whole group for 9 weeks. Cycle 1 included Sessions 1–4, Cycle 2 included Sessions 5–6, and
Cycle 3 included Sessions 7–9. After each session, I wrote reflective memos to track my thoughts,
feelings, hunches, and how I was making sense of the learning sessions I facilitated with my participants.
At the end of each Cycle, I also wrote analytical memos which informed the subsequent Cycle’s sessions.
I also wrote and recorded analytic memos after each session that were transcribed later into notes for
data analysis. These analytic memos served to reflect on the session as a facilitator and adaptive leader.
In between each Cycle, I conducted in-the-field analysis via critical reflection as noted in Table 4. For me,
critical reflection served to gather data about my adaptive leadership behaviors, the learning
environment, and our conversations about the content. In the Research Methods section that follows,
more details will be provided on how I operationalized this concept. Critical reflection is also the tool I
used to analyze my power, position, biases, and assumptions that surfaced throughout my study. I wrote
one critical reflection per Cycle, totaling three critical reflections throughout the 3-month study. Each
critical reflection was written out of the field at the conclusion of each Cycle of my action plan. Drawing
on Coghlan (2019), Brookfield (2017), and Wergin (2020) I used a set of standard reflection questions at
the end of each Cycle that guided my critical reflections:
1. Did I succeed in carrying out the planned actions? If not, why?
2. What have I learned about myself, my skills, my attitudes, my power, my biases, and so on?
3. Given that we are discussing LGBTQIA+ topics, did my positionality as a queer person of color
have an impact on my actions or participants in any way? If so, how?
4. What new understandings, if any, did I gain?
5. What actions will I start, stop, try, and continue next time I am engaging with my participants?

42
Through these critical reflections, I ensured I was examining the role of power throughout my study to
combat biases. To do so, I enlisted Aguilar and Cohen’s (2022) questions on how to navigate and source
power. These critical reflection questions can be seen in Table 4 at the end of each Cycle and were
utilized to further facilitate critical reflection during my study. The study was organized into three
phases. During the first Cycle of my action plan, the learning objectives were centered around becoming
familiar with the terminology and complex gender and sexual identities that existed within the
LGBTQIA+ community. In this stage, we reviewed our already established norms (see Table 3), named
our own identities for ourselves, and engaged in critically reflective discourse around the messages we
have received about gender and sexual identities. The aim of this Cycle was to begin building identity
consciousness for gender, sex, and sexual orientation. We discussed our familiarities with this topic and
the new understandings that we gained because of our reflections. Drawing on Talusan’s (2022) work on
identity-conscious practice, activities in this stage helped guide reflection on our relationship to gender
and sexual orientation. This was imperative to lay the foundation for the Cycles to follow. This reflection
had to come first before we began to think about students’ identities, examining our organization's
acceptance of LGTBQIA+, and cisheteronormative practices that influence those attitudes (Talusan,
2022).
During the second phase, or Cycle 2, we focused on the idea of cisheteronormativity and
developing our collective knowledge of common cisheteronormative practices. We reflected on
cisheteronormative assumptions and transgressions from the student perspective. I used Talusan’s
(2022) questions to illuminate what the LGBTQIA+ experience is like for students who were on the
receiving end of cisheteronormative practices.
The final Cycle was focused on orienting ourselves towards reflection on our own teaching
practices and how to use critical reflection as a tool to do so. I modeled this for my participants, and we
engaged in critically reflective discourse using the descriptive, comparative, and critical reflection

43
questions presented in Jay and Johnson’s (2002) typology. We discussed why this work is challenging for
educators and then reflected on what strategies we may be able to use to potentially combat and
disrupt cisheteronormativity in our practices, the long-term outcome toward addressing the historically
entrenched inequality. By the end of all three Cycles, I hoped for my participants and me to have a
greater queer awareness and consciousness, especially that of cisheteronormative practices in schools.
Table 4
Action Plan for Teacher-Leader
Objectives Activities Progress indicators
Cycle 1: Building identity-consciousness for gender and sexual orientation
Setting: weekly 1-hour meetings (3 weeks)
Objectives Activities Progress indicators
Session 1: Participants will be able to
understand the presented
problem of practice and
historically entrenched inequity
for LGBTQIA+ people.
1. Review team norms
2. Reflect on LGBTQIA+
professional development at
our school site
3. Establish purpose of the
action research study
4. Reflect on where we see
ourselves and our school site
in relation to the historically
entrenched inequity
Participants recalled the
purpose of the study.
Participants reflect on their
proximity to the stated
problem of practice within
local context.
Session 2: Participants will be able to
define and describe their own
identities across the sexuality and
gender spectrum. Participants
can distinguish gender identity
from sexuality.
1. Check-in and review norms
2. Genderbread activity
3. Individual Reflection
4. Whole group reflection
5. Closing
Participants will begin to
name, use, discuss, and
reference identities across
the gender and sexuality
spectrum.
Session 3: Participants will build
identity-consciousness about
sexual orientation.
1. Check-in and review norms
2. Building self-awareness of
sexual orientation activity
3. Individual reflection
4. Whole group reflection
5. Closing
Participants recalled their
proximity to various sexual
identities through
reflection and discussion.
Andragogical moves Data collection In-the-field analysis

44
Objectives Activities Progress indicators
Session 1–3 andragogical
moves: examination of power,
holding environment, decoding
language
Session 1–3 data collection:
jottings transcribed notes of
recorded session via Otter.ai,
and documents (i.e.,
meeting agendas, instructor
guides, feedback surveys,
reflective memos
Week 4 in-the-field
progress analysis (wrote
one analytic memo using
questions below)
What have I learned about
myself, my skills, my
attitudes, my power, my
biases, and so on? How
do I know?
Given that we are
discussing LGBTQIA+
topics, did my positionality
as a Queer person of color
have impact on my actions
or participants in any way?
If so, how?
What new understandings,
if any, did I gain?
What actions will I start,
stop, try, and continue
next time I am engaging
with my participants?
Cycle 2: Using awareness of cisnormativity and heteronormativity to understand queer experience in
schools
Setting: weekly 1-hour meetings (3 weeks)
Session 4: Participants will build
identity-consciousness about
gender.
1. Check-in and review norms
2. Building self-awareness of
gender activity
3. Individual reflection
4. Whole group reflection
5. Closing
Participants recalled their
proximity to various
gender identities through
reflection and discussion.
Session 5: Participants will
understand cisnormativity and
heteronormativity and their
manifestation in the school
context
1. Check-in and norms
2. Watch video “What LGBT
students want you to know”
3. Decoding the term
cisnormativity and
heteronormativity
4. Individual reflection
5. Whole group reflection
6. Closing
Participants shared current
understandings of
cisnormativity and
heteronormativity.
Participants discussed
common ways
cisnormativity and
heteronormativity
manifest in school and
classroom setting.

45
Objectives Activities Progress indicators
Session 6: Participants will
understand fear and its impact on
addressing cisnormative and
heteronormative school practices
1. Check-in and norms
2. Discussion of fear
3. Individual reflection
4. Whole group reflection
5. Closing
Participants shared
reflections on fear that is
most salient for them and
its impact on addressing
cisnormativity and
heteronormativity in
school and classroom
context.
Andragogical moves Data collection In-the-field analysis
Session 4–6 andragogical
moves: modeling, fostering a
holding environment, regulating
distress
Session 4–6 data collection:
jottings transcribed notes of
recorded session via Otter.ai,
and documents (i.e.,
meeting agendas, instructor
guides, feedback surveys,
reflective memos
Week 8 in-the-field progress
analysis (wrote one
analytic memo, one
reflective memo, and one
critical reflection using
questions from Week 4)
Cycle 3: Reflecting on our practice, raising awareness, and moving toward disruption
Setting: weekly 1-hour meetings (3 weeks)
Session 7: Participants will
understand critical reflection as a
tool to build queer consciousness.
1. Check-in and norms
2. Model critical reflection
3. Guided practice
4. Whole group reflection
5. Closing
Participants answered
critical reflection
questions from
comparative and
descriptive dimensions.
Session 8: Participants will
understand critical reflection as a
tool to build queer consciousness.
1. Check-in and norms
2. Model critical reflection
3. Guided practice
4. Individual reflection
5. Whole group reflection
6. Closing
Participants answered
critical reflection
questions from critical
dimension.
Session 9: Participants will assess
their role as teachers to use
queer consciousness to disrupt
and combat cisnormative and
heteronormative school and
classroom practices.
1. Check-in and norms
2. Scenario and role-play
3. Individual reflection
4. Whole group reflection
5. Closing study
Participants shared current
understanding of different
strategies to combat and
disrupt cisnormativity and
heteronormativity.
Andragogical moves Data collection In-the-field analysis
Sessions 7–9 teacher moves:
regulated distress, modeling,
decoding language, orchestrating
conflict
Session 7–9 data collection:
jottings transcribed notes of
recorded session via Otter.ai,
and documents (i.e.,
meeting agendas, instructor
guides, feedback surveys,
reflective memos
Week 12 in-the-field
progress analysis (wrote
one analytic memo, one
reflective memo, and one
critical reflection using
questions from Week 4)

46
Research Methods
The purpose of my action research was to raise queer consciousness. Ultimately, through a
raised queer consciousness, I hoped to combat the cisheteronormative practices that existed at my
school site by engaging my participants in critical reflection to interrogate our instructional practices.
Action research was the necessary means to conduct my study. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) defined
action research as research that
Not only seeks to understand how participants make meaning or interpret a particular
phenomenon or problem in their workplace, community, or practice, but it also usually seeks to
engage participants at some level in the process in order to solve a practical problem. (p. 49)
For my action research, I was the primary research instrument for data collection and analysis. Due to
the nature of my research question, engagement with my peers, a qualitative approach was most
appropriate for this action research (Lochmiller & Lester, 2017). This section will detail the research
design for this qualitative action research.
Participants and Setting
This study took place in the Fall of 2023 at my school site with three other kindergarten teachers
on my team. My sample included myself (a queer, multi-racial, cisgendered male) and three other
teachers. Together we make up the kindergarten team at BW Charter School. I am the department chair
and grade-level lead at my school site. As part of my role, I planned grade-level meetings that impact the
other kindergarten teachers and all kindergarten students. Leading the kindergarten teaching team gave
me positional power, or natural power simply given to me via the name and title of my role (Aguilar &
Cohen, 2022). Working in an elementary school setting I regularly participated in professional learning
communities (PLC) meetings and whole-staff professional development sessions many times a week. My
school site context gave me a convenient setting to conduct my action research. My sample was
convenient and included participants who I had the most proximity to (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).

47
The participants I chose are my co-workers and whom I regularly engaged in work-related meetings
with. As such, they were best positioned to engage with me as I worked with them to learn and uncover
cisheteronormativity in our organization.
Participants
The kindergarten teachers at my school site, as seen in my conceptual framework, were the
participants of this study. As the teacher-leader, I utilized the ways of knowing before and throughout
my study to surface how best to work with my participants. Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano (2017)
stated the four different ways of knowing: self-transforming knowers, instrumental knowers, selfauthoring knowers, and socializing knowers. I used this typology to facilitate and support the learning of
my three participants. The key characteristics of my participants, including me, can be seen in Table 5.
Table 5
Key Characteristics of Participants
Pseudonym Pronouns Gender
identity
Sexual
orientation
Race/
ethnicity
Type of knower
Kris He/him Cisgender male Queer Multi-racial Self-authoring
Nica She/her Cisgender female Heterosexual Latina Instrumental
Gail She/her Cisgender female Heterosexual Latina Instrumental
Ilia She/they Non-binary Bisexual Hispanic Instrumental

48
Nica, a pseudonym, was my first participant. At the time of this study, she had been a
kindergarten teacher at my school site for 10 years. Of the three participants, Nica and I have the
strongest relationship due to the length of our shared history of working together on the kindergarten
team. At the time of the study, Nica co-led the kindergarten team with me. My next participant was Gail,
a pseudonym. Gail was my student teacher from 2020-2021 academic year before she was placed into
her own classroom as a lead kindergarten teacher at my school site. As Gail’s previous mentor teacher
and coach, I held positional, informational, and expertise power over her (Aguilar & Cohen, 2022). This
was something I stayed mindful of throughout my study. My last participant Ilia, a pseudonym, was the
newest kindergarten teacher at my school site. At the time of my study, she was in her 2nd year as a
kindergarten teacher.
Before my study, I had anecdotal evidence to name Nica, Ilia, and Gail as instrumental knowers.
This way of knowing is categorized as having “the capacity to understand and consider others’
experiences and perspectives,” while also needing “external approval that can complicate teaching and
leadership for social justice” (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017, p. 469). All participants had
shown me through informal conversations with their students, student’s parents, and other teachers at
our school that they were driven by other people’s opinions, and these guided their behaviors, practices,
and decisions at work. Both Nica and Ilia have communicated to me via dialogue in our weekly meetings,
formal and informal conversations, that they wanted to know the best way to do something and have
benefitted through adult models. Before the study, Gail, Nica, and Ilia had approached me multiple
times to ask for advice if their situation with a student or parent was the right decision. My assumption
was there was a need for validation, a need important to instrumental knowers (Drago-Severson &
Blum-DeStefano, 2017). All three participants expressed a desire to make changes to their instructional
practices to be more social justice oriented. In the past we have bought books, internalized lesson plans
together, and modeled how to handle a tough conversation surrounding race and equity with students’

49
parents and kindergarteners. This demonstrated a commitment to social justice work, another trait of
instrumental knowers (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017). Before this study I believed I knew the
salient identities of all of my participants. Before the study I assumed that I was the only person who
had a personal stake in my action research. As our holding environment strengthened, and as a result of
the unfolding of group conversations about gender, sex, and sexuality in the study Ilia disclosed their
queer identity markers as seen in Table 5. This moment is detailed further in the findings section. From
these formal and informal observations from my time spent with my participants before the study, I
believed engaging in personal critical reflection, critically reflective discourse, and other activities
previously mentioned in Table 4 would push my learners to grow beyond instrumental learning.
Setting of Actions
The setting of my study was at BW Elementary School. BW Elementary is a school that believes
team is what makes students successful. One of my school site’s strengths was the structure of
horizontal alignment. This meant my participants and I spent most of our weeks together in meetings,
planning periods, and breaks and lunches due to our identical daily schedules. Every Monday, students
are dismissed early so that teachers can meet from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. During this period there are
regularly scheduled whole staff professional development and department/grade-level meetings. Before
my study, I planned to meet on Mondays during this time. After hearing feedback from my participants,
we changed the weekly meeting date to Thursday mornings at 7 a.m. Participants expressed a desire to
come to sessions fresh instead of meeting after a full day of teaching where our energy is not the same.
The change was made before the commencement of the study, and we found throughout our time
together that starting our mornings together brought us much joy. Space to meet was limited at my
school site. We decided as a group that we would meet in the teacher workroom where we normally
have our weekly meetings. We found that it was the best place to meet as there were no student or

50
staff interruptions. We met behind closed doors which allowed for a quiet, focused, private discussion
with one another, important for the fostering of a strong holding environment (Heifetz, 2009).
Data Collection, Instruments, and Protocols
As the primary research instrument, I collected my own data for my action research. This data
allowed me to analyze how my participants and I made progress toward answering the research
question: How do I engage with elementary school teachers in critical reflection to increase our
consciousness of and disrupt cisheteronormative practices in schools? Data included my own critical
reflections in and out of the field, transcripts from sessions with my participants, fieldnotes synthesized
from jottings during our weekly sessions, and other resources used in our activities listed in Table 4.
Documents and Artifacts
Throughout my study my participants and I used many documents and artifacts that helped us
engage with the content surrounding cisheteronormative school practices. Merriam and Tisdell (2016)
discussed artifacts when determining how to mine for data:
Document is often used as an umbrella term to refer to a wide range of written, visual, digital,
and physical material relevant to the study (including visual images). Artifacts are usually threedimensional physical “things” or objects in the environment that represent some form of
communication that is meaningful to participants and/ or the setting. (p. 162)
These served as evidence of how I supported my colleagues and facilitated their learning to become
aware of cisheteronormativity. Each type of document and/or artifact is explained further in the
sections that follow.
Meeting Agendas. I created weekly agendas that guided our learning for each session. Each
participant received their own agenda, so they were able to capture their reflections, thoughts, and any
notes they wanted to take. There were nine agendas in total for the entire study. The agendas always
had our learning outcomes for each session printed on them. My participants and I visited the learning

51
outcomes at the start of the session to preview the work ahead and again at the conclusion of the
session as we assessed and measured our progress on our learning towards those outcomes (Aguilar &
Cohen, 2022). By reflecting on our learning outcomes and goals at the end of the session, participants
have an opportunity to make meaning of the whole learning experience (Fink, 2013). The meeting
agendas outlined the activities we engaged with to build participants’ knowledge and skills toward our
learning outcomes. The meeting agendas consistently had all reflection and discussion questions asked
by the facilitator throughout the session as well as space to write those reflections. This was so that
participants were better able to access the content in a way that facilitates their learning and honored
different types of processing of the material (Warford, 2011).
Visual Documents. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) defined visual documents as anything that is
“film, video, photography, and web-based media” (p. 168). In Session 1 my participants and I used
Killerman’s (2013) Genderbread person image that participants used to unpack their own personal
identities along the gender and sexuality spectrum (See Appendix A). Participants were encouraged to
bring these each time we met as it had definitions of the most updated LGBTQIA+ identities reinforced
the separation of gender, sex, and sexual orientation. The Genderbread Person activity acted as a
helpful reference throughout our time together. In Cycle 2, participants and I started some sessions off
by watching videos from YouTube. The goal of watching these videos together was to prime participants
for the session that followed, outlined in my action plan in Table 4.
Reflective Tools for Participants. In Talusan’s (2022) work on promoting identity-conscious
habits and skills in educators, reproducibles are provided as tools for promoting reflection. These
reproducibles inspired activities and served as a channel for individual reflection before engaging in
critically reflective discourse. They used questioning and scenarios role-play to capture participants’
thoughts, ideas, and reflections. These activities helped promote self-assistance, or reflection on prior
experiences, beliefs, and assumptions that meet my participants ZPTD as mentioned previously in my

52
conceptual framework (Warford, 2011). These activities were scaffolded opportunities for critical
reflection as participants were often asked to interrogate their beliefs and assumptions about their own
identities (Brookfield, 2016). These reproducibles helped gauge our own awareness of these LGBTQIA+
topics and promoted reflection that further surfaced our biases, assumptions, and beliefs about
sexuality and gender. This was a necessary starting point for my study.
Critical Reflections. Critical reflections were collected throughout the study and used as data
points. As previously mentioned in my conceptual framework, I have defined critical reflection as looking
back on our experiences and critiquing them by unveiling power in the form of dominant ideology while
illuminating and challenging our deeply held hegemonic assumptions (Brookfield, 2017; Wergin, 2020).
Critical reflections were written at the conclusion of each Cycle during the in-the-field analysis weeks
(See Table 4) totaling three critical reflections throughout the entire study. Drawing on Coghlan (2019),
Brookfield (2017), and Wergin (2020), I planned to use a set of standard prompts to guide the writing of
my critical reflections. It should be noted that this plan did not account for all additional reflections that
took place upon experiencing a disorienting dilemma, or when an emotional response to a situation
brought about strong emotions because the situation did not fit within any of my mental models
(Wergin, 2020). At the time of my study, these moments were unpredictable. To support this, reflective
memos were written at the end of each session to be used to inform the end of Cycle critical reflection.
Writing critical reflections enabled me to interrogate my power, positionality, and identity. It was also a
space to capture my role in reproducing dominant culture. This type of reflection brought about a
greater understanding of what was promoting or hindering progress towards our learning outcomes
(Brookfield, 2017).
Audio Recordings
All sessions were recorded with the permission of participants. These audio recordings were
captured using Otter.ai transcribing software application. To not distract and be as present as possible, I

53
recorded all sessions and transcribed that data. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) discussed how the practice
of audio recording ensures that everything is captured for later analysis, a technique that also maximizes
the credibility of the findings. Errors, typos, and mistranslated words in the transcribing process were
assumed when utilizing this software. To combat this, careful attention was placed to review and edit
any mistakes made by the software to ensure that participant’s thoughts and words were accurately
captured. I will note, however, that audio recordings only captured the verbal discussion taking place
and not the body language and facial reactions of the group. In these instances, my observer’s
comments during the session were crucial to capturing the essence of each session. This is discussed
more in the following section.
Observational Data
Observational data was critical for assessing whether progress was being made towards
achieving our learning outcomes. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) stressed the importance of observational
data. Capturing this type of data gave me the ability to witness the richness of observational data
unfolding firsthand and later triangulate findings (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Paying attention to what is
happening in my sessions and jotting down my thoughts as an observer later turned into my fieldnotes,
which was also used as observational data (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Merriam and Tisdell (2016) defined observational data as “what is written down or mechanically
recorded from a period of observation that becomes the raw data from which a study’s findings
eventually emerge” (p. 149). As my participants and I engaged in activities and in critically reflective
discourse, I used jottings to write quick notes. I used a fieldnotes journal where all my notes and jottings
lived. Having a central location for fieldnotes allowed me, as the primary instrument for data collection,
to stay organized. During sessions, I wrote notes on my own copy of the meeting agenda that was also
included in my fieldnotes journal. The descriptive part of my fieldnotes included low inference
descriptions and allows others to feel as if they are in the room with me by including drawings of the

54
physical space, using time stamps, and providing direct quotations (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Fieldnotes
also include observer’s comments, where I captured my “feelings, reactions, hunches, initial
interpretations, speculations, and working hypotheses” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 151). These
observer’s comments were later digitized and inserted into the corresponding session’s transcripts. As
such, my fieldnotes included both descriptive and reflective elements. The fieldnotes captured
observations of body language, what was said and what was not said during my sessions. In these
observations, I paid attention to not only how we were making progress towards our learning outcomes
in the session, but also how I fostered the learning conditions and embodied the adaptive leadership
behaviors and andragogical moves previously mentioned in my conceptual framework.
Data Analysis
After organizing fieldnotes, jottings, and recordings, it was time to begin the process of
illuminating findings, or what Bogdan and Biklen (2007) called data analysis. The nature of qualitative
action research called for simultaneous processes of data collection and analysis. The study was
emergent by design so impressions about what was transpiring were constantly changed. Ongoing
analysis took place in the form of end of Cycle critical reflections and reflective and analytical memos. I
used this analysis at the end of each Cycle to inform the subsequent sessions. Doing so meant that data
collection and analysis were happening simultaneously. This action research was an iterative process as
data about my facilitation with my participants was being informed, analyzed, and changed through
analysis in real time (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
All jottings turned into descriptive fieldnotes, observer’s comments, transcribed audio
recordings from sessions, memos (analytical and reflective), and critical reflections were transferred to
ATLAS.ti, a data analysis software. Data analysis for my study included categorizing and coding. It forced
me to practice “having a conversation with the data – asking questions of it and making comments to it”
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I used a cyclical step-by-step process presented by Merriam and Tisdell (2016)

55
that “includes naming the categories, determining the number of categories, and figuring out systems
for placing data into categories” (p. 236). I generated a list of a priori codes created from concepts
defined in my conceptual framework and research question. These a priori codes were turned into a
codebook where they were given a shorthand code name and defined. Having this codebook proved
helpful to analysis as it pushed me to review the data and reflect on the coding accuracy. After the
generation of my codebook, coding and labeling the data began. Essentially, I looked for patterns
throughout the data and labeled it with a code that elicited hunches to be used to inform my findings.
There were two phases of coding that took place. Drawing on Harding (2013) and Merriam and Tisdell
(2016), the first phase of coding entailed 3 weeks of intense coding and analysis. First, I read the entire
Cycle’s transcripts and openly coded by highlighting, annotating words or phrases that I believed to be
useful segments (Harding, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). At this stage, I was open to coding anything
that may be relevant to my study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Second, I used my codebook side-by-side
with my data to assign already established a priori codes to sections of the transcripts. Lastly, I wrote a
memo about what my hunches were for the entire Cycle. I repeated these three steps for each Cycle’s
data set.
Phase 2 of data analysis lasted 2 weeks. Being so familiar with the data, I looked at the codes
that had “counts” or the number of instances the code, and corresponding phenomena, occurred. I
refined my code list in this phase, adding subcodes and created new, sometimes emergent categories
(Harding, 2013). There were also some a priori codes that did not show up in the data set. Some codes
had a count of zero and were removed as they did not impact the findings. Some codes had a count of
zero but had implications for findings. This can be seen, for example, when I found zero instances of my
participants and I working toward a brave space, as mentioned previously in my conceptual framework.
Implications for coding this concept 0 times is discussed further in the findings section.

56
During both rounds of coding, analytic tools were used to begin to make sense of the patterns,
themes, and concepts I found (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). The following analytic tools supported the
coding and data analysis process: the use of questioning, making comparisons, looking at emotions that
are expressed, and asking “so what?” (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). Asking questions allowed me to take on
the perspective of other participants to understand the problem of practice from their vantage point
(Corbin & Strauss). Making comparisons and looking at emotions allowed me to examine my own biases
and assumptions while noticing patterns and implications of humor and fear discussed further in the
findings section (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). Finally, asking the question “so what” when coding and
interacting with my data allowed me to refine codes and look deeper at the meaning of the codes that
were assigned to the transcripts (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).
At the end of data analysis, which involved many weeks and many phases of reading and coding
data, I wrote an initial reflective memo about what I believed transpired throughout my study. I looked
at the code counts and instances where concepts and patterns frequently occurred to begin developing
findings. Data analysis not only informed what was happening between me, my participants, and the
content we engaged with, it also informed the “how” regarding my actions and observations as a
teacher-leader and facilitator of adult learning (Merriam & Tisdell).
Limitations and Delimitations
One limitation of the study was the amount of time allotted to complete the action research.
The study was time bound, only allowing for 9 weekly one-hour sessions that prevented participants and
me from being able to dive deeper into content. It was assumed that the activities, reflection, and
discussion for the sessions designed in my action plan could be completed to fidelity within 60 minutes.
This assumption was proved wrong. Another limitation is that findings from this action research are
reserved to the local context in which I work, as action research is not necessarily generalizability
outside my local context.

57
On how theory and the construction of conceptual frameworks may delimit our study, Maxwell
(2013) stated “Theory that brightly illuminates one area will leave other areas in darkness; no theory can
illuminate everything” (p. 50). In choosing to critically reflect on cisheteronormativity, as mentioned in
my conceptual framework, I have chosen to embed reflection and discussion on both cisnormativity and
heteronormativity all into one study. By including both elements, I am perpetuating the harmful
assumption that the approach to combating and disrupting both should be uniform. This is further
explored in the findings section. Another delimitation is the role of the participants I chose to work with.
Because I chose other kindergarten teachers as my participants, this in turn spotlighted more
opportunities for gender reflection as opposed to sexual orientation due to the age range of the
students we interacted with daily. The focus on kindergarten teachers excluded many other ages and
teachers of other grades even though the study was done in an “elementary setting.”
Credibility and Trustworthiness
Merriam and Tisdell (2016) stated that internal validity, or credibility, is how the findings from
the research study match up to a reality where the practitioner-scholar is observing what they believe
they are measuring. This subsection details ways in which I increased the credibility of the study.
Throughout the study, I asked my participants and myself to reflect on our teaching practices. I also
conducted observations with those same participants during our sessions together. Given my identity as
a queer teacher who felt strongly about building queer consciousness and awareness of
cisheteronormativity in schools, I was initially aware that my study had potential for instances of bias in
both how I gathered and analyzed the data. Triangulation through multiple sources of data was one key
strategy to maximize credibility (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I used observational data, personal critical
reflections, and other documents produced from our sessions as several means of gathering information
to triangulate which further increased the credibility of my research.

58
Additionally, reflexivity, where I discussed how the research process is not only being affected
by me but affecting me personally, was a credibility strategy used throughout this study (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). Aside from being data sources, my three critical reflections and weekly reflective memos
both served as important tools in my research study. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) named this strategy
“researcher’s position,” or “reflexivity,” where the practitioner-scholar journals assumptions, beliefs,
and experiences throughout the research process (p. 249). I regularly considered power dynamics and
the perpetuation of dominant forces during the research process to combat biases. I am the key
instrument of data collection, and my positionality and biases influenced many aspects of the study.
Through peer review, or weekly discussions with my chair who served as my critical friend, I could better
combat some of the “biases and misunderstanding” of what I observed (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 246;
Wergin, 2020).
Ethics
Herr and Anderson (2015) mentioned that “action research is fundamentally about questioning
the status quo and working toward change. We assume there are risks in this and depending on one’s
location, they will be experienced differently” (p. 151). Knowing this, I remained vigilant about
cultivating relationships with my participants and fostered the holding environment for my participants.
I also provided strong framing for each session to ensure my participants knew I was not operating
under a deficit-oriented mindset in relation to them, which could have led to them feeling judged and
diminish our established trust. Everything participants and I discussed remained within the setting of the
session and was not shared with anyone outside the scope of the study to continue to foster trust as
well.
Glesne (2011) wrote about how informed consent “can contribute to the empowering of
research participants” (p. 166). Transparency with my participants from the start was key. Throughout
the study I remained open with my participants about what my study was about and how I intended on

59
using the data I gathered from our interactions together. I believed and still believe that being open and
honest with my participants not only at the beginning but throughout the research process acted as an
audit to ensure that relationships were being maintained and boundaries respected. I resonated with
Glesne’s (2011) idea of the researcher needing a “lens of hospitality” when considering cultural
sensitivity in the research process (p. 180). My participants had a wealth of knowledge to offer and
showing respect, looking and listening, being cautious, and continuously reminding them that I am not
the only holder of knowledge served to “equalize power” in our relationships (Glesne, 2011, p. 180).
Findings
In the following section, I discuss my findings to my research question: How do I engage with
elementary school teachers in critical reflection to increase our consciousness of cisheteronormative
practices in schools? This section will answer my research question by describing and analyzing how my
learner’s demonstrated growth, and how I developed as the facilitator of adult learning. This chapter
will be divided into 3 sections. The first section discusses the progress my participants and I made
toward raising our queer consciousness. The next section illuminates how fear was the elephant in the
room for my participants throughout the study. The third section discusses how I orchestrated conflict
as facilitator of adult learning, as mentioned in my conceptual framework. The subsections of
orchestrating conflict detail the need to regulate distress, foster the holding environment, and use
humor to lower the heat in my study and its impact on adult learning. Lastly, I close this section with
missed opportunities for this study and my reflections about where I could have combated conflation of
gender, sex, and sexuality.
Increased Awareness of Cisheteronormativity
In my conceptual framework, I argued that critical reflection would be how elementary school
teachers combat cisheteronormative school practices. As mentioned previously, educator reflection and

60
awareness of cisheteronormative practices in schools are key to actualizing the disruption of
cisheteronormativity in schools (Greytak et al., 2016; Hanson, 2019; Sadowski, 2019).
I found that participants grew in their ability to recognize what a cisheteronormative practice looks,
sounds, and feels like both inside and outside the school setting. Drawing on Airton (2019) and SaponShevin (2019), I contend that an increased consciousness of cisheteronormativity and
cisheteronormative school practices can be exhibited by adults through evidence of one of four main
abilities as previously mentioned. Table 6 demonstrates instances where each participant showcased
one of the four main abilities, indicating both collective and individual-raised queer consciousness. A
count was created each time a participant showed evidence where they familiarized themselves with
language, paid attention to the reproduction of cisheteronormativity, identified a hot spot, or took
action to combat, address, or disrupt a hotspot. Nica, Gail, and Ilia increased their abilities to define
queer consciousness as seen in the rising counts for each participant across all three Cycles.
Table 6
Evidence of Increased Queer Consciousness
Participant Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Cycle 3
Nica 9 13 18
Gail 10 11 17
Ilia 15 20 24
Totals: 34 44 59

61
I supported my learners to develop an increased consciousness of cisheteronormativity through
the andragogical move of questioning. In each session in every Cycle, I used questioning as a strategy to
“raise the temperature” (Heifetz, 2009) and push my participants to reflect in ways that they may have
never reflected before which helped draw attention to how cisheteronormativity is so present in the air
we breathe at school, resulting in my learners demonstrating one of the previously mentioned four
raised queer consciousness abilities.
Facilitator Questioning as an Andragogical Move
Questioning was found to be a major form of assistance for my participants that helped raise
their queer consciousness. Table 7 displays all questions posed to participants in each session
throughout my study. For each participant, this was the first time they had engaged with many of these
types of questions. I opened each session with a check-in question. Table 7 shows that in Sessions 1 and
3, check-in questions served to elicit joy and foster relationship building in the form of an icebreaker.
Sessions 4, 6, 8, and 9 check-in questions were related to feelings that served to be a pulse check to
better understand participants’ moods or attitudes about something (Aguilar & Cohen, 2022). Sessions
2, 5, and 7 had check-in questions related to emotions and the content that was engaged within that
session and served as a preview that activated participants' prior knowledge to be used later in that
session. Every session was intentionally designed with a check-in question to engage my participants'
emotions and build our collective emotional intelligence (Aguilar & Cohen, 2022). The professional
learning space was productive and effective when I used this type of questioning at the beginning of a
session as it fostered greater individual self-awareness and allowed my participants to actively listen and
empathize with each other (Aguilar & Cohen, 2022). Check-in questions also serve to create
psychological safety to foster a holding environment that is discussed further in the subsequent sections
(Aguilar & Cohen, 2022)

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Table 7
Discussion and Reflection Questions by Sessions
Session Questions asked by the facilitator
1 (Check-in) What is something that you enjoy learning about? What is something you want
to learn more about? Which already established norms do we carry over to this new
learning space? Which ones are most valuable? Do we need to add any more to our
dialogue with one another? Looking at the action research study, how, if at all, do you
think our time together could contribute to the work mentioned in our school’s mission
statement?
2 (Check-in) What do you feel is your most salient identity? Please share what, if any, new
understandings about gender and sexuality concepts were generated because of this
activity. After reflecting on your use of gender and sexuality terminology, what, if any,
are some distinctions among these concepts that have become clearer to you? Why?
3 (Check-in) Fortune Cookie fun question activity (Gail was asked: What's the best dish you
can cook? Nica was asked: Your Fairy Godmother has just granted you three wishes,
what do you wish for? Ilia was asked: What's your favorite superhero? Kris was asked:
What is one thing about yourself that you are most proud of? What, if any, were the
earliest messages I received about sexual orientation? What aspects, if any, of this topic
might be difficult for me to discuss? What role, if any, do I have in addressing issues of
sexual orientation as an educator?
4 (Check-in) What wonderings, lingering thoughts, feelings, and/or reflections do you have
from last week's session? How, if at all, have definitions of gender changed or shifted
since I first learned about gender? What issues, if any, related to gender show up in my
interactions with others? (in and out of the classroom) How, if at all, do I empower and
support my students regarding their gender identity? What, if any, aspects of this topic
might be challenging to discuss?
5 (Check-In) Because we have not met in a while, how, if at all, has what we have been
learning in our sessions together come up for you since our last meeting? How did
cisheteronormativity live in this video? Scenario questions: “What would you do?”
“What emotions or reactions came up for you as you read the scenario” “How would
you react in this scenario?
6 (Check-In) How was the learning space for you during our identity-conscious whole-staff
professional development this week? “Which, if any, is a fear that you connect with the
most? Scenario questions: What would you say? How would you respond?

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7 (Check-In) How, if at all, did topics we have been discussing in our session come up during
your vacation/ break? What stands out to you, if anything, about reflection/ critical
reflection? Which type of, if any, reflection do you think depicts our school site?
Which type of, if any, reflection do you hope to embody? Homework Questions: What is
happening? What is the disorienting dilemma? How am I feeling? What am I pleased
and/ or concerned about? What do I not understand? Does this relate to any of my
stated goals, and to what extent are they being met?
8 (Check-In) How did it feel to do the pre-work and describe your disorienting dilemma?
What, if anything, came up for you when first describing the situation?
Comparative Dimension Reflection Questions: What are alternative views of what is
happening? How would (another person involved or not directly involved) explain what
is happening? (Think about identities and positions of power). How, if at all, can I
improve what is not working? If there is a goal, what are some ways of accomplishing it?
How do other people accomplish this goal?
9 Show a visual roadmap of where we have been as a learning community and ask
participants: What emotions came up for you when looking at our roadmap? What was
that process like for you to do all three parts of all three different dimensions of the
critical reflection? How if at all, did we accomplish this research? So just take a second
to think, if at all. What specific evidence Have you seen in the past 9 weeks that we
make towards if at all accomplishing this research question or answering the research
question?
1–9 All sessions ended with the following questions: How, if at all, did we make progress
toward our learning outcomes for the session? Where, if at all, did you feel the most
connected/ distant during our learning today?
Table 8 illustrates all of the questions I used with my participants each session. Probing
questions were the third most used question as seen in Table 8 (19 instances). Probing questions were
used to follow up with my participants about something they said that I needed their elaboration on
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Some examples of probing questions I used were, “What would you say? And
“How would you respond?” and “How did that feel?” Assessment questions were the second most used
throughout each session (21 instances). Some examples of assessment questions I used were, “How, if
at all, did we make progress toward our learning outcomes for the session?” and “Where, if at all, did
you feel the most connected/ distant during our learning today?” Assessment questions were asked

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specifically at the end of each session and provided a tool for participants to make sense of their
learning and to offer feedback to me as the facilitator (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). Assisting questions
were the most used questions throughout my study (36 instances). Assisting questions were designed
and written in my action plan to be open-ended types of questions to elicit richer discussion and
promote reflection in each session (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Some examples of assisting questions I
asked my participants were, “How, if at all, do I empower and support my students regarding their
gender identity?” and “What, if any, aspects of this topic might be challenging to discuss?” and “What, if
any, were the earliest messages I received about sexual orientation?” This study called for rich
descriptions of participants’ experiences, thoughts, and reflections which were promoted by assisting
questions. Hypothetical, interpretive, and ideal position questions were types of assisting questions that
were borrowed from qualitative methodology guidelines in every session which provided more detail
and more descriptive data (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Hypothetical, interpretive, and ideal position
questions were included in the total counts of assisting questions as seen in Table 8. In total, there were
36 instances where I used assisting questions to get my participants to experience disorientations,
reflections, and thoughts they would not get to on their own (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). What follows
are data taken from transcripts of how I used questioning as the facilitator to promote an increased
queer consciousness with my participant.

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Table 8
Questioning Types and Their Typicality
Session Probing Assisting Assessment
1 1 4 1
2 1 4 1
3 2 3 1
4 1 4 1
5 1 3 1
6 3 5 3
7 2 4 3
8 1 4 2
9 3 4 3
Total 19 36 21
Initially, my participant Nica struggled with being introduced to cisheteronormativity. In Session
2, we watched a video together where a man and a reporter discussed how we are entrenched in a
gendered world. In the video, the reporter dissected the terms gender identity, gender expression,
biological sex, and sexual attraction. As we watched the video, we learned that even how people sit has
been historically gendered as masculine and feminine, which elicited strong feelings from my
participants, especially Nica. Per my observation, my participants’ body language was tense and
uncomfortable while their faces winced and sighed. When I noticed this, I questioned my participants
about their reactions to the video. The following excerpt is how the conversation played out between
Nica and me.

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Kris: It looks like we have some reactions to this video. What was going on for you while you
were watching this video about gender and sexuality?
Nica: Yeah. Everything... everything is like … I do not know. I was gonna say isn't like … like
people just like … constructed this? Like … “they” just come up with these things of what
men and women can do? (OC: Nica's eyes and face show shock as if she is processing
everything she is seeing. Her long pauses indicate that she may be having an ahamoment and/ or disorientation.)
Kris: Which is so fascinating right? Because it is just sitting, we are talking about. But there
are societal standards for what dictates sitting as a man and sitting as a woman. How do
you sit as a nonbinary person? What does that look like?
Nica: The other day I heard a person talking about how even colognes, perfumes, and smells
… I guess that is super gendered too.
In this exchange, I opened by asking the interpretive question “What was going on for you while you
were watching this video about gender and sexuality?” I noticed reactions from my participants and
wanted more information about what those emotions and feelings meant for them (Merriam & Tisdell,
2016). Nica’s long pauses, her repeated “like” comments, and concerned facial expressions noted by my
observer’s comments illustrated to me that she was processing this new information to try to make
sense of it. Her inability to capture words to express her disorientation with the information presented
was an indication of cognitive overload or distress with the material on cisheteronormativity. When she
said, “they just come up with these things of what men and women can do,” Nica demonstrated the
understanding that cisheteronormativity is constructed by society which demonstrated an epiphany
about the role of cisheteronormativity as dominant ideology. I further concretized the example for
participants when I posed an assisting question. I said “Which is so fascinating right? Because it is just
sitting, we are talking about. But there are societal standards for what dictates sitting as a man and

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sitting as a woman. How do you sit as a nonbinary person? What does that look like?” Though a
rhetorical question, when I asked “How do you sit as a nonbinary person? What does that look like?” I
assisted and prompted Nica to provide her own example and to make a connection to the learning. With
the knowledge that Nica is an instrumental knower, as previously defined, the example and questioning
allowed her to make connections between something she had seen before that may contribute to
cisheteronormativity and the content we were engaging in at that time (Drago-Severson & BlumDeStefano, 2017). This was shown when she responded to my rhetorical question by saying “The other
day I heard a person talking about how even colognes, perfumes, and smells … I guess that is super
gendered too.” Nica even demonstrated the beginnings of a disorientation when she said “Everything...
everything is like … I do not know. I was gonna say isn't like … like people just like … constructed this?”
as indicated by her long pauses and body language witnessed in my observer’s comments. Her reactions
and reflections to the questions represented an initial understanding of how we are entrenched in
cisheteronormativity, made possible through facilitator questioning.
By Session 5, Nica was able to more fluidly name cisheteronormative practices and how
cisheteronormativity lived in her classroom. I began this session with a check-in with my participants
and posed the question, “How, if at all, have these LGBTQIA+ topics we have discussed in our sessions
shown up for you?” Nica responded with the following:
Nica: Yes, for me it has. (OC: Nica jumps into the conversation without hesitation before I
could finish the sentence I was saying. She seems eager to share.) I use GoNoodle which
is like the activity app for students and there is always a champion that starts as a little
creature. And that evolves and it grows, right? And so, at first it just looked very, like … it
had not a lot of features. And so then when it grew it had long eyelashes and it had like,
like pink lips and I heard a student say, “It's a girl?” I stopped and said “Okay, this is my
chance. This is my chance!” (OC: Nica’s eyes light up and her voice is strong. I see all of

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us smiling. My heart is warm, and I am beginning to get emotional. Nica has not been
someone who brings moments of practice like this in our space.) And so, I was asking …
“Oh, I noticed that. Some people thought that this character was a girl. I wonder why?”
But can you … I was just asking you because until they would say “because they have
long eyelashes” … because “they have long eyelashes, they have lipstick.” And so, I
started to ask them if you think of yourself as a boy, that was … that was the hard part. I
was like if you think of yourself as a boy like, check if you have eyelashes … and then
they are like yeah! So, it was just a very … it went on and on but it was very interesting. I
ended up telling them that obviously everyone can choose to do whatever they want
with their bodies, and they can all look different.
Kris: What did that feel like?
Nica: It felt so good. Yeah, it felt so good to just like challenge them and ask questions. And
we spoke about this already but like, just like be curious. And yeah, you also learn a lot.
Their faces were very like, confused.
Kris: What were the student’s reactions?
Nica: Yeah. They were silent. They were deep in thought. So, it felt oh so good. I wanted to
share!
Nica’s body language and tone in Session 5 illustrated a stronger level of comfort when discussing topics
of cisheteronormativity as seen in my observer’s comments and as juxtaposed in the two sections of the
transcripts from Nica in the two different sessions. In Session 2, as noted in the first section of the
transcripts, Nica had the beginnings of a disorientation about how gender has been constructed in the
world and how pervasive it is in our society. By Session 5, Nica had recognized gender constructs in her
classroom and showcased elements of a raised queer consciousness. She heard a student ask if the
character was a girl and understood the cisnormative assumption the student made. This is an example

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of what Airton (2019) called “paying attention” where we learn to recognize and be on the lookout for
when transgressions about gender nonconformity are made. She then posed her own question to her
class in the form of curiosity when she asked: “Some people thought that this character was a girl. I
wonder why?” When she posed this question to her class, Nica “took action” as she drew her class’s
attention to the cisheteronormative comment to solicit other contributions from other voices in the
room to combat or disrupt (Airton, 2019). When she asked this, it showed that she recognized the
cisheteronormative assumption made about long eyelashes, unpacked it with her class, and had the
motivation to challenge it. Nica began to mimic my andragogical move of questioning and even used
questioning as a strategy to help illuminate cisheteronormativity for her students. This can further be
seen when she said, “I was like if you think of yourself as a boy like, check if you have eyelashes … and
then they are like yeah!” She illuminated the cisheteronormative assumption for students when she
offered them to check their bodies to see if eyelashes were something they all had. Airton (2019) called
this strategy identifying a hot spot where the hot spot is a “person, place, or moment that creates a
gender unfriendly or downright unsafe place for gender nonconformity of any kind, whether in general
or for a particular person who stands out” (p. 168). Nica identified the comment “it is a girl!” by the
student who made this cisnormative assumption about a character with eyelashes as a hot spot. She
then took action to challenge the status quo by using questioning from a stance of curiosity and brought
her class back to an inclusive space. I used two probing questions in this excerpt. When I probed and
asked Nica, “What did that feel like?” I wanted Nica to explore the emotions that came with her attempt
at addressing the hot spot (Merriam & Tisdell, 2018). When I asked the next probing question “What
were the students’ reactions?” I wanted Nica to share more information about what she witnessed with
students and the impact addressing that hot spot had on her classroom. Much like I created conditions
for my participants to have disorientations through probing and assisting questions, Nica mimicked

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these conditions and took the strategy of questioning into her classroom so that her kindergarteners
may experience similar disorientations.
Another example of how my participants grew in their awareness and identification of
cisheteronormative practices was seen in Session 2 when my participants and I worked to disentangle
gender and sexuality so that we would be better positioned to talk about how both groups of people
have experienced harmful normative assumptions. My participant Gail mentioned that she always
thought each letter of the LGBTQIA+ community experienced similar struggles and needed the same
kinds of supports. By the end of the session, Gail had a sharper understanding of gender and sexuality
after we collectively unpacked queer terminology and language through the Genderbread person
activity. At the end of each session, I solicited feedback by asking assessment questions to elicit my
colleagues’ perceptions of progress made toward learning outcomes (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). The
transcript section that follows showed how Gail reflected on the progress made toward the named
learning outcomes and goals of the session and her ability to elaborate and demonstrate her learning
through the synthesis of key points.
Kris: Thank you for sharing, everybody. Let's just take a look at our learning objectives today.
Not everyone has to share like always, but just take a look at them and anyone can
share about how we made progress towards those learning objectives with our time
today.
Gail: I think the first one is “the understand that there is a difference between gender and
sexuality.” The little Genderbread person activity definitely outlined the difference
between the two. I have an understanding that gender is more than just what you are,
and gender expressions, and then your sexuality is who you are attracted to. And then
there are also differences in romantic and sexual attraction. So yeah, I learned a lot
today.

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When Gail said, “Gender is more than just what you are and gender expressions and then your
sexuality is who you are attracted to,” she showed awareness that gender and sexuality were much
more nuanced than she previously thought. When Gail said “There are also differences in romantic and
sexual attraction” she showed an understanding that sexuality is on a continuous spectrum with
different variations. In these instances of discussing gender and sexuality, she did not state exactly what
those differences were, solely an awareness that they are nuanced. This also illustrated Gail’s
conception of the terminology used to describe gender and sexuality. Sadowski (2019) called for
“normalizing the conversation” where there is an open discussion of LGBTQIA+ topics, terminology, and
issues amongst staff and teachers in schools. Understanding LGBTQIA+ concepts and the complexity of
queerness is fundamental and essential for teachers to create inclusive environments for their students
(Sadowski, 2019). I contend that Gail’s exposure to and comfort with LGBTQIA+ language impacted her
ability to recognize cisheteronormativity. Language is the basic requirement to create inclusive
classrooms and as an authority figure and purveyor of language in her own classroom, it is imperative
that Gail demonstrated awareness of definitions as she did in the data presented previously because
“what students hear and what they are taught to say when discussing gender and sexuality are key
components of establishing and maintaining a learning environment that is conducive to student
comfort and growth” (Sapon-Shevin, 2019, p. 9). By Session 4, however, Gail demonstrated a more
developed queer consciousness and awareness of the reproduction of cisnormativity. As shown in the
transcript, she responded to deeper reflection question that asked: “How, if at all, has gender shown up
in your interaction with others?” She said the following in response to this question:
Gail: I kind of want to talk about number two just because I have found myself in my
classroom, I have caught myself, and that is something that I want to get better at and I
have noticed that like, I will assume my student's gender, so like when I am talking to
them, I will be like “Way to go girl!” and like “you rock dude!” And that is an issue

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because I am already putting that on them or like put it like, I do not know. So why am I
saying it? So, things like that is an issue that I see that I am already doing or like that I
have with interacting with my students and I want to be better because I do not want to
assume. I want to check myself and call them by their name and be like “Way to go, Kris!
Way to go Nica! Go Ilia!” instead of putting a gender to it.
Kris: Yeah, can I ask you a question? Whose voices are missing?
Gail: Their voices.
Kris: Why do you say that? Tell me more.
Gail: Because they haven't expressed to me that they would want or like, what they identify
as, and so I already choose that for them. It's like I am choosing for them or not giving
them an option.
Kris: That’s very valuable insight. Thank you, Gail, for sharing.
Gail identified a cisnormative school practice when she vulnerably stated, “I have noticed that, like, I will
assume my student’s gender.” As demonstrated by this part of the meeting transcript, she identified the
cisnormative practice’s impact on student labeling when she said, “that in itself is an issue because I am
already putting that on them.” Gail understood that this cisnormative practice of gendered praise
erased students' identity. Gail even used questioning on herself and wondered about the genesis of this
practice by asking “So why am I saying it?” and demonstrated “paying attention” to improve upon and
combat cisnormativity when she stated, “I do not want to assume. I want to check myself and call them
by their name.” When Gail said “so things like that is an issue that I see that I am already doing” she
identified a hot spot or an opportunity to make her space more inclusive for all but especially for
LGBTQIA+ individuals (Airton, 2019). Gail thought about what she would do differently next time which
moved her beyond awareness into “taking action,” or doing something to concretize cooling down a hot
spot so that no one is harmed by them, thereby creating a more inclusive space for her students. By

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suggesting what she might do differently, namely “call them by their name,” she demonstrated Airton’s
(2019) fourth ability of queer consciousness. After Gail shared her reflection I asked, “Whose voices are
missing?” This was an attempt to probe and uncover positionality and privilege (Ramdeholl & Jones,
2019 as cited in Brookfield, 2019). Gail then responded with “their voices” which indicated her
understanding that when she engaged in cisheteronormative school practices, students’ identities were
erased. This is an example of the queer consciousness element of “paying attention” (Airton, 2019;
Ramdeholl & Jones, 2019 as cited in Brookfield, 2019). When I probed once more and asked “Why do
you say that? Tell me more,” I wanted Gail to explore the impact on students and pushed her to identify
the hot spot in her instructional practice (Airton, 2019). Gail showcased her ability to identify the hot
spot when she responded with “Because they haven't expressed to me that they would want or like,
what they identify as, and so I already choose that for them. It's like I am choosing for them or not giving
them an option.” My probing questions allowed Gail to successfully “pay attention” to the missing
voices in her classroom and pushed her to identify the hot spot in her practice that perpetuates the
reproduction of cisheteronormativity further raising her queer consciousness (Airton, 2019). By paying
attention, identifying hot spots, and trying to take action, Gail ultimately contributed to the disruption of
cisheteronormativity when she exhibited all three elements of a raised queer consciousness (Airton,
2019).
My third participant Ilia entered my study with more experience and content knowledge of
cisheteronormative practices than my other two participants. In my time building relationships outside
of sessions with Ilia, they explicitly shared favorite LGBTQIA+ books they have read in their classroom,
lesson plans about LGBTQIA+ awareness month and Pride they have written and taught, and their
experiences with homophobia and transphobia that they witnessed and attempted to disrupt in their
old school site and district. In Cycle 2, Ilia disclosed their identity as a non-binary person who used
she/they pronouns. All this context indicated to me that Ilia had a high proximity to queerness as it is

74
their lived experience. This non-neutral stance on gender and sexuality was seen in Ilia early on in
sessions which illustrated they may have many elements of queer consciousness. In Session 1, Ilia
already understood what a cisheteronormative school practice looked like and had other strong
reflections on the topic of cisheteronormativity. The following excerpt illustrates this reflection.
Ilia: I will piggyback on Gail. I do agree that that is something that I was taking away, and it
was a good reminder. I know it is very easy to fall into the “Okay, boys and girls line up.”
And that reminder of like, hey, remember language matters. It is one thing to correct it,
but do not just correct it, challenge it! And I felt like sometimes we need that reminder
to ourselves of like, why is this happening? So, I think that was a good reminder to the
staff to challenge, like stereotypes and misunderstandings with the students.
When Ilia said, “we need that reminder to ourselves of like, why is this happening?” they demonstrated
Airton’s (2019) ability to “pay attention” where Ilia noticed and wondered about the impact of
cisheteronormativity. When Ilia said, “I know it is very easy to fall into the ‘Okay, boys and girls line up,’
they demonstrated awareness of cisheteronormativity in classrooms by identifying hot spots (Airton,
2019). Sapon-Shevin (2019) stated “Perhaps one of the most basic requirements for creating LGBTQinclusive classrooms is close attention to language.” Ilia echoed this sentiment when they stated,
“Remember language matters.” When Ilia said, “But do not just correct it, challenge it!”—they
demonstrated an understanding of the power teachers have as the authority figures in the classroom to
create inclusive spaces for all students and the importance of “taking action” by challenging the status
quo (Airton, 2019, Sapon-Shevin, 2019). Despite a starting place that was more conscious of
cisheteronormativity relative to Gail and Nica, after Session 7, Ilia and I had a brief one-on-one
conversation that demonstrated a further increased consciousness of cisheteronormative practices. In
other words, there was evidence of growth in Ilia. They prepared fun activities for the students in our
entire grade level during the holiday season. They strongly understood how to pay attention to

75
cisheteronormative school practices, identified “hot spots,” and proceeded to make attempts to disrupt
and combat by acting (Airton, 2019). The following excerpt is evidence of this and is an example of Ilia
identifying one such practice unconscious to many educators during the holidays:
Ilia: I remember talking to you guys. I wanted to make that gingerbread disguise one before
it went to break. But I did not have time. So, I have made a snow person disguise one.
Oh, so I am gonna send that one out consciously because I kept writing snowman. So, I
consciously had you keep going and then change snowman to snow person.
When Ilia said “consciously because I kept writing snowman” they showed an awareness about how a
routine holiday time practice such as simply using the term “snowman” with students is both (a)
situated deep in our unconscious minds and (b) not inclusive of gender-expansive persons. After this
recognition of cisheteronormativity infiltrating wintertime, Ilia proceeded to discuss how they were
combatting it when they said, “Change snowman to snow person.” Ilia demonstrated awareness of the
impact of language on young students developing within the school setting and the power a teacher
holds to combat cisheteronormative language. By using the word “consciously” two times, it underlined
the need for teachers to be intentional when working against the status quo. As demonstrated in
previous transcripts, Ilia revealed that they had elements of queer consciousness and yet, they needed
questions from my facilitation during sessions that would challenge their thinking more. I recognized this
between Cycles 2 and 3 and added more reflection and discussion questions from Jay and Johnson’s
(2000) Typology of Reflection to push their thinking in the final sessions. In one session, I asked my
participants to bring a moment of practice regarding an experience they had with cisheteronormativity
that caused a disorienting dilemma. The following excerpt is Ilia’s response to the posed assisting
questions.
Kris: You do not have to respond to all the questions in today’s discussion, but I wanted to
provide you all with choice. So, for today’s reflection, our questions are–How did it feel

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to describe your disorienting dilemma? What, if anything, came up for you when you
were first describing the situation? How would other people involved or not directly
involved in your dilemma explain what is happening?” Anyone who wants to share feel
free when you are ready.
Ilia: It did not feel good! (OC: Group shares a laugh that you can tell has weight to it. Writing
about your disorienting dilemma can sometimes bring about triggers, feelings, and
emotions we may not want or be ready to face just yet at that point in our lives. I can
tell we all laugh because we may have connections to that sentiment. At least I do.)
Kris: Tell me more.
Ilia: I think ultimately, I just chose a disorienting dilemma, one that happened at work to
keep it work-related to keep me more centered. And … to you know, bring it into
practice. I did not choose a personal one because I felt like that would be too much of
like … “This is something I need to deal with in therapy!” (OC: Group shares a laugh). So,
I chose the one that happened recently, when we had LGBTQIA+ pride month that
parent messaged me … and it is like exposing this to her student at such a tender age.
The hardest one … (OC: It seems the rigor of the questions has presented challenges to
participants and may even begin to create disorienting dilemmas) the hardest question
that I struggled with was “How would the other person involved and not directly
involved explain what is happening?” Thinking about identity and positions of power, I
started processing on it. But I reflected on it, and I reflected that it wasn't just the one
thing that really stuck to me. I can get some level of understanding with you know, I …
the whole “tender age” thing because you know, that is something that is really
questioning that a lot of parents do not know when to talk about these subjects. That I
can wrap my head around. (OC: We all shake our heads and roll our eyes hearing the

77
words “tender age” in unison and share a group laugh. This is a moment we will not
forget as a parent told Ilia that her son is at a “tender age” and should not be exposed to
LGBTQIA+ topics. It was very interesting language to use to describe a student and it is
an inside joke we always scoff and laugh at.)
I asked the open-ended, assisting questions developed from Jay and Johnson’s (2002) Descriptive
Dimension of Reflection, “How did it feel to describe your disorienting dilemma? What, if anything,
comes up for you when you were first describing the situation?” to gather information on participants’
feelings about their reflections and disorienting dilemmas. I posed the assisting question “What, if
anything, came up for you when you were first describing the situation? How would other people
involved or not directly involved in your dilemma explain what is happening?” to push Ilia to reflect on
alternative perspectives of their disorienting dilemma, a challenging task for them made possible by this
type of facilitator questioning (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). Ilia jokingly responded, “It did not feel good!”
This indicated the beginnings of a disorientation for Ilia. I wanted to know more about these feelings and
to gather more details, so I probed Ilia with the prompt “Tell me more” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2013). Ilia
specifically mentioned the difficulty of the assisting questions I posed when they said, “The hardest
question that I struggled with was, ‘How would the other person involved and not directly involved
explain what is happening?’” These questions challenged Ilia as they pushed them to view their dilemma
with a new lens that was outside their comfort zone. They grappled with a response to the reflection
question “How would the other person involved and not directly involved explain what is happening?”
because it pushed them to move beyond naming and identifying a cisheteronormative practice. Instead,
this type of questioning elicited reflection on power dynamics and to view the situation through an
alternative lens as seen when Ilia said, “That I had the struggle with was ‘how would the other person
involved and not directly involved explain what is happening?’ Thinking about identity and positions of
power” (Brookfield, 2017). When Ilia said they struggled with that question from Jay and Johnson’s

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(2002) comparative dimension of reflection, they reflected on the challenge of taking on an alternative
lens and the difficulty they had in viewing their situation through another’s perspective, especially a
perspective that is not queer inclusive. This type of critical reflection questioning allowed Ilia to build
empathy for others, in this case, the parents of their students who naively reproduced
cisheteronormativity and made cisheteronormative assumptions. This is especially true when Ilia closed
her thoughts with “A lot of parents do not know when to talk about these subjects. That I can wrap my
head around.”
At the end of every session, I ensured I created space to ask assessment questions to my
participants. Every session ended with the same assessment questions: “How, if at all, did we make
progress toward our learning outcomes for the session? Where, if at all, did you feel the most connected
during our learning today? The most distant?” Participants were always given a few minutes to
independently reflect at the end of every session on their participant agendas. Then we always engaged
in quick, whole group discussion as time allowed. These assessment questions served not only as
feedback to me as the facilitator, but they also gave me information about my participants' progress
toward developing their queer consciousness by directing where the following sessions would go (Tharp
& Gallimore, 1988). With each subsequent session, my participants understood that these questions
would be asked of them and became a predictable way to close out our time together. The following
excerpt is Gail’s reflection on these assessment questions at the end of Session 4.
Kris: All right, well, it is time to close our session. I want to bring us back to our learning
outcomes in the beginning. In our short time together, those are the two learning
outcomes. If you cannot see them on my computer, they are on your agenda. I want us
to take a second to either out loud reflect or internally reflect on our closing questions:
“How do we make progress towards those learning outcomes for today, if at all? Where,

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if at all, did you feel the most connected during our learning today? Where, if at all, did
you feel the most distant?”
Gail: I think that the one that talks to or like the one that I feel like I would identify, or I
learned the most from today was “Participants will be able to reflect on the relationship
with gender, gender identity.” I feel like it is making me reflect a lot about how I
approach gender in my classroom with my students, and then also making me reflect on
what I can do to continue creating those safe spaces for my students to feel like they
can be their full selves, and like continue to, like, foster those conversations within
them, such as when they are doing crayons and picking their favorite colors or when we
are doing the read aloud. I was reading a story the other day, called “Milo Imagines the
world” (OC: I make a happy/sad face because that book makes me cry every time I read
it. But I want to let Gail know that I share her sentiment with whatever she is about to
say about this book). I should have read the stories before I read them to the kiddos!
But in the story when he imagines the bride going to get married to the groom at the
end of the story … but it is two brides getting married! (OC: We collectively say “aww”)
And so like continuing to foster those conversations with my class. … I am excited to
continue that learning.
When I said, “I want us to take a second to either out loud reflect or internally reflect on our closing
questions,” I asked participants to assess their learning for the session. This prompted Gail to share her
assessment on how she made progress toward the learning goal when she said, “I learned the most
from today was ‘Participants will be able to reflect on the relationship with gender, gender identity.’”
Then, without prompting, Gail elaborated on that assessment of progress made toward learning
outcomes when she said “I feel like it is making me reflect a lot about how I approach gender in my
classroom with my students, and then also making me reflect on what I can do to continue creating

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those safe spaces for my students to feel like they can be their full selves, and like continue to, like,
foster those conversations within them, such as when they are doing crayons and picking their favorite
colors or when we are doing the read aloud.” In Gail’s case, assessment questions prompted Gail to “pay
attention” to how gender and sexuality inclusion is currently not working in each context and our role in
reproducing that as classroom teachers (Airton, 2019).
In Session 9, our final session together, I asked an assessment question using my research
question to my participants. Again, the intention was for participants to assess their own learning and
provide evidence for how, if at all, they feel they have demonstrated an increased queer consciousness.
The following excerpt is how the conversation unfolded.
Kris: So, we have had little learning outcomes throughout every session, and this was my
giant learning outcome for all of us. Every learning outcome worked toward helping me
answer the big, meaty question: “How do I get us as kindergarten teachers, to reflect on
the things that we do in our classrooms and with our parents and with each other, to be
more conscious of cisheteronormativity and those practices that may happen in schools
to better serve LGBTQIA+ students?” My last question for us is, how if at all, did we
accomplish this? So just take a second to think, if at all. What specific evidence have you
seen in the past 9 weeks that we make towards if at all accomplishing this research
question or answering the research question?
Nica: I think for me, I think we were successful. Successful because the learning did not stop
here. Like I think that is the goal for any type of learning is that you can apply it like in
your life, personal life at work. I feel like we were constantly thinking about or at least I
was constantly thinking about these sessions, even when I was at like freaking
Disneyland! You know, like, I was just like, I was conscious. Like, my consciousness just

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grew so much, and I feel like even if I wasn't disrupting it and like doing it, I feel like I
was doing it in my mind. Yeah. And, like, that is an important place to start.
Gail: I agree Nica! Ever since we started the sessions, I haven't stopped thinking about what
we are learning! (OC: Group shares a chuckle) Like I feel like I have shared this already,
but I am always talking to my partner about it too. I have grown in my comfortableness
of speaking about these topics. I feel like I stated this at the beginning … but I did not
want to speak out a lot about LGBTQIA+ topics because I did not know how and so I feel
like these 9 weeks have helped us put stuff in our toolkit to be able to have these
conversations. To be able to critically reflect before I go into these conversations so that
I am not projecting my emotions. Like I remember when I had that conversation with
that parent, I was so terribly afraid. I like … wanted to throw up. But because of the prep
we did before thanks to our sessions, we were able to come to the parents with
research to show them to help with those misconceptions and to help with that
misinformation. So, I feel like I have grown and being more prepared and like being able
to engage with not just my teachers like my co-workers, but also take on someone else’s
point of view like with those families and being able to tie it back to our school values.
When I asked, “How if at all, did we accomplish this?” I wanted my participants to first assess whether
we individually or collectively made progress toward answering my research question. Then, when I
asked, “What specific evidence have you seen in the past 9 weeks that we made progress towards, if at
all, accomplishing this research question or answering the research question?” I required my
participants to make that assessment and to do so by providing evidence. When Nica said “Successful
because the learning did not stop here. Like I think that is the goal for any type of learning is that you
can apply it like in your life, personal life at work” and Gail said “Ever since we started the sessions, I
haven't stopped thinking about what we are learning” they used their application of knowledge outside

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of sessions as evidence that they have grown. These questions prompted both Gail and Nica to realize
their ability to “pay attention” to how cisheteronormativity manifests even outside the classroom, a key
element that demonstrates their raised queer consciousness (Airton, 2019). Nica said “My
consciousness just grew so much, and I feel like even if I wasn't disrupting it and like doing it, I feel like I
was doing it in my mind. Yeah. And like that is an important place to start” which further illustrates
paying attention, one of Airton’s (2019) element of queer consciousness. Gail answered the question
and provided evidence when she stated “I remember when I had that conversation with that parent, I
was so terribly afraid. I like … wanted to throw up. But because of the prep we did before thanks to our
sessions, we were able to come to the parents with research to show them to help with those
misconceptions and to help with that misinformation.” Gail mentioned where she started in her queer
consciousness and how she is ending after our nine sessions together. Gail closed her reflections guided
by the assessment questions when she said, “I feel like I have grown and being more prepared and like
being able to engage with not just my teachers like my co-workers, but also take on someone else’s
point of view like with those families and being able to tie it back to our school values.” Through
reflecting on these questions, Gail demonstrated her increased ability to identify “hot spots” or areas
where cisheteronormative assumptions and transgressions are made (Airton, 2019). When Gail
celebrated their ability to “take on someone else’s point of view like with those families,” they have
identified a necessary component of critical reflection by taking on another person’s perspective to cool
down those hot spots through combating or disrupting cisheteronormative assumptions (Airton, 2019;
Wergin, 2020).
As previously demonstrated, my participants Nica, Gail, and Ilia all increased their consciousness
of cisheteronormativity. All three participants familiarized themselves with the language and concepts
surrounding the LGBTQIA+ community, a crucial aspect of raising awareness of cisnormative and
heteronormative practices (Sapon-Shevin, 2019). All participants increased their ability to pay close

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attention to when transgressions were made about LGBTQIA+ persons in their classroom and even
recognized when they participated in the reproduction of cisheteronormativity, two major strategies
used by teachers who understand cisheteronormativity and want to take action to combat or disrupt it
for all students (Airton, 2019).
Fear Is the Elephant in the Room
Increasing teacher consciousness of cisheteronormative school practices is an adaptive
challenge (Heifetz et al., 2009). Before my study began, I did not anticipate how much fear would play a
role in our ability to combat and disrupt cisheteronormativity. This findings section is harmonious with
findings from Traylor (2021) where surfaced fear served as their participants' primary mental barrier for
teachers’ feelings of readiness to engage in topics of cisheteronormativity. Many teachers fail to address
homophobia and transphobia in classrooms and schools due to being afraid of the pressure from
parents and families of students (Sadowski, 2019). Outside forces make their way into classrooms and
can influence a teacher’s comfort level with combating cisheteronormativity. As stated previously in my
conceptual framework, parental dissatisfaction is one of the primary obstacles contributing to teachers'
comfort with teaching topics related to queerness (Sadowski, 2019). For my participants, this parental
pressure created fear and halted conversation on queer-related topics. On what makes addressing
cisheteronormativity so challenging for educators, Sapon-Shevin (2019) stated the following:
Without oversimplifying, the answer to the question about the challenge of critical pedagogy
can be summed up in one word: fear. Addressing gender and sexual diversity in classrooms taps
into deep emotions and feelings in both teachers and students, thus complicating classroom
climate, pedagogy, and curricular decisions. At least three kinds of immobilizing fear and their
intersections can make this teaching difficult: (a) fear of “getting in trouble,” (b) fear of selfrevelation and exposure, and (c) fear of getting it wrong. (p. 5)

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These fears can be seen in my participants' reflections. I name fear as the elephant in the room that
made the creation of safer spaces for LGBTQIA+ persons challenging and to normalize the strong
feelings that my participants may have felt in discussions with one another (Heifetz, 2009). “Naming the
elephant” and normalizing naming fear as the elephant is an adaptive leadership move necessary for my
participants so that we may be able to engage in courageous conversations during sessions (Heifetz,
2009). Throughout my study, there were over 46 instances where my participants mentioned some fear
related to outside voices. These outside voices included religious organizations and affiliations, the
guardians and parents of our students, community members, and political organizations and affiliations.
In these instances, my participants mentioned the influence outside voices had on their queer
consciousness. Outside voices informed my participants’ own deeply held beliefs about LGBTQIA+ via
adults in their upbringing. My participants’ ability to address cisheteronormativity was also impacted by
the adults and parents of their students. From the data, I gathered that fear and backlash from student
families played a role in their ability to make their classes safer for LGBTQIA+ persons. When I noticed,
through in-the-field analysis, how often my participants were impacted by outside voices in Cycle 1, I
decided to intentionally bring fear into the conversation to prompt participants to generate connections
between their fear and the pressures they felt from outside voices. In Cycle 2 Session 6, I taught my
participants the three types of fears previously mentioned by Sapon-Shevin (2019). I then asked my
participants the question “Which of these three fears, if at all, do you connect with the most?” The
following excerpts showcase the responses from each participant.
Gail: I feel like I have two feelings. I have a fear of getting it wrong. I do not always feel so
prepared or adequate to answer my students' questions that might be coming up and
like I do not want to get it wrong where if by where I answer something, I am harming
the child instead of like, empowering their identity. And so that is like one of my major
big fears. And then the second big fear is getting in trouble. Here at our school, I feel like

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I do not feel like so scared with admin but more the parents like what parents will say. I
also put down like, I know I had that talk with that homophobic family and like yes, I felt
good after … but like, the feelings that have brought up during that time. … I do not
think anyone ever wants to feel anxiety and like feel those things. So, I have like a fear
of getting in trouble. And then just that conversation with that one family and how, like,
after that conversation … are my relations with my student’s families still the same or
are they having some type of feelings because of what we are teaching our students
LGBTQIA+ stuff? So yeah, I am scared of getting in trouble and getting it wrong.
Gail named her two fears when she said, “I am scared of getting in trouble and getting it wrong.” When
she said “I do not want to get it wrong where if by where I answer something, I am harming the child
instead of like, empowering their identity” her fear was that she was not an expert in these topics and
that she might communicate misinformation to her students. The fear of getting it wrong can create
discomfort and even produce shame and self-consciousness, as seen in Gail’s reflection, that they have
committed some sort of social injustice by getting it wrong. This caused Gail to stay silent on LGBTQIA+
topics and thereby reproduce cisheteronormativity (Sapon-Shevin, 2019). Additionally, when Gail said,
“more the parents like what parents will say” and “Are my relations with my student’s families still the
same or are they having some type of feelings because of what we are teaching our students LGBTQIA+
stuff” she reflected on the impact of student families’ perceptions of her and their relationships because
of teaching LGBTQIA+ topics to her class. This fear of how she was perceived by outside voices and how
it caused strong feelings can be seen when she said, “I do not think anyone ever wants to feel anxiety
and like feel those things.” This reflection shows how Gail’s ability to have increased queer
consciousness, particularly the element of taking action, is severely impacted by anxiety from discussion
with outside voices, a potential to harm students from lack of perceived expertise about queer topics,

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and a negative perception from student’s families that impacts her relationship with them (Airton, 2019;
Sapon-Shevin, 2019).
When asked that same question “Which of these three fears, if at all, do you connect with the
most?” my participant Nica shared similar connections to Gail’s reflection. Nica also mentioned that she
had a fear of getting it wrong and fear of getting in trouble specifically with student families and outside
voices. Nica expressed a desire for a starting point with teaching LGBTQIA+ topics to students.
Throughout my study, Nica demonstrated her commitment to LGBTQIA+ inclusivity by reflecting on her
instructional practices and conversations she has had with her students. This behavior is typical of an
instrumental knower, like Nica, who needs to see models and examples when it comes to topics of social
justice (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017). Nica also mentioned she had a fear of “getting it
wrong” for students and families. Nica and I had the following exchange:
Nica: For me I feel like my fear is getting it wrong and fear of the trouble. I feel like I would
like to have … well obviously everybody probably would … just like a place to begin?
Where to start like these conversations. Having like a flow I thought about like a scope
and sequence? And like, I just feel like, I would love one. Because I do not have fears of
like, teaching it. I am all here for it. I just want to have a nice flow to like, teach it. And I
also fear like because things are ever changing, it seems to me. I want to be like up to
date, on like language. And just like anything that I say to students I want it to be correct
to respect other people. So they know how to be respectful.
Kris: Yeah, like modeling. You want to model it for other people? The correct way. Yes.
Nica: Yeah. And then I did have a connection to family concerns similar to getting it wrong for
the students like fear of getting it wrong for the student families. I want to have like
clear examples and information to show them on what I am actually teaching.

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Nica named the two fears that hinder her ability to teach about queer issues when she said, “My fear is
getting it wrong and fear of the trouble.” When Nica said “Because I do not have fears of like, teaching
it. I am all here for it. I just want to have a nice flow to like, teach it” she expressed a willingness to teach
LGBTQIA+ topics to her students despite not knowing necessarily to begin. This fear of not knowing
where to begin with teaching LGBTQIA+ topics is common in teachers and ultimately paralyzes them
from starting any conversation at all (Sadowski, 2019). When Nica stated “I also fear like because things
are ever-changing, it seems to me. I want to be like up to date, on like language” she admitted the
challenge that comes with trying to maintain vigilance on the ever-evolving, nuanced identities and
continuously expansive knowledge within the LGBTQIA+ community. Sapon-Shevin (2019) declared that
the “difference between ‘I would definitely say something’ and ‘I know what I would say’ is huge,” and
that tension can be seen when Nica said “I want to have like clear examples and information to show
them on what I am actually teaching” because Nica had a “fear of getting it wrong for the student
families.”
My third participant Ilia had similar fears when compared to both Gail and Nica’s fears. As a
queer-identifying person, however, Ilia had one different fear not expressed by Gail and Nica. This was
the fear of self-revelation or the fear that if they revealed their queer identity to others, they thereby
exposed themselves to potential negative repercussions for being LGBTQIA+ identifying. While Gail
wondered how the relationship between her and her students’ parents might be severed if they taught
something the parents may not agree with, for Ilia, the fear was more personal and related to their own
identity. Sapon-Shevin (2019) said the following about the very real fears, that Ilia expressed, of being a
queer teacher:
Heteronormativity is so powerful that unless we explicitly say otherwise, we are assumed to be
“straight.” But for teachers who identify as LGBTQIA+, the decisions are more complex. What
are we modeling if we are open about our sexuality? What level of explicitness is appropriate to

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the students we teach? How will our own openness and revelations affect the possibilities for
student discussion and openness? Will we create “safer” spaces for exploration, or limit what is
possible because it has become “too” personal? (p. 7)
Ilia exhibited many of these tensions and when asked “Which of these three fears, if at all, do you
connect with the most?” Ilia discussed that their salient identity of being Hispanic connected them to
their students’ families and community and that they were afraid of how the intersection of their
queerness could sever that relationship they have worked hard to build. The very real fear of being
rejected for being queer is evident in the following excerpt:
Ilia: For me, it is definitely fear of self-revelation and exposure. Because I am so much
different from the community that I work in it is like there is this fear of the differences
causing mistrust with families and that causing isolation. From my experience, there is
not a lot of parent and family understanding or knowledge about this part of my
identity. So how much of myself do I share? And then do I only share what is visible? I
am brown, you know that I am brown, and you know that I am Hispanic, and I speak
Spanish. And that is something that a lot of families can connect with. But then the,
these other parts of me, you know, the hidden invisible queer identity that like you do
not know, and you probably would not, you know? The biggest thing of it is, like if I do
share that with families, there is this fear of creating a hostile relationship. With the
parent, is the fear of like, being very uncomfortable when interacting with parents. That
relationship and that bond with parents and teachers is supposed to be something that
we need to forge and to utilize. I feel that bond with the parents and the families that I
have now, and I see the difference of how it is impacting, you know, not only the way
that I like, I am able to communicate with them, but also in the way that they are able to
be very vulnerable with me because of my Latinx identity. So, if my queer identity is

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completely against something their core belief … does that mean that I am like going to
be completely canceled? Are they going to be able to trust me? How is that identity I
have going to impact you know, the way that we work together with the student for the
student? How's that going to impact like my interactions at dismissal for the rest of the
year? This is someone that I am thinking about daily. So it is a lot of fear I have.
Ilia made an assumption when they said “There's not a lot of parent and family understanding or
knowledge about this part of my identity” which was based on their experiences they openly shared
with previous families of students. That previous experience with fear carried over to their current
classroom. When Ilia posed the question “So if my queer identity is completely against something their
core belief … does that mean that I am like going to be completely canceled?” they highlighted the
“clash that happens between pride and professionalism” (Connel, 2014). This clash of pride and
professionalism was defined by Connel (2014) as “gay and lesbian teachers contending with the
fundamental incompatibility between the professional demands of teaching and the political demands
of contemporary gay and lesbian citizenship” (p. 17). Ilia understood that the role of a teacher demands
you build relationships with families when they said, “That relationship and that bond with parents and
teachers is supposed to be something that we need to forge and to utilize” and they communicated a
fear that their self-disclosure might negatively affect those relationships. The fear of losing trust and
credibility with student’s families was present in Ilia’s response and was evidenced in their rhetorical
questioning:
Are they going to be able to trust me? How is that identity I have going to impact you know, the
way that we work together with the student for the student? How's that going to impact like my
interactions at dismissal for the rest of the year?
These questions Ilia asked were a result of the fear generated by the clash between pride and
professionalism that significantly impacted how Ilia experienced their workplace, community, safety,

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and identity (Connel, 2014). In each of these examples, participants were able to clearly and readily
express how their fear shaped the way they saw their teaching practice and were aligned with the three
fears reported by Sapon-Shevin (2019). Recognizing and naming the fears that prevented us from
discussing queer topics with students or adults, I argue, was an important step on the path to raising my
participants’ queer consciousness. When we addressed the fear and the discomfort that prevented us
from raising our queer consciousness, we were naming the elephant in the room for ourselves (Heifetz,
2009). I argue that this adaptive leadership move of naming this elephant, fear as a blockade, is a
necessary step for participants to be able to engage in the work to raise their queer consciousness
(Heifetz, 2009; Sapon-Shevin, 2019).
In one critical reflection following the Cycle 2 sessions, I took time to think about which of the
three fears I connected with most. When I named the three fears educators may feel for my
participants, I allowed them to find the root cause that may have prevented them from engaging in
LGBTQIA+ topics in the past. I reflected after the session so that I may address it in the next session with
my participants. I thought this reflection would be important for me to do as well so that I may be able
to make connections with my participants. As a queer-identifying person, showing that I too have fears
that stop me from engaging in instructional practices that affirm the queer community is a strong model
of vulnerability for my participants. It reiterated that this work to make inclusive spaces for all is
challenging for everyone, irrespective of their identity or level of commitment to this work. Though I
connected to the fears of all three participants, my fear was mainly in relation to the community.
Specifically, I named that my fear was hearing what students say about the LGBTQIA+ community and its
implications for how queerness is talked about in their homes. The potential for hearing homophobic or
transphobic things from kindergarteners, knowing it was most likely a direct reflection of what was said
by the adults around them prohibited me from discussing queer topics as well. I never want to put
myself in a situation that may make me vulnerable to homophobia and transphobia, especially in the

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workplace setting. Moreover, as a queer identifying individual, I do not want to hear negativity
surrounding my identity marker. This fear of hearing harmful things rooted in cisheteronormative
ideology sometimes paralyzes and prohibits me from discussing LGBTQIA+ topics. I wrote about these
tensions in an excerpt from my critical reflection:
Kris: I feel very similar to my participants, but I also feel like there somehow needs to be like
a new bucket of fear. I think it needs to be like a sub bucket of getting in trouble, which
is like fear of like community response. But maybe there is, maybe they just assumed
but lots of my fears too are like, “What will parents say?” “How will parents treat me as
a result of this?” My first fear is getting in trouble with the community. And then I also
think it is a little bit of the fear of self-revelation. My fear used to be getting it wrong,
and I feel like it is changed now. And because I feel like with self-revelation for me, I
used to be like, “Boy bunnies can marry boy bunnies,” right? But like, I am intentionally
not even giving my kindergarteners a chance to like, discuss, and answer that question,
right? We know we are supposed to ask open-ended questions especially with topics
like LGTBQIA+. But I was scared. I was so scared that if I do not quickly say that and
stamp the learning fast, then I am gonna hear other things from my kids and in my
heart, it is too personal. And so I feel like my biggest fear is always like, what are the kids
gonna say about my community? Kids are sponges and whatever they say … that reflects
the parents and what parents are saying at home. And that may hurt.
When I said “But I was scared. I was so scared that if I did not quickly say that and stamp the learning
fast, then I am gonna hear other things from my kids, and in my heart, it is too personal” I named my
fear of hearing hurtful homophobia or transphobic remarks from my students and by proxy, their
families whom I am expected to forge a partnership with as part of my role as their student’s teacher.
Connell (2014) discussed how such moments can create a “gay-hostile work context” where teachers

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who negotiate their queer and professional identities have less safe working conditions than their nonqueer coworkers” (p. 20). Naming this fear has created a new awareness for me. The next time I engage
in instruction with my students around LGBTQIA+ topics, I can recognize when this fear is taking the
wheel and regulate that distress. Recognizing and combating this fear is crucial and is a way to “pay
attention” to how gender and sexuality inclusion is currently not working in each context and our role in
reproducing that as adults (Airton, 2019). This mindful recognition of fear has become a crucial element
necessary to raise queer consciousness within myself.
The fear of getting it wrong, the fear of getting in trouble, and the fear of self-disclosure and
self-revelation are all fears that cause discomfort in educators trying to both increase their queer
consciousness and act on this newfound consciousness by way of combating cisheteronormative school
practices. Many times, this fear paralyzes teachers as seen in the previous excerpts from my
participants' reflections. When fear causes paralysis of LGBTQIA+ instruction to students, it reproduces
cisheteronormativity in classrooms (Sapon-Shevin, 2019). Teachers opt not to enact practices that could
disrupt it. When a teacher lets this fear take over, fear then becomes a cisheteronormative school
practice. I did not anticipate how present fear would be and its effects on my participants and me. We
learned about its impact on our ability to increase our queer consciousness and how it prohibited our
team from making attempts at combating or disrupting the reproduction of cisheteronormativity.
In my conceptual framework and in the initial design of this action research, I did not account
for the recurring presence of fear. I intended for my participants to reflect on our instructional practices
and how they may contribute to reproducing cisheteronormativity with one session devoted to
discussing fear. While cisheteronormativity and critical reflection were a part of my initial conceptual
framework, I have learned that fear (naming fear as the elephant in the room, normalizing that fear with
participants, and reflecting on ways to mitigate that fear) is an addition necessary to address to answer
my research question: How do I engage elementary school teachers in critical reflection to increase our

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consciousness of cisheteronormative practices in schools? Fear must be intentionally addressed across
multiple sessions so that participants can engage in critical reflection on their practices that reproduce
cisheteronormativity.
Orchestrating Conflict
In my conceptual framework, I discussed the need to use the adaptive leadership move of
orchestrating conflict with my participants. Two adaptive leadership moves that facilitate the
orchestration of conflict are (a) creating a strong holding environment and (b) regulating the heat with
participants (Heifetz, 2009). Discussing LGBTQIA+-related topics in an elementary school setting has
been historically taboo based on restrictive policies, laws, book bans, and the rampant transphobia and
homophobia that has historical roots in our society (Sadowski, 2019). In many states, teachers are even
penalized for having discussions about queerness and LGBTQIA+ inclusive practices which has created a
nationwide culture that forces teachers to remain silent on issues affecting LGBTQIA+ communities
(Airton, 2019). The product of all of this is that discussion of queer topics in schools has created natural
feelings of discomfort (Connell, 2014). That discomfort found its way into my study as my participants,
and I felt many instances of uneasiness during sessions that demanded a strong holding environment
and regulation of distress.
Importance of a Strong Holding Environment
Originally, in my conceptual framework I discussed the need to foster a “brave space” with my
participants where conflict is assumed, and norms are co-created (Arao & Clemens, 2013). What my
study called for was a strong holding environment. This was due to the fact that my participants and I
already had a shared history of working together, an element crucial to a strong holding environment
(Heifetz, 2009). At the time of this study, my participants were my teammates, and we had both strong
individual and collective relationships with one another. My participants also eagerly volunteered and
took interest to be a part of my study. When I recruited them, I was transparent about my study and

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that it entailed sensitive topics and potentially difficult reflections on LGBTQIA+ concepts. Their consent
to participate and excitement to learn illustrated our shared orienting values as purposes in regard to
LGBTQIA+ topics (Heifetz, 2009), which made the development of a “brave space” less of a necessity.
However, my participants did have different proximities to queerness which created varying degrees of
comfort levels when engaging in discussions in session. As an adaptive facilitator, I needed to facilitate a
strong holding environment so these discussions could take place productively. All my participants
disclosed that these sessions were the first time they had ever engaged in a discussion about LGBTQIA+
topics in the work setting, but this was not our first time engaging in discussion with each other. In fact,
our norms have been co-created and established for many years. A strong holding environment, Heifetz
(2009) stated, has: “shared language, shared orienting values, and purposes, history of working
together, and lateral bonds of affection, trust, and camaraderie” (p. 156). Because of this and the nature
of our team dynamic, facilitating a strong holding environment made more sense than establishing and
working toward a brave space.
In Session 2, I engaged my participants in an activity called “The Genderbread person.” The
learning goals for this session were as follows:
• Participants will be able to understand the difference between gender and sexuality.
• Participants will be able to describe the difference between biological sex, gender identity,
gender expression, romantic attraction, and physical attraction.
• Participants will be able to generate at least one reason why it is helpful and important to
recognize these different components of queer identities.
This session was intended for my participants and me to generate a shared language when referencing
persons in the LGTBQIA+ community by defining terms they would see throughout my study. It also
served to build empathy for the LGBTQIA+ community around the complexities and nuances of queer
identity. The Genderbread person activity is designed to be interactive. I defined and concretized all

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components of gender and sexuality which include biological sex, gender identity, gender expression,
romantic attraction, and physical attraction. As we learned about each component, I asked my
participants to identify where they fell on the spectrum of each. I did not require my participants to
name where they fell on the spectrum of each identity marker. Instead, I engaged in a discussion after
the activity where I asked, “What new understandings, if any, were generated about gender and
sexuality as a result of this activity?” and “After reflecting on your use of gender and sexuality
terminology, what, if any, are some distinctions among these concepts that have become clearer to
you?” The following excerpt is from my participant Ilia.
Ilia: Before I share my answer to these questions, I just want to tell the group that I am
feeling so affirmed and I really love it. I have had to explain my gender and sexuality to
people so many times. This is the first time in a space where I have not been the one to
say that “sexuality is this” and “romantic attraction is this.” I always must explain myself.
So just that being in this session... and having it explained to others where I am not the
one explaining it is like … so affirming and it is like it is like starting the healing process
for me as an LGBTQIA+ person. (OC: Me, Nica, and Gail share an “aww” for Ilia. You can
hear the tone in Ilia’s voice is one of feeling grateful for this activity. I am wondering
what their other experiences were like in learning spaces that did not affirm her so that I
may continue to create a safe space and strong learning conditions for her).
Kris: Thank you for sharing, Ilia. I am happy that you are feeling affirmed. I think that we
should, we all deserve a safe space to feel affirmed. So, I am happy that if one has not
existed for you that one exists now.
Learning about language about LGBTQIA+ terms facilitated the holding environment for Ilia. This
validated them and their identities. This can be seen when they said, “This is the first time in a space
where I have not been the one to say that ‘sexuality is this’ and ‘romantic attraction is this.’ When Ilia

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said “so affirming and it is like it is like starting the healing process for me as an LGBTQIA+ person” they
named how the way I engaged my participants in the activity and the activity itself created safety and
structure, elements crucial for a holding environment where they were able to participate in the
discussion (Heifetz, 2009). When I said “I am happy that you are feeling affirmed. I think that we should
we all deserve a safe space to feel affirmed. So, I am happy that if one has not existed for you that one
exists now” I expressed those lateral bonds of affection, trust, and camaraderie necessary for a strong
holding environment (Heifetz, 2009). Ilia and I learned that we have shared identity markers and
moments like these contributed to fostering ties that bind, a key characteristic of a strong holding
environment.
In Session 5, my participants and I role-played different scenarios where a cisheteronormative
practice occurred. I asked my participants to read the example aloud for all, then they took a few
moments to think about how they would respond to combat or disrupt cisheteronormativity. In one
scenario from Talusan’s (2022) The Identity-Conscious Educator, my participants and I pushed ourselves
to think how we would ask about others' pronouns, both students and parents, to create a more
inclusive classroom environment of gender-fluid and non-binary identities. After we all shared, my
participant Ilia interjected about their pronouns. This was not part of the activity. This was an
interruption to the discussion but in doing so, Ilia made themselves vulnerable by disclosing a new part
of their identity not previously known by the group. This is something that only happens when
participants feel safe, a feeling reinforced by the holding environment I have created with my
participants. The following exchange occurred between Ilia and the group.
Nica: I … I never introduced my pronoun to parents. I am going to start doing it and asking.
Kris: I have not either. This is good reflection right now.
Ilia: Well, I am gender-fluid. (OC: The group looks at Ilia in silence. We did not know this
about Ilia. I find myself unsure how to affirm this for her. In the previous sessions they

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have disclosed they are queer in the sense that they identify as bisexual, but they
haven’t talked about gender before. The group leans in and listens awaiting her next
thoughts eager to hear more).
Kris: Oh! So, do you have to tell your students' parents your pronouns?
Ilia: Well no. I used to be a lot more male presenting when I was younger. Now I really do
not care. I am comfortable with who I am. Like I wear dresses and stuff.
Kris: Do you tell like people “my name is Ilia … I go by.”
Ilia: Um, mostly they misgendered me a lot. I got very, I got really misgendered. I had to
correct a lot of people and it is it is a very stressful and it is also very–
Kris: Probably very exhausting Ilia. I am so sorry you had to go through that.
Ilia: Yes exhausting. Because I also had shorter hair back when. Yeah. I had to correct people
a lot. So now I just go by she/ her because like it was … it was … it was a lot for me.
Kris: Do you want us to not call you she/ her?
Ilia: Oh no, I go by she/ her/ they now. I have never really gone and she/ him. But she/her
and they/them. That's fine with me.
Kris: So, we can use both to address you?
Ilia: Yeah! Of course.
Kris: That’s so good to know. And thank so much you for telling us Ilia.
After this exchange with Ilia, I made a deliberate choice to use the pronouns “they” and “them” as much
as possible when referencing Ilia. My hope was that I would affirm Ilia by making this change in the
discussion of them throughout my study. Talking about gender-identity is challenging for adults because
our comfort and views about gender are informed by the earliest messages we have received (Talusan,
2022). When Ilia said “Well I am gender-fluid” they showed vulnerability and bravery that can only
happen if they know the holding environment is strong enough to accept them unconditionally (Heifetz,

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2009). When Ilia said, “I had to correct a lot of people and it is it is a very stressful and it is also very,”
and then I responded with “Probably very exhausting Ilia. I am so sorry you had to go through that,” I
wanted to validate Ilia’s feelings of what that must have felt like to not have a safe space to be
themselves fully. When I asked, “Do you want us to not call you she/her?” I wanted to give them the
space to tell us how to address them in the future. By asking this question to Ilia I wanted to increase
trust with them and ensure that Ilia knew they could count on the members of our holding environment
to say their pronouns correctly. Ilia’s lack of a strong holding environment in the past distanced them
from others and can be seen when they said “Um, mostly they misgendered me a lot. I got very, I got
really misgendered.” This forced Ilia to retreat to making others feel more comfortable by using she/her
at the expense of her own agency to name herself. I closed the conversation and said “That’s so good to
know. And thank so much you for telling us Ilia.” This was not at all how I wanted to end that
conversation. In hindsight, I wished to give Ilia more time and space to discuss what that experience was
like for them. I wanted to probe to facilitate a conversation around what it was like as an adult to be on
the receiving end of a cisnormative practice. My participants and I had lunch together later that week
where I named how meaningful and brave it was for Ilia to disclose that salient part of their identity. The
following excerpt is from a reflective memo after our conversation:
I had to have lunch with Ilia. I asked them if they wanted to eat together as usual but also to
discuss what they said in the session about their gender-fluidity. They said yes excitedly. My
participants and I all had lunch together as we always do, and I asked if I could bring it up again.
Ilia said yes and we began to have conversation. I saw Ilia get emotional which told me that this
is exactly what they wanted. To be honest, I did not quite know what to do in that moment
because it threw our conversation off topic a bit. I explained that to Ilia and asked if they
wanted to talk about their gender fluidity before now that we have some time. Nica and Gail
asked questions and I saw Ilia light up as we were all taking an interest in their identity and what

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that means. Ilia said that they are happy they told us this and they would only tell us because
they feel safe doing so. They said it felt like a weight was lifted off their shoulders now that
other people know at work. This made me happy to know Ilia felt shared power in the group
setting and that their identity would be affirmed from here on out. We all learned more
together outside of session. At the end, we made a commitment to use she/her and they/them
interchangeably per Ilia’s request and that if they ever wanted us to use, he/him pronouns to
promise to let us know. We all did pinky promises like our kindergarteners did, shared a laugh,
and hugged each other before moving on to the next lunch topic.
From experience, I understand the emotional challenge to disclose parts of your identity that others
may not know or that may not be as salient to us. Teachers are expected to follow “sexual scripts.”
These sexual scripts contribute to teachers’ anxiety and stress in the workplace and even cause some to
leave the profession (Connell, 2014). Connell (2014) defined sexual scripts as “instruments of power that
organize and regulate sexual behavior and sort us into hierarchies” (p 7). Connell (2014) also stated that
these hierarchies for teachers in the workplace are organized into “good” (married, monogamous,
cisgender, heterosexual, men as masculine, women as feminine) and “bad” (transgender, non-binary,
homosexual, gender non-conforming) based on modern systems of power (p. 7). Ilia has clearly
experienced the consequences of not following the sexual scripts placed on them. My job was to abolish
those scripts by naming they can be who they want to be, and that the holding environment will support
them. My participants and I have always talked while we enjoyed lunch together but my choice to bring
up the topic discussed in Session 5 was to ensure that Ilia received what they needed from our team. Ilia
disclosing their gender fluidity told me that the holding environment was strong enough for them to
reveal that part of themselves especially when they have had negative experiences doing so in the past.
By having another discussion outside of the session, as seen in the excerpt in my reflective memo, I
ensured that Ilia was given the space to talk about their identity and for us to make commitments to

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them about pronoun usage in the future. Validating their identity and knowing that my participants and
I would continue to do so ensured that Ilia knew our commitment to creating a safe space for them to
be themselves further fostered a strong holding environment. By solidifying our collective ties to each
other, Ilia was better able to tackle tough problems in future sessions because fear of getting
misgendered was now minimized (Heifetz, 2009).
Regulating Distress
Queer consciousness was adaptive work that called for a strong holding environment in which I,
the facilitator, regulated the heat and tension generated in the sessions (Heifetz, 2009). Regulation of
the heat became a necessity for me and for my participants. Table 9 shows the counts for distress
regulation throughout my study.
Table 9
Evidence of Heat Regulation
Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Cycle 3
Regulating distress in
my participants
34 14 15
Regulating my distress 9 4 5
Totals: 43 18 20

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As seen in Table 9, regulating distress in my participants and myself was more frequent in Cycle
1 than the following two Cycles. As the sessions continued, regulating distress maintained importance
but was not as prevalent as it was in Cycle 1. This was due to Cycle 1 sessions’ heavy emphasis on
learning about all the identities under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. In these sessions, we reflected where we
saw ourselves on the spectrum of those identities, and unpacked our deeply held beliefs about sexuality
and gender that were informed by our childhood, religion, media, and families. Cycle 1 was designed to
develop a shared understanding of language in reference to the LGBTQIA+ identities and to excavate
those deeply held beliefs about gender and sexuality. Naturally, there was discomfort in the
conversations and interactions between me and my participants. The discussion about these topics were
extremely personal and the sessions called for adaptive facilitation of lowering the temperature for my
participants and myself so that we were better able to engage in reflection with one another (Heifetz,
2009). The sensitivity of the topic at hand remained the same as seen in Table 9, though it called for less
distress regulation compared to Cycle 1 due to Cycle 2 and 3 sessions’ focus on cisheteronormative
school and instructional practices. Our reflections on our teaching practices and how they reproduced
cisheteronormativity was still personal, but not as personal as Cycle 1 sessions’ activities, discussions,
and reflections.
Session 3 was where my participants and I engaged in deeply held beliefs about sexual
orientation. Participants answered the question “What were the earliest messages you received about
people who have a different sexual orientation than you do? Where did you learn those messages?
Were they positive or negative messages?” The discussion was fruitful and ended with not enough time
for everyone to share. Knowing this, I opened Session 4 with a check-in that created space for my
participants to share anything they did not get to in our last session regarding sexual orientation. I
specifically named that I did not seek closure. My intention was to create a space for anyone who
wanted to share any lingering thoughts, learnings, or wonderings about sexual orientation before we

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switched gears and started our conversation about gender. At this point, Gail looked emotional and was
eager to respond. Gail felt remorseful and worried that the trauma around religion and her upbringing
that informed her beliefs about sexuality impacted me in some way. The following excerpt was Gail’s
response to the check-in question:
Gail: Like that is something that I left last session being here like … we did not really get to
hear Kris's point. And I like hearing everybody's perspective. It's nice to just hear where
we are, like what we grew up knowing about sexuality and how the things that kind of
shaped us and like the way we go about stuff and our beliefs about LGBTQIA+ people.
And I think that that is something that made me reflect last week. I felt icky. Like I left
feeling icky. (OC: Gail seems to be getting emotional as she is talking, and her eyes begin
to well up with tears). Because I shared openly about how my parents feel about
LGBTQIA+ people and like of the things that I was taught as a child were negative things
about LGBTQIA+ people … and like Kris … I care about you, and I wanted to … (OC: Gail is
getting even more emotional, and her voice begins to get shaky). Kris, I wanted to text
you after because I felt like shit. The shit I said about how my parents raised me to
believe about gay people was harmful and what my parents were believing could have
hurt you or brought up things for you as a person who hold that identity. I did not check
in with you on that. And when I left our session, I was like … I left feeling like “I hope I
did not hurt Kris” in the sense of like expressing what my parents were saying or like
what my church was believing. And I left feeling icky in that sense. And I just wanted to
share like it made me reflect. My childhood was a little like confusing and conflicting like
the messages about sexuality that I got. And I also just wanted to say that I hope that
last week nothing I said was hurtful or harmful just because I know that what my
parents and like what the Church says sometimes can be harmful.

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When Gail said, “I left feeling icky” she named the feeling of distress that she carried with her since our
previous session. Gail named where this distress came from when she said, “Because I shared openly
about how my parents feel about LGBTQIA+ people and like of the things that I was taught as a child
were negative things about LGBTQIA+ people.” Furthermore, Gail understood the discussion of our
deeply held beliefs about sexuality and gender had the potential to harm queer-identifying people. To
make progress on our collective and individual challenge of raising our queer consciousness I had to
surface deep value conflicts with tough reflection questions that caused Gail distress (Heifetz, 2009).
Asking these questions of my participants, no matter the anguish it caused, is important because our
deeply held beliefs about sexuality and gender and knowing where those come from directly impact our
comfort and discomfort with discussing LGBTQIA+ topics with others (Talusan, 2022). When Gail said
“The shit I said about how my parents raised me to believe about gay people was harmful and what my
parents were believing could have hurt you or brought up things for you as a person who hold that
identity” she owned the impact those reflections may have had on me. I did not address this further in
the moment and merely accepted Gail’s apology. I checked in with Gail while walking to our cars at the
end of the school day. The following excerpt is from a reflection I wrote immediately after the
conversation where I addressed Gail and how I regulated her distress:
I knew that Gail, Ilia, and Nica all grew up religious with traditional Catholic Latino families. I
share this same connection with my participants as my family has a religious background that
intersects with our Latino culture. In today’s session we focused so much on unearthing where
our deeply held beliefs come from and hearing some of the harmful things that my participants
were told from their families and church did hurt to hear because they were similar messages I
received and were deeply traumatizing. Today, Gail expressed concern for potentially harming
me with something she said from last session. She seemed upset as she said she felt icky and
wanted to call me to take accountability for what she said that may have hurt me. I decided to

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go to Gail’s classroom after school and ask to walk out with her. Gail and I have a strong
relationship and I wanted to reassure her of things and reiterate other things so she can fully
participate in the next sessions. I walked out with Gail to the parking lot, and we discussed this
topic further. I reiterated to Gail that the goal of the sessions is that by the end of my time
together, that she will leave a little bit more aware how we may be reproducing
cisheteronormative ideology. And that we must come back to our beliefs, our deeply held
beliefs or messages we are hearing at home that inform our behaviors now so that way when
we are stepping into the classrooms, we are mindful and conscious of those things to benefit
like students. Gail nodded as I was talking in an authentic active listening way. I honestly told her
that a lot of the times I am not always going to respond in sessions and that doesn’t mean what
she is saying is or isn’t hurting my feelings. It means I am processing everything. And that these
sessions are also a way for me to practice decentering myself so that others may share
authentically without censoring themselves for fear that they will hurt my feelings. I said if Gail
does that, then the sessions will not be useful to anyone because they would not be engaged
with in an honest way. Gail understood this and said she appreciated me coming to her. She said
she did not know what to make of my silence in this session and that she now knows what this
means for future sessions. She committed to continue being open and honest in sessions. I told
Gail that if she ever feels this way again, like she hurt my feelings for saying something or she is
anxious to be transparent about something out of fear it will hurt my feelings, I will commit to
checking in with her in a 1:1 setting to unpack things together. She reiterated how much she
cares for me and that she just is always thinking about me. I reminded her that our norms say to
speak our truths and that her truth is important to me, no matter what. I saw her become less
tense and she asked for a hug. We embraced tightly and then went to our cars to head home for
the day.

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To lower Gail’s temperature, I addressed the aspects of the conflict that have technical solutions when I
reflected, “I told Gail that if she ever feels this way again, like she hurt my feelings for saying something
or she is anxious to be transparent about something out of fear it will hurt my feelings I will commit to
checking in with her in a 1:1 setting to unpack things together. I temporarily reclaimed my responsibility
and my personal role in this tough issue, a strategy I used to reduce the heat Gail felt (Heifetz, 2009)
when I said the following:
I honestly told her that a lot of the times I am not always going to respond in sessions and that
doesn’t mean what she is saying is or isn’t hurting my feelings. It means I am processing
everything. And that these sessions are also a way for me to practice decentering myself
When I said, “Our norms say to speak our truths and that her truth is important to me, no matter what”
I reminded Gail of our established norms and how we made a commitment to one another in this
process to be honest so that we may learn together (Arao & Clemens, 2013). When I took the time to
circle back to Gail, addressed their assumptions, reminded them of our norms, and shared our
commitments to one another, I employed strategies of an adaptive leader to reduce Gail’s distress
following the session (Heifetz, 2009). With both Ilia and Gail, I have come to realize that follow-up
conversations outside of adult learning sessions lowered their levels of distress and re-visiting distress
that was experienced in sessions and discussing it further enabled both Ilia and Gail to better engage in
later sessions.
As stated in the conceptual framework of this study, orchestrating conflict with my participants
was predicted to be a necessary adaptive leadership behavior I needed to embody as the facilitator of
adult learning. However, prior to the study, I did not account for how much stress regulation would be
necessary. I mentioned that a strong holding environment would involve the regulation of heat and did
not foresee how big of a role stress regulation would play. In the design of my study, I also did not
account for how much stress I would personally need to regulate. I believed and still believe that a

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strong holding environment is essential yet insufficient on its own. There must be someone present to
gauge the temperature and lower the heat (Heifetz, 2009). I continue to believe that it is imperative for
the adaptive leader and facilitator to regulate distress both with others and within themselves, as I did
throughout my study. It is with this temperature regulation that adaptive change is truly able to take
place.
The Power of Humor
Heifetz (2009) discussed the need for an adaptive leader and facilitator to control the
temperature enough so that participants may be able to engage in discussion about adaptive problems.
On controlling the temperature for your participants, Heifetz (2009) stated the following:
To orchestrate conflict effectively, think of yourself as having your hand on the thermostat and
always watching for signals that you need to raise or lower the temperature in the room. Your
goal is to keep the temperature- that is, the intensity of the disequilibrium created by the
discussion of the conflict- high enough to motivate people to arrive at creative next steps and
potentially useful solutions, but not so high that it drives them away or makes it impossible for
them to function. (p. 160)
One strategy to lower the temperature is to employ work avoidance mechanisms that provide a break
for the group such as making a joke or telling a story (Heifetz, 2009). Humor was extremely present
throughout my study. Using humor became a strategy to lower the heat and relieve discomfort for my
participants and myself when discussing LGBTQIA+ topics. Table 10 shows evidence of humor and how it
was used throughout the sessions. As demonstrated in Table 10, humor was used more often to
regulate distress than it was to foster a holding environment amongst my participants. Table 10 shows,
however, that every session was sprinkled with one or more instances of humor as a means to regulate
distress and further foster the holding environment for my participants. Humor was used in different
ways. When humor was used a means to foster a holding environment, the facilitator or participant

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made the situation light in a way that fostered connections and affection toward one another. When
humor was used to lower the heat, the participant or the facilitator regulated distress to be better
suited to engage in conversation. Given using humor to lower temperature was the main use of humor,
this section will focus on that type of humor use.
Table 10
Evidence of Humor and Its Purposes
Session Humor was used to foster a holding
environment.
Humor was used to lower the heat.
1 3 4
2 1 3
3 1 2
4 1 2
5 1 4
6 2 5
7 2 3
8 1 4
9 3 2

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Borrowing Heifetz’s (2009) idea of living in the disequilibrium, humor became a mechanism that
allowed my participants and me to tolerate the discomfort that came when we called attention to tough
questions related to LGBTQIA+ identities and cisheteronormative school practices through facilitator
heat regulation. This section will detail how humor, though used as a means of fostering a holding
environment for my participants, had more instances when used to lower the heat during challenging
discussions about LGBTQIA+ topics.
In Session 5, I taught my participants about hegemonic assumptions and the role of those
assumptions in our own critical reflections. When I designed the sessions, I anticipated that my
participants would struggle with new terminology and accounted for that in the framing of each session
to frontload this new language. I framed each session and gave participants a preview of what is to
come in the session, explicit instruction and definitions of new words they need to know, and even a
model of how to pronounce new words. I immediately noticed my participants’ faces of confusion when
saying the word “hegemony” and “hegemonic.” My assumption was correct that this word was new,
and I empathized with my participants as it was a word I recently learned as well. To help with this, I
infused humor into the teaching of the word to help make the language feel less intimidating for
participants. Here is an excerpt from that framing.
Kris: So, the first element that makes reflection critical is that we reflect on the power
dynamics at play in any given context. And the second way is hegemonic assumptions.
(OC: Participants look confused. Their faces seem overwhelmed. Illumination of Power
and Hegemonic Assumptions are words that can create cognitive overload and I see it
on their faces right now. Distress may be present). What is it? Hegemonic assumptions
are the things that we think are in our best interest but really harm us in the long term.
Hegemony. I think of like … Jiminy as in Jiminy Cricket, get it? HA-Jiminy? (OC:
participants and I share a big laugh collectively). Hegemony describes the process where

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ideas, structures and actions cannot be seen and come to be seen by many people as
natural when they actually protect the status quo. So, I am gonna give you another
example that you might relate to. When people say “you are so good at teaching and
must be your calling. Teaching is your calling. You're so good at it, you are going to do it
forever.” This hegemonic assumption implies that teachers, us, are selfless servants of
our calling, our students and institutions. We even take pride in saying this, there are
stickers all over the place saying “teaching is my calling”; in reality it works to enslave us.
In this interaction, distress immediately became present when I said, “And the second way is hegemonic
assumptions.” This novel idea and new language gave my participants pause. Recognizing this, I said “I
think of like … Jiminy as in Jiminy Cricket, get it? HA-Jiminy?” I intended to help ease the distress that
came from cognitive overload around language by not only sharing a mnemonic device, but by making
participants laugh. Here, humor served (a) to lighten the mood around a challenging new concept for
participants and (b) to make a word impressionable to participants by using a fun, familiar name
reference. Participants made references to this joke when reading the word hegemony in their own
reflections and throughout our conversations in the session. This further showed that humor was the
tool that allowed the heat to be lowered enough so that participants felt efficacious and motivated to
engage in the session (Heifetz, 2009).
The strategy of infusing humor became contagious throughout my study. As I infused humor to
ease my participants’ distress, I noticed my participants mimicked this strategy to ease their distress as
well. In other words, my use of humor served as a model for them to imitate (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988).
In Session 6, my participants and I engaged in a role play on how we would respond to common
cisheteronormative school practices. Specifically, we focused on identifying the cisheteronormative
practice in each scenario and then developed common language we would use to address it, combat it,
and disrupt it. In one scenario I posed a hypothetical, and very real parent concern to the group. The

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concern read, “I do not think boys should be allowed to play with girls toys. If we let children cross
gender roles, they will grow very confused.” This activity was designed to get participants to generate
their own responses first, then read and rehearse common responses taken from Sapon-Shevin’s (2019)
research. The goal of this session was to help participants become more familiar with LGBTQIA+
inclusive language that can be memorized and at the ready in their teacher toolkit to combat
cisheteronormative assumptions. The following excerpt, taken from the Session 6 transcripts, illustrated
a lighthearted dialogue between my participants in the final scenario and role-play of the session:
Nica: Well, you are confused! (OC: Nica pretends to be sassy to a pretend adult and waves her
finger while snapping in a z formation and a hand on her hip. The group shares a big
laugh.)
Kris: And you can leave our school! (OC: Group laughs harder. We’ve made this joke before
as a team, but it has deeper roots. At some point in our journeys as teachers, we have
said to parents who disagree with LGBTQIA+ topics being taught in school that if this is
not the school for you it is a choice school, and you can leave! I truly believe that this is
a last resort but it also speaks to the coalition of the willing. If they are not a part of that
coalition after everything is tried and said and done, then we have got to learn to make
peace with letting that go.)
Gail: I would say kindly, “There's no such thing as boy things or boy and girl toys.” “All kids
can play with all kinds of toys.”
Kris: Do you want to see what the research says you can say? Can you read that Ilia?
Ilia: (reading from section in participant agenda) “Actually, I think that it is our role as
teachers to lead children to answer a wide range of activities.”
Kris: Can you read the next one, Nica?

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Nica: (reading from section in participant agenda) “The research actually shows that children
who are allowed to figure out who they are with support and appreciation grow up with
more self-confidence and a better sense of self.”
Kris: How did those feel? It's very like matter of fact, right? If you notice the responses are
not emotional.
All: Mhm!
Kris: Even in the first response you are just saying “it is a dangerous myth.” Right? And
saying, “that is not my experience with LGBTQIA+ people.” I feel like these two are also
very like matter of fact.
Ilia: So, we do not tell them you are a meanie, and you are wrong? (OC: We all share another
great unanimous laugh)
Kris: Yeah, you do not say you are a bully! Your child's first bully!
In this conversation, there were three instances of laughter amongst all participants of the group. Two
of the instances were initiated by the participants. This interaction demonstrates the infectious nature
of infusing humor through participants naturally doing so in the discussion. Nica infused humor when
she said, “Well you are confused!” as her answer to how she would respond to a parent who stated, “if
we let children cross gender roles, they will grow very confused.” Nica said what many teachers who are
frustrated with and fatigued by conservative views on LGBTQIA+ topics are thinking. This honesty
created humor because, as professionals, it is not a response we would tell a parent. When I replied to
her humorous response with “And you can leave our school!” I continued the momentum of adding
more humor which created more laughter amongst the group. Later, Ilia responded with their own joke
when they said, “So we do not tell them you are a meanie, and you are wrong?” While each of us, as
professionals, know these are not ways to respond to parents, we do need a toolkit for what to say
and/or do because these are the first responses we think of in our minds. This session provided

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scaffolding for my participants, and to get us there, humor helped diffuse what many teachers wish they
could say to parents who do not support LGBTQIA+ inclusive practices. Nica, Ilia, and I infused humor in
this last scenario to lower the temperature. We were engaging in a scenario where hurtful assumptions
were made by a parent or an adult and resolved any painful feelings from the cisheteronormative
assumption with laughter.
The scenarios in this session called for us to pretend to respond to serious, harmful assumptions
rooted in misinformation and disinformation from outside voices. Discomfort was present in the roleplays when we practiced how we would combat cisheteronormative, homophobic, and transphobic
language. Humor helped ease that tension so that we could engage in dialogue and learn productive
responses and language when discussing these issues with parents. These cisheteronormative school
scenarios took my participants and me out of our comfort zones and into pretend conflict which
collectively raised the heat. This heat created collective and individual disequilibrium (Heifetz, 2009).
Humor was the medicine that allowed my participants and me to stay in the productive zone of
disequilibrium (Heifetz, 2009) where our temperature regulation allowed for richer reflections and
critical dialogue without paralysis from group members. Humor was the tool that allowed my
participants and me to lower the heat when discussing LGBTQIA+ topics to make progress on learning
goals each session and positioned us to better engage in reflection in subsequent sessions.
Missed Opportunities
Throughout my study, gender was the topic that was discussed most by my participants. Shared
insights into their instructional practices, our reflections, and group discussions about those reflections
centered mostly on concepts related to cisnormativity and gender as opposed to heteronormativity and
sexuality. This often reproduced the conflation of gender, sex, and sexuality. Because I was aware of and
hoping to disrupt this common conflation, explicit efforts were made to combat this conflation through
my study design, action plan, and scripted facilitator’s guide. Evidence also showed that even thought I

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made attempts combat conflation amongst my participants, I personally conflated concepts of gender,
sex, and sexuality as well. As a queer-identifying person, I felt this tension and dissonance as I
reproduced conflation throughout my study as well. Table 11 shows the list of topics covered
throughout each session in my study. Careful consideration was made to separate the concepts of
gender and sexuality to promote separate discussions and combat the conflation as illustrated in the
topics of Sessions 3 and 4 in Table 11. I initially separated sessions about gender, sex and sexuality in the
design of my study, as you can see in Table 11, but then in Sessions 4 through 9 I continue to use the
term cisheteronormativity, which allowed my participants to choose what they wanted to share and
discuss, and more often that was gender. Evidence will later show instances in which both I and my
participants reinforced conflation even when attempts were made to combat and disrupt it. As much as
I wanted to make the distinction amongst sex, gender, and sexuality clear for my participants from the
outset, instead I discovered that I, in, fact, reinforced their conflation. Taking into account all previously
mentioned factors, combating conflation of gender, sex, and sexuality emerged as my most significant
missed opportunity in the course of my study.

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Table 11
List of Topics in Action Plan
Session Topic
1 Introduction of historically entrenched inequity, investing in the problem of practice
2 Exploring one’s salient identity and unpacking gender and sexually expansive identities
across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum
3 Building identity-consciousness around sexual orientation
4 Building identity-consciousness around gender
5 Understanding cisheteronormativity and cisheteronormative school practices
6 Understand fear and how to address cisheteronormative school practice
7 Introduction of critical reflection as a tool to build queer consciousness Pt. 1
8 Introduction of critical reflection as a tool to build queer consciousness Pt. 2
9 Reflection of our roles as teachers to use our queer consciousness to disrupt and
combat cisheteronormativity
Throughout my study, participant discussion showed that the topics of sexuality and sexual
identity, though always present inside and outside classrooms no matter the age of students, was not
discussed with students as often as gender-identity. I was not surprised by this data as it is consistent
with the research. In a 2023 survey of 3,905 adults (40% identified as Liberal, 30% identified as
Conservative, 30% other) about contentious topics taught in schools, Saavedra et al (2024) discovered
the following on topics of sexuality in elementary schools:
● Adults (45%) disapproved of children reading a book assigned in class about two male
penguins adopting a baby penguin.
● Adults (51%) adults disapproved of schools talking about different types of families, like
same-sex couples.

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These data are not presented to say that my participants disapproved of talking about sexuality nor is it
to say that it informed their comfort or discomfort with participation in topics about sexuality. The data
presented by Saavedra et al. (2004) offered one explanation as to why my participants may have
defaulted to discussion about gender as many adults have internalized their disapproval for the
discussion of sexuality in elementary schools. Knowing this, careful attention was placed in the design of
my study to build identity consciousness about sexuality and to do so before gender, as seen in the
topics of Session 3 and 4 in Table 11. Despite strategically compartmentalizing these concepts to give
each their own time and attention, participants and I still defaulted to reflecting on gender and brought
up gender more often even when explicitly prompted to discuss gender and sexuality. This laid the
foundation for participants and I in my study to bring in instances of how gender showed up or how they
combated cisnormativity more often than they did sexuality, regardless of attempts made by me as the
facilitator to reiterate and remind them about the dangers of conflation. Table 12 illustrates the
instances of gender, sex, and sexual conflation by each participant across all 3 Cycles of my study. As
seen in Table 12, conflation was present for every participant in every Cycle, including me. The following
section illustrates examples of how this conflation unfolded throughout my study.
Table 12
Instances of Gender, Sex, and Sexual Identity Conflation Across Cycles
Participant Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Cycle 3
Kris 4 2 2
Nica 3 3 2
Ilia 2 2 3
Gail 5 3 3

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Session 2 was designed to unpack these concepts of sex, gender, and sexuality. I believed that
engaging in the Genderbread Person activity would allow participants to see the nuances between
gender identity, gender expression, biological sex, sexual attraction, and romantic attraction.
Throughout my study, I often conflated gender, sex, and sexuality in group discussions with my
participants (eight instances across all three Cycles). After the activity, I asked the group to engage in
three discussion questions about the activity. The following excerpt demonstrates the exchange
between Gail and me in response to one of those questions and how she defaulted to the discussion of
gender exclusively.
Kris: Here are today’s discussion questions, “What new understandings, if any, were
generated about gender as a result of this activity?” “What new understandings, if any,
were generated about sexuality as a result of this activity?” “After reflecting on your use
of gender and sexuality terminology, what if any, are some distinctions among these
concepts that have become clear to you? Why?” Let’s take some, about 5 minutes time
to quietly reflect on the questions before our discussion. If we need more time that is
okay I will check-in after the timer goes off (OC: I give participants 5 minutes to quietly
jot down their reflections, ideas, etc. I see my participants writing and it looks like they
have lots of noticings and learnings based on the speed at which their pens are moving.
Participants look up at me indicating they are done before the timer goes off. I stop the
timer before). Okay! it looks like we are finished independently reflecting. Whoever
feels moved to start our discussion first may do so!
Gail: I will start! As I was going through this activity, it made me aware of my own thoughts
and like what I considered to be feminine and masculine. Like gender expression. I do
not always do my makeup. I do not do my nails. I do not do my eyebrow like I do not
upkeep for stuff like that. Sometimes I do not shave my legs so often. And I have wrote

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here “Why is body hair gendered? Like we all get body hair!” Things like that made me
aware because like now I am like, I sometimes feel like I am not girly enough in a sense
but I know when I walk into a room obvi people know I am a girl. That like made me
have some type of like feeling and I am feeling some type of way because I am not that
girly, I should not feel like I have a masculine side. It just doesn't mean that I am super
girly in that sense.
After I heard Gail reflect on gender identity and expression, I interjected with the following reflection.
Kris: I think for me an understanding that I had was when I did this activity the first time I was
like, “oh, okay, I know this,” but doing it like now with like a new lens of students and
having to teach this to parents and having to have these conversations with parents. I
was like, “this is really complicated, and this is really nuanced stuff” and also I had a
reflection from you Gail from last week, because you had said a lot of the examples in
the LGBTQIA+ staff training were about gender and it wasn't about sexuality. And I think
we conflate the two because the LGBTQIA+ acronym itself has all of all of genderqueer
and sexually queer people together. And I was thinking to myself, we need to take them
apart because they are two separate communities with two separate problems. And we
have to talk to parents and students about one and then also teach them out the other
and not conflate the two with that. I was reflecting on how tough of a job that is for
teachers.
When I initially asked the third reflection question to my participants, “After reflecting on your use of
gender and sexuality terminology, what if any, are some distinctions among these concepts that have
become clear to you?” I asked participants to make the distinction between these concepts. I probed
here to get participants to talk about the distinctions to get participants to focus on the separation of
concepts. In doing so, Gail still chose to reflect on her improved understanding of gender expression

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when she said, “it made me aware of my own thoughts and like what I considered to be feminine and
masculine.” I was unable to hear if Gail had any new and improved understandings about sexuality
terminology. My early assumption was that Gail defaulted to sharing about gender even when
prompted to discuss both gender and sexuality due to the nature of the grade level we teach. The
kindergarteners we teach are at the age level where there is hyper-awareness of gender norms and
gender differences, and even experience moments of discomfort with breaking those societally
constructed gender norms (Sadowski, 2019; Sapon-Shevin, 2019). Sadowski (2019) even noted how
gender, as opposed to sexuality, is a dominant force in young students’ daily lives:
Gender roles are taught at school. When children enter school and kindergarten they are
learning much about gender codes and what is expected of them if they are a boy or a girl. They
are often fixated on “what boys do” and “what girls wear” and most try very hard to follow
these rules. (p. 121).
The design of Sessions 3 and 4, as seen in Table 11, intended to prompt participants to engage in
separate discussions on building identity consciousness on sexuality and gender, respectively. My
participants and I intentionally de-conflated gender and sexuality in these sessions in hopes that we
would remain vigilant about the reproduction of cisnormativity and heteronormativity through
conflation in Sessions 5–9. Participants, however, continued to conflate gender, sex, and sexuality even
after attempts were made to intentionally engage in separate discussions about those topics. When the
terms cisheteronormativity or cisheteronormative school practices were used in facilitator questioning
throughout Sessions 5–9, there were more instances where participants defaulted to discussing and
reflecting on gender and cisnormativity as opposed to sexuality and heteronormativity (26 instances of
reflection on gender and 7 instances of reflection on sexuality). This can be seen in Session 7 when I
asked participants to discuss how topics of gender and sexuality have come up for them in their lives.
The excerpt that follows is how the conversation unfolded.

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Kris: So today we are going to get started with our seventh session together. Let’s look at our
check-in question for today. I have two questions for you. Take a second to think about
the following questions: “How, if at all, did topics of cisheteronormativity we have been
discussing in our sessions come up for you?”
Gail: I will share! I was talking to a mom, and she made a comment. She said, “you know, like,
why would parents let a girl play football, like, do not they know how aggressive it is?”
In my head. I was like, why are you letting your son play then you know? Then my
partner and I talked about it later. It frustrated me how she so like, blinded by … she
accepts that like the risk of the sport for boys, but only for like female or like femaleidentifying students. And like, she doesn't care about that risk with her with her son.
And I was like, hmm … that is very interesting.
Ilia: I had something similar to Gail. I was talking to my mom who saw two women holding
hands. One was masculine presenting, the other feminine. The mom was like, “I think it
is funny how they will be wives when she looks like a man.” The mom said, “if she wants
to act like a man, why doesn’t she just be a man?” She looks like one anyway. (OC:
We’re all shaking our heads, affirming the confusion and frustration Ilia must have felt
having to hear this). Yeah, I know the logic is confusing but that is some people’s logic.
Nica: I remember mine. For me, me and my family were watching tv. It was my mom and my
aunt, and my sisters and in the living room with their husband's and my dad. And we
were watching like the Spanish news, like gossip news. A man came out dressed in a
skirt and feminine clothing. He was wearing like a skirt with like a leather like a plaid
skirt. My tia was like “I do not know. I do not know why people dress like that.” I was
just listening to what they were saying.

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When I asked “How, if at all, did topics of cisheteronormativity we have been discussing in our sessions
come up for you?” I intended to gauge participants in a conversation about how both gender and
sexuality have come up for them. All three participants brought in topics of gender. In other words, the
“hetero” part of cisheteronormativity was ignored. Gail brought in gender roles and expectation when
she said, “she accepts that like the risk of the sport for boys, but only for like female or like femaleidentifying students.” Ilia described cisnormativity when she recalled dialogue from someone else that
said, “I think it is funny how they will be wives when she looks like a man.” Similarly, Nica’s reflection
centered on someone else’s discomfort with a gender non-conforming person. While Ilia mentioned
issues related to sexuality when she said, “my mom saw two women holding hands,” the thrust of her
reflection was about her mom’s awareness about the presentation of masculinity and femininity, an
issue of cisnormativity and gender.
As a facilitator, I missed the opportunity to follow-up and ask my participants to engage in
reflections about sexuality and heteronormativity. As a result, my participants and I missed the
opportunity to engage in conversations that could have built our queer consciousness specifically and
independently around sexual orientation. Upon reflection, merely having used the term
“cisheteronormativity,” a foundational concept in my research question, conceptual framework, and the
design of my study, reproduced what I tried to prevent by limiting my use of the terms LGBTQIA+ and
queer as previously mentioned in the Context and Background section. By using “cisheteronormativity”
in the questioning of participants in Cycles 2 and 3 (see Table 7), and in topics henceforth in Sessions 5–
9 (see Table 11), I conflated cisnormativity and heteronormativity as similar dominant ideology just as
LGBTQIA+ conflates gender, sex, and sexuality. The consequences of this conflation were that my
participants and I scarcely discussed sexuality and sexually expansive people and missed the opportunity
to engage in learning together about that identity marker within the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. Having gained
clarity, when facilitating future sessions, I would still ask questions related to gender, have participants

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reflect on gender, and then have the discussion about gender. Then, as a facilitator, I would be clear
with participants as I transition from dialogue about gender to sexuality. I would prompt independent
reflection on questions related explicitly to sexuality, sexual orientation, and heteronormativity. This
separation and repeated follow-up from the facilitator would promote a more authentic learning
experience for participants and prevent the session on building identity-consciousness about sexual
orientation from feeling as it was another isolated, disconnected professional development workshop
(Webster-Wright, 2009). Facilitating two separate conversations about gender and sexuality could
better promote the disentanglement of gender, sex, and sexuality. Also, in a future study not bound by
time constraints, the facilitator would benefit from having more opportunities to engage in those
separate conversations about gender and sexuality so participants may be able to engage in separate,
deeper reflections about them further raising their queer consciousness (Webster-Wright, 2009).
My participants were not the only ones who conflated these concepts. Using specific language,
such as the term cisheteronormative and cisheteronormativity throughout my study, I not only
conflated the topics myself but also set my participants and I up to conflate them through the language
used in my questioning. The issue of conflation was not just seen with my participants, but rather
something I also repeatedly defaulted to. There were 8 instances across all 3 Cycles where I conflated
gender, sex, and sexual identity as presented in Table 12. In a critical reflection combatting the tension I
felt with my own conflation of gender and sexual identity, I said the following:
Conflation has come up in classroom discussion before at USC with my colleagues and now it is
coming up in my study with my participants. I want my classmates and my participants to stop
the LGBTQIA+ conflation but how do we separate gender and sexuality when I cannot do it for
myself? I have privilege walking through this world as a cisgender man in so many ways. That
being said, my queer identity is a marginalized one that has come with its own disadvantages.
It's hard for me to separate like my gender, my maleness, from my queerness because they are

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so interlinked. Thinking about intersectionality they are just like, so tied for me. It's hard
because I was thinking about my upbringing. And I was thinking about how when I was a little
boy, I did not feel like I had a space with girls because I was a boy. I did not feel I had a safe
space with boys because I was queer. And because of this, I did not ever feel like I had this like
this like safe space to be with other people. And there were no queer men, like when I was little.
And so that was just very like a lonely isolating experience. And for me, when I think about my
interactions with other people, especially like students, I think about how like is there a space
for them to just be themselves? And for me, like, when I am approaching my classroom every
day, I am not thinking about like, who is queer, who is not, I am thinking about like, does this
student have a space to be themselves regardless of how they identify because we know even
students have intersectional identities. I am constantly thinking about when I am looking at a
student or looking at an adult, like, how it is so hard to detach the two, which is why we conflate
them so much, right? But it is like, my salient identities just show up everywhere. And so, it is
like, when I am with other students, when I am looking at other students, I try to ask myself
“What are their salient identities and can they detach them?” “Can they not detach them?”
“How do I make a safe space for them?”
When I said, “It’s come up in classroom discussion before at USC with my colleagues and now it is
coming up in my study with my participants,” I noted how conflation seemed to be a natural
consequence when LGBTQIA+ topics were discussed. When I asked myself “how do we separate gender
and sexuality when I cannot do it for myself?” I named the disorientation I felt. The conflation I witness
in my spheres and that I also engage with personally obscured the social differences I originally sought
out to explore with my participants. When I said “it is hard for me to separate like my gender, my
maleness, from my queerness because they are so interlinked” I made reference to how my identities
have intersected. On intersectionality, Love (2019) wrote “Intersectionality is not just about listing and

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naming your identities-it is a necessary analytic tool to explain the complexities and the realities of
discrimination and of power of the lack thereof, and how they intersect with identities” (p. 3). I further
named this tension when I said, “I am constantly thinking about when I am looking at a student or
looking at an adult, like, how it is so hard to detach the two, which is why we conflate them so much.”
The repeated default conversation about gender throughout my study showed that there was a
need for further and intentional facilitation surrounding topics of sexuality without the conflation of the
two. It is only after the facilitator does this that we can examine the ideological positions of
cisnormativity and heteronormativity separately and intentionally, and how they have shaped school
and instructional practices. Table 13 illustrates that participants defaulted to discussion about gender
and sex as opposed to sexuality anytime a discussion or reflection question had the words
“cisheteronormativity” or “cisheteronormative.” Cycle 2 and Cycle 3 first introduced participants to the
word cisheteronormativity. From then on, questioning was done utilizing variations of this term as seen
in the discussion and reflections questions in Table 7 and topics discussed in Table 11. As shown in Table
13, Nica, Gail, and Ilia defaulted to reflection on gender and sex more frequently than reflection on
sexuality and sexual orientation (27 total instances of participant reflection on gender across Cycles and
7 total instances of participant reflection on sexuality across Cycles

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Table 13
Instances of Gender and Sexuality Reflection
Cycle 2 Cycle 3
Participant Reflected on
gender
Reflected on
sexuality
Reflected on
gender
Reflected on
Sexuality
Nica 5 1 5 1
Gail 7 0 5 3
Ilia 3 1 2 1
As a result, the word cisheteronormativity itself can be viewed as a term that can conflate, even
when it tries to name the intersectional nature of cisnormativity and heteronormativity. For future
studies about queer consciousness, adults should remain vigilant against the harm that comes from
gender, sex, and sexuality conflation (and further, from using the terms LGBTQIA+, cisheteronormativity,
and queer) while simultaneously analyzing their intersectional qualities. Conflation of gender, sex, and
sexuality not only minimizes the individual nuanced experiences of the infinite possible identities within
the LGBTQIA+ community, but it also gave permission to my participants to engage in reflection on the
identity marker of their choosing (gender and sex in this case) stifling conversation about any sexual
identities. By engaging in conversations that mostly centered the identity markers of gender and sex as
opposed to sexuality, my participants and I missed the opportunity to build content knowledge about
sexually expansive persons therefore limiting the scope of our queer consciousness, the very thing this
study was designed to raise.
Afterword
Throughout my study, I have learned a lot about what it means to be an instructional leader for
adults. I have also learned about the challenges that educators face when trying to raise their queer
consciousness such as learning how to pay attention and unpacking fear to identify, combat, and disrupt

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those “hot spots” that may be reproducing cisheteronormativity in schools (Airton, 2019). In this
section, I discuss my personal growth as a queer educator of color and my role in continuing this work. I
also discuss the implications of my findings section specifically, the urgency of a national queer
consciousness, how schools can support queer educators (who were once queer kids in schools), and
answer the question “What now?”
My Growth
October is the month nationally recognized as LGBTQIA+ History Month. LGBTQIA+ History
Month is aimed at recognizing, teaching, and celebrating queer history and queer figures while
encompassing October 11th’s National Coming Out Day contrasted with Pride Month’s celebration of
queer visibility because of the 1969 protests and Stonewall Inn’s raids (Juedes, 2022). Given the sociopolitical landscape at the time of my study and the way my study put a spotlight on these issues for my
participants and I, we had an opportunity to, together and separately, work through concrete examples
of how cisheteronormativity has transpired for us. Also, given the heightened political climate, instances
of homophobia and transphobia were less abstract as my participants and I were on the ground,
experiencing them firsthand. My study took place from the months of October through December 2023.
My school attempted to recognize LGBTQIA+ History Month via one school assembly and whole-school
Zoom read-alouds. My school also communicated these activities to parents via our weekly family
newsletter that is distributed weekly. Due to the timing and focus of my study, it became a time when I
heard teachers share stories about homophobia and transphobia, they dealt with from student families,
many of whom are families I taught previously and have relationships with. The month of October and
June always bring about strong feelings for me, and this was more pronounced given the time period in
which my study took place. I experienced these feelings in October which coincided with the beginning
of my study where I was trying to not only teach others to increase their own queer consciousness, but
also be a model of how to increase queer consciousness. In a text message from a parent of a student

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currently in my class, expressed curiosity and their hesitance that echoed my coworkers’ experiences
regarding LGBTQIA+ History Month. They expressed that as new parents, they have not heard more
about the topic and how it is being taught to their children and feel that it should not be taught to their
kindergarteners. They also expressed that there should be a focus on learning the alphabet and
numbers and that talking about these topic makes them feel quite nervous. When I received this
message, I immediately felt sick to my stomach. When I see messages like this, the alarm in my head and
heart go off, and this time was no exception; my guard immediately went up. By saying “I am not
completely against it, but I do not agree that it should be taught at this age,” this parent telegraphed her
conservative ideological position about LGBTQIA+ inclusivity. While she admitted that she did not know
the “specifics of what is going to be talked about,” she nonetheless jumped to the assumption that
whatever it is would not be age appropriate. Despite not really wanting to, I scheduled a meeting with
the parent the next day to address this concern. To regulate my distress, I prepared for the worst. I had
a heightened sense of threat and was fully ready for the parents to say they were taking their student
out of my class and into another school. I was prepared to put on a professional tone, rooted in a culture
of niceness, while also standing my ground and defending my queerness (Jones & Okun, 2001). Myself,
my administration, and my colleague and participant Gail (who had my student’s twin student in her
class) all met with the mom and dad of the students. The excerpt that follows is from a reflection on
how the conversation with the parents unfolded:
I am having anxiety pretty much the whole day about having to talk to these parents. I am
nervous. I am wondering which way could go. I am trying to assume best intent. I am also
hoping to like not model anxiety because my colleague is a newer teacher, and she is also saying
how nervous she is for this conversation that is happening after school. I opened up the
conversation by telling them that I am so excited like happy, and I want to affirm them for
coming to talk to me and have a conversation. I talked to them and told them that we were a

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team for their student. And we are a partnership and I want to have and preserve our
relationship and everything they say today. I hope that I can answer their concerns and not
necessarily solve anything but hopefully hear one another out. And I told them that I was going
to be taking notes the entire time. Just so that way I can make sure I answer their questions and
they agreed. Some of their concerns were: “Why do we not we give 9/11 the same recognition
in September?” “Why are we teaching students about sex and sexual organs?” Why are
kindergarteners, who are barely learning their letters, being taught these intense topics?” We're
talking about family structure and respect for families. And we are talking about differences in
family structure and what that looks like, and all that also about respecting people's differences.
I jumped in took part of the conversation and told them that we have same sex parents of
students here at our school. We have same sex teachers and I kind of disclosed myself. I said, I
am a part of that community. And I deserve to feel a safe space and so do those students who
have families that look different from our families. It's about respect and showing respect for
differences. And that is the root of everything. I assured them that I wasn't teaching about
sexual organs or sex, because I agreed with them that that is not something that I am
comfortable talking about to kindergarteners nor is that part developmentally appropriate. I
have told them that we will be talking about the identities and what they mean. We will be
talking and reflecting about our family structure. And in kindergarten, we need to know that all
our families are different and that we will be showing respect to them. We had lots of
conversations as I showed the parents the books I read during this month and continued to
answer as many of the questions they had. I told them that our conversation today is just the
beginning. I told them “If you go home later, you are having dinner and you think about things
more like please text me or contact me right away!” And reassured them that my door is always
open, and I want to like keep the lines of communication open. They left. As soon as the doors

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shut and those parents left, I started crying. My other initial thoughts were “Why do I have to do
this?” like, again, it is my Friday afternoon. I just wanted to go home. Instead, I am spending it
teaching ignorant parents about things that they should already know, which was you know, not
necessarily something that I want to think about. I also was thinking to myself, I do not know I
was kind of like taking pity on myself and thinking to myself, like “woe is me.” And yes,
LGBTQIA+ people should not be the people that talk about this type of stuff. But it does feel like
I am one of the only persons at my school who talks about this stuff and tries to approach it
head-on. I am exhausted.
I began my reflection with strong emotions of distress when I said, “I am having anxiety pretty much the
whole day about having to talk to these parents. I am nervous. I am wondering which way could go.” I
further noted how difficult it was for me when I said, “I am trying to assume best intent.” I made a
prescriptive assumption, or what I thought should happen in this situation (Brookfield, 2017). When I
said, “And we are a partnership and I want to have and preserve our relationship” I reiterated the
importance of creating a community of learners and the impact of bringing our student’s parents into
the conversation discussed further in the following section. I assumed all parents should already be
accepting of me and the fact that they questioned LGBTQIA+ inclusivity meant it was not going to go
well and that I would have to spend our meeting defending my humanity. This prescriptive assumption
was further underlined when I closed with “I am spending it teaching ignorant parents about things that
they should already know.” When I said, “My other initial thoughts were, “Why do I have to do this?” I
saw the parent meeting as an inconvenience rather than an opportunity.
Afterward, I reached out to my critical friend, my dissertation chair, to debrief the conversation
as I knew that critical reflection is most valuable when it is done with others (Wergin, 2020). My chair
pushed my thinking and held up a mirror to me when they asked questions such as, “Is that what really
happened, Kris?” and “What evidence do you have of that?” It was this type of questioning that was

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done by my chair, my critical friend, that allowed me to zoom out and take on multiple lenses to explain
the situation that happened. Following both the conversation with the parent and the reflection with my
chair, I realized that this anxiety, though very real, is not sustainable as a queer educator. I spent so
much time fostering and creating a holding environment for my participants in the study, only to
discover that there was a need for me to create a personal holding environment. It was the only way
that I could continue this work and could help others raise their queer consciousness. On the need for
adaptive leaders to create their own personal holding environment, Heifetz (2009) stated the following:
Your body is essential. You need stamina, and for the practice of leadership, you need to be in
close enough touch with your body so that you can read yourself for clues to the emotional
undercurrents in the system in which you are taking action. You cannot use yourself as a mirror
for the dynamics in the system if you are not in tune with your body. When you are in the midst
of a leadership initiative, you are taking on additional stress. Consumed with your purposes, you
can easily forget to take care of yourself at the very moment when it is particularly important to
do so. (p 293)
Heifetz (2009) further stressed the importance of creating this personal holding environment when he
said, “adaptive leadership stresses you as much as adaptive change stresses everyone involved in the
ecosystem” (p. 293). As a queer-identifying person, holding environments are so important because my
study was extremely personal, and the stakes always felt high for me as I was trying to create inclusive
schools with teachers. I was trying to promote the type of school I never experienced as a queer
student. It is in this aspect of recognizing the need to create my own personal holding environment that
I have grown the most. I have fostered my personal holding environment which included: creating
sanctuaries and renewing myself through having a balanced portfolio, finding daily and local satisfaction,
and being coolly realistic with unwavering optimism (Heifetz, 2009). The creation of this holding
environment has given me the sacred space to surface and problematize my previously constructed

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worldviews and assumptions about combating cisheteronormativity, homophobia, and transphobia. I
have found sanctuaries in the supportive people in my life, a community of queer co-conspirators,
media (social media, film, television, and music), theory, literature, language, and the sessions I led that
allowed me to put theory and language into practice. These sanctuaries have offered me healing I did
not know I needed as a queer person, have given me sacred space and time to reflect on current
troubles and to prepare myself for the work that lies ahead for raising queer consciousness (Heifetz,
2009).
These sanctuaries pushed me to ask myself different questions about what is going on in each
scenario so that I regain perspective to become a more reliable narrator and calm the alarms that go off
when I experience the harm of cisheteronormativity (Heifetz, 2009). When seeing cisheteronormativity
being reproduced, I previously asked “Why do I have to do this?” Now I say, “I am the most prepared
individual who has the ability to stay curious.” With this renewed perspective, instead of saying “I am
having anxiety pretty much the whole day,” I now say, “I am anxious and that is okay because I care so
much about the potential of this conversation and the impact it could have on queer futurity.” I now
channel being “cooly realistic and unwaveringly optimistic” by asking myself “I wonder what life
experiences have led this person to believe this harmful assumption about LGBTQIA+ people and if they
are willing to hear about my experiences,” instead of unproductive prescriptive assumptions like when I
previously made: “I am spending it teaching ignorant parents about things that they should already
know” (Heifetz, 2009; Sapon-Shevin, 2019).
The impact of creating this personal holding environment can be seen in a critical reflection
following my study. My principal shared the results of our whole school family survey in December with
our staff. As presented in Table 14, there were comments from parents that echoed the sentiments in
the conversation I had with my own students’ parents back in October.

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Table 14
Parent Feedback From December 2023 Family Survey
Grade level of student Parent comment
Third grade Not all Hispanic ethnicities are represented. Also, we are Christians. Even
though I know the law stipulates to teach about other sexual
orientations, in my opinion parents should be given the right to have
their kids excluded from this materials, or how it gets presented.
Elementary kids are still in the process of identifying themselves. Giving
them this type of material at such a young age could just confuse them
more.
Second grade Too much other genders or identities. There are only 2 genders and
nobody can implement another one besides whatever people want to
think. Don’t like the LGBTQ clubs. Should should not promote this kind
of clubs or ideas.
First grade Lo unico que no estory muy segura es sobre la informacion que reciben
los ninos pequenos sobre LGBTQIA+ creo que los ninos pequenos
pueden llegar a confundirse… lo pensaba antes pero ahor y my nina es
un ejemplo de eso con un comentario que ella me hizo a sus 6 anos… :/
(The only thing I am not very sure about is the information that young
children receive about LGBTQIA+, I think that young children can get
confused... I thought about it before but now and my daughter is an
example of that with a comment she made to her 6 years. :/)
Third grade, kindergarten Children should be talk about respecting everyone. (the way they talk,
dress, and etc.). Anti-bullying should be talked about instead of having a
month of LGBTQ where children get confused at such a young age. Or
give us parents an option of whether we would like our children to be
talked about it. My child is confused!! Show them to respect everyone
and treat others as they would like to be treated.
My honest reflection about the parent feedback presented in Table 14 were captured in the
excerpt from a reflective memo and is as follows:
Of course, initially the parent feedback was disorienting. I think it is safe to say that anyone
would feel some sort of disorientation if their identity marker was replaced by the LGBTQIA+
ones mentioned in the survey. My frustration, anger, sadness, hopelessness that I felt reading

132
this feedback is valid and a normal response. I left work with these feelings and on the drive
home put on “RENAISSANCE,” an album by Beyoncé inspired by her late queer uncle who loved
house and dance music. This album is special because it serves as a testament to the importance
of queer culture in music, arts, and society. Listening to this album both calms me and charges
me and has become a sort of healing and meditative experience knowing the historicity of its
creation. I went home and texted my queer group chat and asked for a facetime to decompress
what I was feeling. My queer circle is made up of lifelong friends I have created over the years.
They validated and affirmed feelings that came with disorientation upon seeing parent feedback
and shared similar experiences they have had in their workplaces (non-educational spheres).
After, we shared laughs, caught up on pop culture, shared music with one another before
hanging up the facetime. I am feeling refreshed by talking to other queer people. They might not
be teachers, but it seems that cisheteronormativity is the final boss in a video game we are all
trying to beat. I decided to cook dinner and put on a show I have been watching on Netflix called
“Heartstopper.” It’s the perfect queer teen cheesy romance I need to heal my inner child
anytime it is wounded. In this show, all the main characters at this high school are on the
LGBTQIA+ spectrum, even the teachers. They all navigate the world similarly. I think about how
when I was a child there were no teen romances with queer teen leads. I know the bar is low for
queer representation, as the entire cast is white, and I know that seeing what I am seeing on TV
is progress. What I see on TV is a result of what people like me are doing in schools. I may not be
able to change the world’s opinion of the LGBTQIA+ experience or community, but what would
be the impact if I talked to those four parents? What would be the impact of sharing my story?
How can I bring them into the conversation? I have so many student families that have become
my family throughout my teaching career. How can I bring those parents to be a part of my
army? I can share power with them to potentially lead and support with conversations with one

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another. How can I fine tune the sessions I led these past three months into something tangible
other adult educators can use? At this point the homophobic and transphobic grief I felt that
was created by cisheteronormativity had dissipated. It has quickly turned into wonder, curiosity,
and the desire to take opportunities to make small changes. I immediately text my principal and
ask If I can co-lead a professional development session to address this whole school. This gave
me forward momentum instead of spiraling like I used to do so easily. I am proud of myself.
Creating a personal holding environment is the biggest growth I experienced as a queer adaptive leader
and adult educator of color as evidenced in the juxtaposing of my October and December reflective
memos. The disorientation I had in the beginning of December’s reflection was an example of the stress
that comes with being an adaptive leader trying to solve the adaptive problem of raising queer
consciousness. When I said, “Listening to this album both calms me and charges me and has become a
sort of healing and meditative experience knowing the historicity of its creation” I named music,
specifically the Beyoncé album, as a sanctuary or an opportunity to distance myself from the chaos and
recalibrate my bodily responses (Heifetz, 2009). This time alone in my car (either with or without music)
has become my sanctuary meant to “anchor” myself “despite the inevitable frustrations and
disappointments that come with the territory of pushing for change” as seen in my initial disorientation
when I read the results of parent survey (Heifetz, 2009). When I “texted my queer group chat and asked
for a facetime to decompress what I was feeling” I made an attempt to renew myself, a second
demonstration of how I have created a strong personal holding environment. These friendships sparked
joy in a difficult and challenging moment.
Throughout my study, it sometimes felt that I exhibited what Heifetz (2000) called “narrowing
life’s meaning to a single sphere” and that sphere was raising queer consciousness not only with the
participants of my study, but with coworkers and student families at my school. Personal renewal and
comfort from my strong friendships was shown when I said, “They might not be teachers but it seems

134
that cisheteronormativity is the final boss in a video game were all trying to beat.” When I asked myself,
“I may not be able to change the world’s opinion of the LGBTQIA+ experience or community, but what
would be the impact if I talked to those four parents?” I named the small, yet mighty transformations I
have the opportunity to make by trying to improve the lives of people in my community, in my spheres
of influence. Posing this question to myself is an example of finding satisfaction daily and locally,
another element crucial to fostering a strong personal holding environment (Heifetz, 2009).
This excerpt is also an example of the last element of a strong personal holding environment
called “be coolly realistic and unwaveringly optimistic” (Heifetz, 2009). I expect there to always be
tensions and mistakes in my journey, but I must be realistic in my expectations of what and who I can
influence, while simultaneously refraining from allowing that realism to devolve into cynicism. For me, a
major component of creating a personal holding environment is regulating my distress using the
sanctuaries that I have built as a means of coping and healing. In the example of my December reflective
memo, these sanctuaries helped me ask inquisitive and empowered questions about what my role could
be in this ongoing videogame. This strategy will sustain my will to fight for queer people. As a result of
all of this, I strongly recommend that adult educators about to engage in adaptive leadership at their
organization first foster a strong personal holding environment, as I have demonstrated previously, to
have the sanctuaries and renewal necessary to fuel the momentum that adaptive change calls for
(Heifetz, 2009).
Community of Love, Community of Learners
As I reflect on the tension between my participants’ fear of parents and families versus the
possibility of partnering with them, I have learned the importance of extending the work of this action
research with teacher colleagues to our parent partners. Throughout my study, student families were
seen as outside voices influencing our ability to feel comfort with discussing LGBTQIA+-related topics. As
previously mentioned in my findings, there were over 46 instances where my participants mentioned

135
some fear around outside voices. At the same time, my participants and I expressed our love and care
for our students’ families and saw them not as antagonists to our work, but as partners in supporting
our students, their children.
Given our role as kindergarten teachers, for most of our families, my participants and I are their
first experience with a teacher, school, and curriculum. My participants and I recognized the role we
play in welcoming and guiding students through the first formal stop on their educational journey and
recognized our role to simultaneously welcome and guide the parents of our students. Our experiences
in the role of being a student’s first teacher has informed our understanding of the impact that strong
relationships with families have on student success. These strong relationships and bonds with families
lay the foundation for the potential to create conditions for them to be able to engage in this work with
us, as partners.
I have learned in this study that just as I worked to foster the learning conditions for my teacher
participants to engage in adaptive work, there are opportunities for elementary school teachers to
create those same learning conditions for the parents and help raise their queer consciousness as well.
Proactive actions like this combat the “crisis management” that most teachers and administrators deal
with when facing parent backlash (Sadowski, 2019). Engaging parents in the work with us to create more
inclusive spaces early in elementary school is a proactive approach that combats cisheteronormative
structures meant to put LGBTQIA+ students at risk. Sadowski (2019) cautioned parents and educators
about the consequences of not engaging in this work as early as elementary school:
The biggest crisis is the dramatic rate of suicidal behavior among transgender and gendernonconforming youth, even as young as elementary school. Suicide is the third leading cause of
death among early adolescents (children ages 10 to 14) according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. And, given the fact that transgender and gender-nonconforming youth
are often amongst the most frequently isolated, marginalized, and bullied at school, these are

136
statistics of which Keating and other parents of gender-nonconforming children are aware. For
those of us parenting gender-diverse youth, that is a reality. It’s not a matter of if we are going
to have an elementary school kid attempt suicide, it is when. (p. 121)
Sadowski (2009) addressed the bleak reality many parents of gender-diverse children grapple with.
Teachers and administrators have the power to manage the intersection of queer consciousness with
family and home dynamics. What I am arguing for goes beyond teaching families about respecting
student pronouns, gender identity, and students’ self-assertions. Rather, I argue the need to avoid using
state and local policies and legislation as primary shields and rationale as to why LGBTQIA+ topics should
be taught in schools. I believe all these things are important and necessary in certain circumstances.
However, I believe that the primary way we approach outside voices should include proactive methods
mirroring many of the actions I enacted throughout my study. We must do more than hide behind what
“we are obligated to do” and delve deeper than surface level conversations about “respect.” Sadowski
(2019) underlined why this type of approach is important with parents:
Many parents do not immediately see the relevance of issues of gender and sexual diversity in
elementary school classrooms. Unfortunately, many of these critics incorrectly believe that
talking about diverse sexualities means that there will be explicit conversations about sexual
behaviors. In elementary schools, this is generally not age-appropriate, nor is it recommended.
Issues of gender and sexuality affect everyone and do not only impact students after they have
reached puberty. The two main issues of gender and sexual diversity that are most relevant in
the lives of young children are those related to gender and role expectations and parenting and
family relationships. (p. 129)
What if we, as educators, used the bond we have with families to get them to see the “relevance” of
these issues? What are the possibilities of inviting parents and families into the conversation? What
would be the impact if educators transformed parents’ worldviews on LGBTQIA+ topics so that they are

137
more open to taking on alternative perspectives? Bringing in outside organizations like PFLAG (Parents
and Families of Lesbians and Gays) and LEA (Latino Equity Alliance) to offer professional development
for educators and parents has great potential to support this work. Drawing on Webster-Wright (2009)
and Aguilar and Cohen (2022), I contend that sessions and learning for parents about LGBTQIA+ topics
to raise queer consciousness must occur frequently across a time period and be within a community
that fosters those conditions to learn. Just as I created opportunities to get to know my participants as
learners throughout my study, efforts should be made by educators and administrators to do the same
with the families. The impact of creating conditions for families to engage with this work is a proactive
strategy that beneficially affects all students, no matter their identity, across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.
Blanket Terminology Is Insufficient
Much of this action research study discussed the need to combat conflation and give gender,
sex, and sexuality their respective individual attention and reflection. As previously mentioned, terms
such as LGBTQIA+ and queer collapse gender and sexually expansive identities into one group further
invalidating the individual, nuanced experiences of each (Bey, 2019). Conflation of identities in this way
prevents deepening our understanding of each identity marker. As seen in the findings section of my
study, there were implications when I used the term cisheteronormative. It caused conflation of both
cisnormativity and heteronormativity even when my intention of using the word was to honor the
intersectionality that is sometimes present amongst gender, sex, and sexuality. The experiences of and
harm from each of those dominant ideologies manifests itself in both similar and dissimilar ways. I argue
for the need for a more pluralistic and diverse language to reference gender and sexually expansive
persons. The impact of this type of language would not only affirm the immeasurable number of
identities across the gender, sex, and sexuality spectrum, but would also validate the harm that comes
from cisheteronormative ideology. Terminology such as LGBTQIA+, queer, and cisheteronormativity
should not necessarily be opted out of. As mentioned earlier, conflation in this sense can provide a lens

138
for intersectional analysis. Instead, I believe that we should remain open to continuous learning about
ways in which language can have more specificity to better include the beautiful, colorful, ever-evolving
queer community.
Conclusion
In summary, the previously mentioned sections detailed the results of my attempt to answer the
research question, “How do I engage with elementary school teachers in critical reflection to increase
our consciousness of cisheteronormative practices in schools?” Over the course of my 3-month study, I
intended to build queer consciousness with my colleagues. I believed that doing so would allow us to be
better positioned to recognize and pay attention to the school practices that reproduce
cisheteronormativity. My goal was to engage my participants in critical reflection on cisheteronormative
school practices to turn our kindergarten classrooms and my school site into more inclusive spaces for
LGBTQIA+ individuals. I was able to better position my participants to pay attention to and become
aware of cisheteronormativity. Participants even made attempts to address and combat the “hot spots”
of cisheteronormativity that occurred within our time together. I fostered a strong holding environment
and regulated participant distress while prioritizing humor so that they were able to engage in critical
reflection candidly as we surfaced our fear of addressing LGBTQIA+ topics and our deeply held beliefs
about queerness. Through the diverse activities and critical reflective discourse that took place in our
sessions, my participants and I all built our identity consciousness for gender, sex, and sexuality. This
action research process pushed me to regulate my own distress, a life skill necessary for queer people to
engage in LGBTQIA+ equity work. I will continue to fight against the historically entrenched inequity that
was foundational to the design of my study: School and classroom practices have been biased toward
heterosexual and cisgender students and have ignored and erased queer identities. This has resulted in
lower achievement outcomes and a diminished quality of life for queer students. I believe that I was
able to help others stay vigilant, through the development of their queer consciousness, to the fight as

139
well. Throughout this study, I discovered sacred sanctuaries for personal reflection and established
healing spaces that better positioned me to combat cisheteronormativity in my own life. I grew in every
session as I practiced my andragogical moves and embodied elements of adaptive leadership. I will
continue to stay mindful and learn about the ever-evolving terminology to discuss LGBTQIA+ persons
while recognizing that future language may be insufficient to accurately define the colorful, nuanced,
and infinite number of identities within the queer umbrella. I believed and continue to believe that
building strong, loving, empathetic relationships and engaging in critical reflection on our deeply held
beliefs about queerness with adults is how we transform the mindsets of those who have been fearful of
LGBTQIA+ centered topics or who have remained silent in the face of queer injustice.

140
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Appendix A: The Genderbread Person Activity

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The purpose of this action research study was to examine how I, a queer, multi-racial, cisgender, kindergarten teacher supported other kindergarten teachers to engage in reflection on instructional practices that reinforce cisheteronormativity to promote greater queer consciousness. My action research question was, “How do I engage with elementary school teachers in critical reflection to increase our consciousness of cisheteronormative practices in schools?” I developed a 3-month-long action plan that consisted of nine weekly one-hour sessions where myself and three other kindergarten teachers engaged in critical reflection about topics related to gender, sex, and sexuality to raise our queer consciousness. The study took place at a Pre-K–4 elementary school in South Los Angeles that served Black and Latino students and families. My conceptual framework was constructed using elements of transformational adult learning theory and adaptive leadership that informed the development of my action plan. Participant transcripts, jottings, and observer’s comments turned into fieldnotes, and personal critical reflections were coded and used as data to inform the analysis. I found that our fear of and pressures from students’ families shaped our ability to facilitate a queer-inclusive environment. I also found the importance of regulating distress within myself and participants and the need for humor to lower the heat when there is discussion about LGBTQIA+ topics, as seen throughout my study. The evidence presented, as seen in my findings section, showcases how participants made growth toward raising their queer consciousness, the power humor had to support the holding environment, as well as my missed opportunities as an adult educator throughout my study. Implications are discussed in the afterword detailing my personal growth throughout my study, the importance of teacher-family partnerships in this work, and a reimagining of language sufficient enough to disrupt the reproduction of conflation between gender, sex, and sexuality and promote queer futurity.

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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Sanchez, Kristian Steven (author)

Core Title Queer consciousness: one kindergarten teacher’s action research to support colleagues in creating safer schools for queer people

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Educational Leadership

Degree Conferral Date 2024-05

Publication Date 06/14/2024

Defense Date 05/06/2024

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag cisheteronormativity,cisnormativity,gender,heteronormativity,Kindergarten,queer consciousness,reflection,Sex,sexuality

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Samkian, Artineh (committee chair), Pascarella, John III (committee member), Stevens, Mary (committee member)

Creator Email krissanchez624@gmail.com,kssanche@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113996WPK

Unique identifier UC113996WPK

Identifier etd-SanchezKri-13109.pdf (filename)

Legacy Identifier etd-SanchezKri-13109

Document Type Dissertation

Format theses (aat)

Rights Sanchez, Kristian Steven

Internet Media Type application/pdf

Type texts

Source 20240619-usctheses-batch-1170 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu