Curriculum, Teachers, and Instructional Approaches for Gifted GLBTQ Students

The NAGC Board's support of the latest GLBTQ-associated proclamation, put forward by the NAGC GLBTQ Network, is laudable for the courage that the Board shows. The march toward implementation of GLBTQ curriculum, faculty, and teachers, as advocated in the proclamation (which was signed by the Board and more than 100 November 2018 NAGC Conference attendees in Minneapolis), will take a while, given the current status of sometimes anti-GLBTQ educational practice (Friedrichs, 2014). Here are some steps that need to be addressed for thorough implementation to occur of the GLBTQ curricula, faculty, and teachers advocated in the proclamation (seen below). Educational laws, materials, and teacher education practices should play an important role in the speed and style of implementation in all three areas. We invite those of you concerned with gifted GLBTQ curricula, educators, and methods to keep NAGC GLBTQ Network leaders posted on your progress, in pursuing the change processes described below or others, and to ask if you may wish our help!

Curriculum

1. Laws: There are some states that do not allow anything that promotes non-heterosexual lives. These are called “No Promo Homo Laws” (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educators Network, or GLSEN, 2015). Gifted LGBTQ curriculum advocates will need to speak up for changes in the law, or to test the waters with their own daily classroom innovations: a) on topics necessary for children’s health, and b) in geographical areas that are more sensitive to LGBTQ topics (Friedrichs, 2014).
2. Production of Materials: There are not many materials about LGBTQ topics, since publishers are less than willing to make those materials or are less than able to sell them to schools, especially in states with anti-LGBTQ laws. Further, many materials used by gifted students (including some fine ones) are not made by gifted-education but rather by LGBTQ-advocacy producers, such as GLSEN (2015). There needs to be more gifted LGBTQ materials available at the K-12 level in all subjects (Seney, 2018). Advocates can also seek out schools, and teachers within those schools, willing to purchase such materials. In some areas, enterprising -- and courageous -- teachers may also choose to write their own new materials.
3. Teacher Education: University teacher education programs rarely educate undergraduate and graduate teachers in use of LGBTQ materials, since LGBTQ sensitivity is sometimes not seen in these programs, and certainly not in some teacher preparation guidelines (Windemeyer, 2013). While LGBTQ diversity is increasingly praised in some teacher education standards (though not alluded to in the most recent NAGC/CEC teacher preparation standards), encouragement of diversity rarely extends to support for the actual use of LGBTQ materials (Kumoshiro, 2002). Advocates need to push for more such lessons and more materials in their gifted-education teacher training sequences.

Teachers

1. Laws: Among their several GLBTQ-related legal constraints, many states have long dissuaded teachers from making public the fact that they are sexual or gender minorities (Harbeck, 1997). Advocacy is needed at state and district levels to allow educators to express who they are, using existing state, city, district, or union rights to express who they are (AFT, 2016). Alternatively, courageous teachers may consider assuming the risk to come out to their faculties and even to their students, for the role modeling value that they may convey, especially in areas that do not yet have employment non-discrimination.
2. Encouragement of Educators: In the past, some professional organizations have not appropriated union staff to fight for GLBTQ teachers under fire. There needs to be encouragement of GLBTQ professional organizations to come out at work and to defend fellow GLBTQ educators for taking the risks to be open about their sexual orientations and gender identities (AFL, 2016).
3. Teacher Education: Teacher education associations often do not mention the value that out, open, and "activated" GLBTQ teachers can play. These associations sometimes do not even mention the existence of GLBTQ teachers, much less the freedoms such teachers can draw upon, energizing their students in the process (Michigan State Board of Education, 2016). As a result, undergraduate and graduate educators may feel isolated as GLBTQ persons and may not wish to come out at school. There needs to be more emphasis on the fact that there are student teachers that are GLBTQ, that they are sometimes harassed, and that there are professional guidelines to protect them.

Instructional Methods

1. Laws: Just as there are “No Promo Homo” laws that prohibit LGBTQ curriculum, these same laws may prohibit instructional methods that ask students to study LGBTQ material or that request students’ opinions on controversial issues (Friedrichs, 2014). Often, gifted GLBTQ students are filled with desire to learn more about themselves (Seney, 2018). Advocates need to work toward methodological, not just material-related, freedom, perhaps justifying to their districts and states the great good their LGBTQ-related lessons can play in the physical and psychological safety of their LGBTQ students.
2. Production of Methods: There are many LGBTQ topics that still do not have many well-known, LGBTQ-sensitive teaching methods at all. Teachers can specialize, in their classrooms, on creating and disseminating exercises that challenge student consciousness without forcing opinions (Kumoshiro, 2000) in LGBTQ-related science, psychology, and economics.
3. Teacher Education: LGBTQ teachers often do not learn the LGBTQ community’s perspective in conducting lessons on a range of subjects (Villanueva, 2016). Educators need encouragement and practice in doing LGBTQ lessons and methods that tap the community’s sensitivity and drive for justice.

In teaching and advocating with the latest NAGC LGBTQ proclamation in mind, gifted educators may speed the day that gifted LGBTQ students can truly feel empowered as themselves, through school curricula, staff, and instructional approaches.

Proclamation

We believe that high-potential LGBTQ students should have access to educators like themselves, as well as to curricula and instructional methods that will both inform these youth about themselves and help them to lead their lives. We urge other members of the NAGC community, as they go about their everyday lives as parents, educators, researchers, and other advocates, to support both equality and excellence for gifted LGBTQ and other underrepresented gifted students, through the provision of truly diverse teacher role models, learning materials, and instructional approaches.