This book blends multiple research studies, historical and current events, reflective teaching examples, and guidance for LGBTQ+ inclusion and queer pedagogy in elementary schools. It is divided into three sections to guide the readers from a broad understanding of the hxstories of LGBTQ+ discriminations, rights, and some communities’ resistance to LGBTQ+ children, teachers, and curriculum to a focused invitation into the author's own reflections, teaching, and discussions with children about LGBTQ+ literature and topics. The volume provides hxstories, theoretical and methodological inquiry, resources, and encouragement for teacher-researchers ready to engage LGBTQ+-inclusion and queer literacy pedagogy in their classrooms, schools, and communities.

Winner of the 2018 Outstanding Book by the Michigan Council Teachers of English Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2018 Winner of the 2017 AERA Division K (Teaching and Teacher Education) Exemplary Research Award This book draws upon a queer literacy framework to map out examples for teaching literacy across pre-K-12 schooling. To date, there are no comprehensive Pre-K-12 texts for literacy teacher educators and theorists to use to show successful models of how practicing classroom teachers affirm differential (a)gender bodied realities across curriculum and schooling practices. This book aims to highlight how these enactments can be made readily conscious to teachers as a reminder that gender normativity has established violent and unstable social and educational climates for the millennial generation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, (a)gender/(a)sexual, gender creative, and questioning youth.

This volume assembles a range of writers from diverse backgrounds and geographies to examine five broadly-defined areas in elementary education: foundational issues; social and sexual development; curriculum; the family; and gay/lesbian educators and their allies.

Drawing on examples of teaching from elementary school classrooms, this timely book for practitioners explains why LGBTQ-inclusive literacy instruction is possible, relevant, and necessary in grades K–5. The authors show how expanding the English language arts curriculum to include representations of LGBTQ people and themes will benefit all students, allowing them to participate in a truly inclusive classroom. The text describes three different approaches that address the limitations, pressures, and possibilities that teachers in various contexts face around these topics. The authors make clear what LGBTQ-inclusive literacy teaching can look like in practice, including what teachers might say and how students might respond. “Reading the Rainbow is a terrific, nuanced, practical resource that many ELA teachers should come to value. Children in their classrooms, whatever their identities, will be the better for it.” —Mombian “Reading the Rainbow invites us to enact justice in our classrooms as we honor our students’ rights and work to foster equity.” —From the Foreword by Mariana Souto-Manning, Teachers College, Columbia University “The field has been hungry for this book! It will allow elementary teachers to make immediate and impactful change in their classrooms.” —Elizabeth Dutro, University of Colorado Boulder “This is a warm and vigorous invitation for teachers to create more equitable classrooms where the full humanity of students is honored.” —Mollie V. Blackburn, Ohio State University

Theoretical studies in curriculum have begun to move into cultural studies--one vibrant and increasingly visible sector of which is queer theory. Queer Theory in Education brings together the most prominent and promising scholars in the field of education--primarily but not exclusively in curriculum--in the first volume on queer theory in education. In his perceptive introduction, the editor outlines queer theory as it is emerging in the field of education, its significance for all scholars and teachers, and its relation to queer theory in literacy theory and more generally, in the humanities.

In a documentarian investigation of the major LGBTQ archives in the United States, Queer Literacies: Discourses and Discontents identifies the homophobic discourses that prevailed in the twentieth-century by those discursive forces that also sponsored the literacy acquisition of the nation. Mark McBeth tracks down the evidence of how these sponsors of literacy—families, teachers, librarians, doctors, scientists, and government agents—instituted heteronormative platforms upon which public discourses were constructed. After pinpointing and analyzing how this disparaging rhetoric emerged, McBeth examines how certain LGBTQ advocates took counter-literacy measures to upend and replace those discourses with more Queer-affirming articulations. Having lived contemporaneously while these events occurred, McBeth incorporate narratives of his own lived experience of how these discourses impacted his own reading, writing, and researching capabilities. In this auto-archival research investigation, McBeth argues that throughout the twentieth century, Queer literates revised dominant and oppressive discourses as a means of survival and world-making in their own words. Scholars of rhetoric, gender studies, LGBTQ studies, literary studies, and communication studies will find this book particularly useful.

This second edition is essential reading for educators and other school community members who are navigating the increasingly complicated laws and legal rulings related to LGBTQ students, employees, and community members. It combines historical, contemporary, theoretical, and practical information to help educators address exclusionary practices in schools related to gender identity, sexuality, racism, sexism, and other forms of bias that shape student experiences. To enable educators to better understand their obligations to students in relation to policy, staff training, daily school climate, pedagogy, and curriculum, the author has extensively revised this popular text to include updated information on the impact of same-sex marriage legalization and increasing federal recognition of transgender student rights. And because the legal terrain regarding transgender youth has been especially volatile, Mayo provides strategies educators can use to maintain ethical trans-inclusive teaching, even when local regulations appear to impede transgender inclusivity. Book Features: An examination of the pedagogical, curricular, and policy changes that can improve school experiences for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) and ally students.A new chapter on gender identity and transgender, nonbinary, and gender expansive student experiences.Current policy and legal information, data, and justification for LGBTQ-equitable and inclusive teaching.